Born in Odessa, in 1934, she experienced anti-Semitism in high-school, after which she became an ardent activist in an underground Zionist movement. From 1955 onwards, Tina and her parents, Yehoshua Drobovsky and Bella had secret contact with the representatives of the Israeli Embassy in Moscow and directly with Israel. In 1958 Tina and her father were arrested, charged with Zionist propaganda and with “criminal connections with some persons in the Israeli Embassy in Moscow”, and sentenced by a military tribunal to 3 years imprisonment. She spent her sentence in the infamous Moscow prisons Lubianka and Lefortovo and was released in 1961, but her family and she did not stop their Zionist activities until 1970 when the family of Tina Brodetsky received instructions to leave the USSR within 4 hours. They arrived safely in Israel.
