He was born in 1930 in Kharkov, the Ukraine, in a partially assimilated family, which, nevertheless, followed some Jewish traditions, and did not totally abandon its “Jewishness”. In the middle of 1978 together with his family he attempted to obtain permission to leave for Israel, but was refused. He began his fight for the right of free emigration for Soviet Jews, who desire to go to Israel. He wrote a paper which helped Soviet Jews to understand, that one of their legal rights is the right to leave the USSR, and that they can legally fight for the realization of this right. He was arrested in September 1982, charged with “systematic dissemination of knowingly false fabrications that defame and bad-mouth the Soviet state and social system ”, and on December 10 was sentenced to 30 months of imprisonment in the medium security camps of the Gulag. He spent his term in the prisons of Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk and Perm’, and also in the camp in Solikamsk. He was released on March 9-th, 1985, after serving his sentence in full, but almost three years after this he spent “in refuse”. He arrived to Israel on April 1-st, 1988, on Erev Shabbath (Saturday Evening) and Erev Pesah (Pesah Evening). Now he lives in Rekhovot.
The information was provided by Felix-Azriel Kochubievsky
