Born in 1929 in Poltava, the Ukraine, he grew up in an assimilated family, but his encounters with anti-Semitism awoke in him his latent Jewishness and Zionism. He became an activist in Zionist activities in the company of the intelligentsia of Jewish youth, and was thus under constant surveillance by the authorities. Arrested in 1972 he was sentenced to 3 years in the Gulag, but was released in 1974, and in 1975 his dream came true—he went to Israel.
