Born in 1932, in Moscow, in a assimilated family, though his father was brought up in a Belorussian Jewish shtetle and even studied in a yeshiva. In the mid-sixties, trying to comprehend the terrors of Holocaust and in search of his Jewish roots he met an old Jew, a member of a synagogue, and started to take Hebrew lessons from him. Later, after the Six-Days War he got acquainted with Moscow Zionists—K. Malkin, D. Havkin, V. Svechinsky, etc. He continued to learn Hebrew, was engaged in distribution of Zionist literature and participated in the meetings of Zionists. In January of 1971 he signed a letter of protest against the harsh sentences to the members of the “Aircraft Trial”, and as a result of this lost his job. In March of 1971 he tried to apply for the exit visa to go to Israel, but they refused even accept his documents. Finally in several months the documents have been accepted, but he was denied the exit visa because of the “knowledge of the classified information”. The first time he was arrested in March, 1977, for “a parasitic way of life” (though he applied to the authorities with the request for an official recognition of teaching of Hebrew as a labour activity). He was sentenced to 2 years in exile to a mining town of Burkania near Magadan, but was released in a year, because the time, which he spent in jail waiting for the trial, had been taken into the account. The second time he was arrested in May 1978 for the infringement of the rules of residing (he visited Moscow where his wife with two minor children lived) and sentenced to 3 years of exile to Kolyma. He was released in August of 1980, but it was forbidden to him to live nearer then “101 kilometers” from Moscow. The third time he was arrested on the 7th of November, 1982 on charge of “anti-Soviet propaganda and propagation for the purpose of sabotaging the Soviet power” and sentenced to 7 years in a high-security camp of the Gulag plus 5 years of exile. Served his time in the Chistopol prison. Released in February, 1987, and in January, 1988 left for Israel. Lives in Jerusalem.
The information was provided by Josef Begun.
