Elena Ilana Fridman (sister), Lev Arie Fridman (brother-in-law), Yacov Fridman (nephew)
Ida Yakovlevna Nudel (Hebrew: אידה נודל; Russian: Ида Яковлевна Нудель) (27 April 1931 – 14 September 2021) was a Soviet-born Israeli refusenik and activist. She was known as the "Guardian Angel" for her efforts to help the "Prisoners of Zion" in the Soviet Union.[1]
Early life
Nudel was born in 1931 in Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Krai, in the Russian SFSR. In 1970, she heard of the Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking affair, and decided to emigrate. She contacted a Jew named Vladimir Prestin, a known refusenik who was secretly teaching Hebrew.[2] In 1970, she first sought an exit visa to leave the USSR, saying she could not stand its discrimination against Jews. The authorities refused, saying she possessed state secrets she had learned working for the Moscow Institute of Planning and Production. Her sister, Elena, received permission to leave with her husband and son in 1972.[1]
Efforts to support Refuseniks
In the summer of 1972, she organized a hunger strike at the central office of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to protest the arrest of refusenik Vladimir Markman. After four days, the police ended the strike by blocking their entry.[3] She started a campaign for keeping contact with prisoners of Zion who called her "Mama" and "The angel of mercy".[4] She spread word about items the prisoners needed and were permitted to possess, and requested them from visitors from all over the world. These included vitamins, warm underwear and chocolate, as well as pens, cigarettes, and three-dimensional postcards, that could be exchanged with the guards for small favors.[5]
She soon lost her job. In June 1978, she placed a banner in her apartment in Moscow reading "KGB, give me my visa to Israel". She was sentenced to four years of internal exile.[4] She was sent to Krivosheino, on the River Ob, Siberia. For several months, she was the only woman in a factory dormitory, before finding herself a log hut and a job as a night guard at a truck yard. The KGB warned the residents of the village to stay away from her. She kept receiving letters of support and corresponding with prisoners of Zion.
Activist groups were organized in the United States and Israel, calling attention to her plight and pushing for her release. In the US, the group Women for Ida Nudel (WIN) appealed to elected women officials to press for her release, and was run by the Long Island based activist for Soviet Jewry Lynn Singer.
She was released on 20 March 1982, having been warned not to associate with any refuseniks or foreigners. After almost a year in constant movement as she wasn't allowed back to her flat in Moscow nor gain permit to live in any other place, she was permitted to live for five years in Bender, Moldova.[6]
From 1973, her sister Elena Fridman fought to bring her to Israel, contacting world leaders for help. In April 1984, Jane Fonda visited her, a meeting arranged by political activist and publicist Stephen Rivers.[7] The two became friends and Fonda launched a campaign for Nudel's release.[6] Others involved in the campaign included Liv Ullmann, and Israeli President, Chaim Herzog, left an empty place at his Passover table in her honor.[8] On 2 October 1987, she was informed she had been granted an exit visa.[6]
Nudel settled in Karmei Yosef, an agricultural community in the Judean foothills.[9] She later wrote an autobiography, A Hand in the Darkness, which was translated into English by Stefani Hoffman in 1990.[10] The movie Mosca Addio (Farewell Moscow) by Mauro Bolognini, starring Liv Ullmann, was a dramatized version of her ordeal.[11][12] In 1991, she established "Mother to Mother", a nonprofit organization funded by donations from abroad, seeking to take the children of Russian immigrants off the streets and into after-school activities.[13]