Ida Nudel

Ida Nudel
File:Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - Prisoner of Zion Ida Nudel and Her Faithful Dog.jpg arrival of Ida Nudel in Israel
Born	(1931-04-27) April 27, 1931 Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Krai, Russian SFSR
Nationality	Israeli
Ethnicity	Jew
Citizenship	Israeli
Education	Economic
Occupation	Economist
Organization	"Mother to mother" אם-לאם
Known for	Former refusenik and an Israeli activist
Relatives	Sister - Elena Ilana Fridman, Brother in low - Lev Arie Fridman, Nephew Yacov Fridman.

Ida Nudel (Hebrew: אידה נודל‎; Russian: Ида Нудель) (born April 27, 1931) is a former refusenik and an Israeli activist. She was known as the "Guardian Angel" for her efforts to help the "Prisoners of Zion" in the Soviet Union.

Biography

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. In 1970 she first sought an exit visa to leave the USSR, saying she couldn't 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.

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. She started a campaign for keeping contact with prisoners of Zion who called her "Mama" and "The angel of mercy". She spread word about items the prisoners needed and were premitted 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.

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. 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. She was released on March 20, 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.

Since 1973 and for all those years her sister Elena Fridman conducted relentless struggle to save Ida's life and bring her to Israel. She approached, communicated and met any world leader who was willing to help the case. Significant contribution in organizing the struggle to free Ida was done by Peter Kraus. In April 1984, she was visited by Jane Fonda, which had been arranged by political activist and publicist Stephen Rivers. The two struck a friendship and Fonda began a campaign for Nudel's release. Others involved in the campaign included Liv Ullman, and Israeli President, Chaim Herzog, left an empty place at his Passover table in her honor. On October 2, 1987, she was informed she had been granted an exit visa.

Immigration to Israel

On October 15, she arrived in Israel. She was greeted at the Ben Gurion International Airport by Fonda, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as well as her sister and thousands of Israelis. She was immediately presented with an Israeli identity card and immigration papers, and had a brief telephone conversation with United States Secretary of State, George P. Shultz. The welcome ceremony was broadcast on Israeli television.

She wrote autobiography: "A Hand in the Darkness". Artistic version of her life struggle, was filmed as Addio Mosca (Farewell Moscow) by Mauro Bolognini, starred by Liv Ullman. She initially settled in Karmei Yosef with her sister Elena's family, later relocating to nearby Rehovot in 2008.<1st origin participant>

In 1991, Nudel established and ran "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. In 2001, she testified in the Jerusalem District Court in favor of Yuli Nudelman during Natan Sharansky's libel suit against him, who had published a book claiming that Sharansky was a former KGB agent with connections to the Russian mafia. In 2005, she petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel to force Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to use any measures necessary to save the lives of fifteen jailed Palestinian collaborators facing execution, and spoke against Israel's upcoming disengagement plan from Gaza and part of the West Bank. In 2007, she filed a petition to the Supreme Court demanding it order Israeli Internal Security Minister, Avi Dichter to withhold visitation rights from Hamas and Hezbollah prisoners in Israel, as long as the Red Cross was prevented from seeing kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldiers Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.