Sylva Zalmanson is a Soviet-born Jewish Prisoner of Zion, human rights activist, artist and engineer who settled in Israel in 1974. "Sylva Zalmanson was most memorable with the stringing and hunting effect, not heard since the publication of Anne Frank's diary of a young girl" A. Phillip Spiegel, author, Triumph over Tyranny 2008
Early life
Born in Siberia in 1944 to a middle-class Jewish family from Riga. The family escaped the Nazis and returned to Riga in 1945, after the Soviets defeated the Nazis and liberated Latvia. Zalmanson graduated Riga Polytechnic University in 1968, worked as an engineer and dreamed of living a in Israel. Repeatedly requesting and being denied an exit visa to leave the Soviet Union for Israel, Zalmanson and her husband Eduard Kuznetsov became members of a group of activists who came up with a plan to escape.
The Leningrad plane hijackers case
The plan was called "Operation Wedding," : the group would buy all the tickets to a local flight, as if they are going for a wedding. Once on board, they would take over the controls of the "borrowed" government plane and Major Mark Dymshits, a former Soviet military pilot and Jewish refusenik, would fly the aircraft, under the radar, over the Soviet border. Sylva recruited most of the group members, including her husband Eduard Kuznetsov and two brothers: Wolf Zalmanson and Israel Zalmanson. Aware that the KGB was watching and waiting, they nevertheless decided to go through with the plan. On 15 June 1970, the group were arrested and tried for "high treason,". Sylva was the only women on trial that took place in 15 December 1970, and the first to go up the stand, she said: "If you would not deny us our right to leave Russia, this group wouldn't exist. We would just leave to Israel with no desire of hijacking a plane or any other thing that's illegal. Even here, on trial, I still believe I'll make it someday to Israel. I feel I'm the Jewish people's heiress so I'll quote our saying Next year in Jerusalem and If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. לשנה הבאה בירושלים אם אשכחך ירושלים, תשכח ימיני Sylva received 10 years in Soviet Gulag: 3 years for the escape attempt, 7 years of "anti Soviet propaganda", referring to Sylva's distribution of Hebrew learning books. Sylva's husband Edward Kuznetsov and the group's pilot, Mark Dymshits, received death sentence. The death sentences were reduced to 15 years after only 8 days, due to massive free world pressure. " The Let My People Go! event brought awareness to the world and tens of thousand of people demonstrated all over the world which made the Soviet release people.
Migration before and after the trial
Before the trial 1948–1970: 10,720 people/ After the trial 1971–1979: 378,410 people Source: "The Cambridge Survey of World Migration"By Robin Cohen
From prison to freedom
Sylva spent four years in Putma labour camp in indescribable conditions. On 22 August 1974, Sylva got an early release, due to a secret prisoners exchange between the Soviet government and the Israeli government who caught a Soviet spy, Yuri Linov who was exchange for Sylva Zalmanson and Heinrich Shefter, a Bulgarian Jew, UN employee who was arrested by the Bulgarian Security Service and sentenced to death for espionage, apparently solely for the purpose of extorting Linov's release. In Israel, Sylva worked as an engineer at the aerial industry but continued her non-stop activity for the release of her family and friends, including a 16-day hunger strike in front of the United Nations in New York in 1976. Most of the group, including Sylva's husband and brother were released in April 1979, due to a prisoners exchange with the American government that caught two Soviet spies in New Jersey.
Today
Today Sylva lives in Israel. She and Edward had a daughter and were divorced two years after his release, in 1981 without a trial. . For years, until her retirement in 2005, Sylva worked as a Mechanical Engineer. She started painting in 1992, working in acrylics, oil and mixed media. Sylva was an accepted member of the "Painters and Sculptors Association of Israel" and exhibited in Israel, USA, UK, Italy, Romania and Finland. Sylva and Edward's only daughter, Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov, an Israeli Filmmaker, directed a documentary film in 2016 about their story, Operation Wedding.
