On June 15, 1970, in an airport not far from Leningrad, Russia, sixteen Jews attempted to hijack an empty twelve-seater airplane. The airplane was scheduled to fly to Murmansk in the far northwest of Russia – and the plan was to divert it to fly to Sweeden instead, thereby escaping from the Iron Curtain in hopes of then emigrating to Israel.
All of the Jews in this group were refuseniks – people who had been denied visas to exit the Soviet Union. There were refuseniks from just about every ethnic group within the Soviet Union – but the vast majority of them, including these sixteen refuseniks, were Jews.
The organizer of this escape attempt was Edward Kuznetzov, who had already served seven years in Soviet prison for his role in publishing an underground literary magazine known as The Phoenix. Also among those in the party was his then-wife Sylva Zalmanson. Shortly after, in a trial in Leningrad that drew world-wide attention, Kuznetzov (along with Mark Dymshits, the would-be pilot of the plane) was given a death sentence that (also as with the would-be pilot) was shortly thereafter commuted to a fifteen-year prison sentence – and Zalmanson was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Just over 46 years later, on July 29, 2016, their daughter, Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov, released Operation Wedding in Israel, a documentary telling the story of her parents and the others who participated with them in the escape attempt – and how the event brought world attention to the plight of Jews trapped in the Soviet Union, eventually leading to a loosening of restrictions in emigration out of the Soviet Union.
Anat was born and raised in Israel in 1980 after international efforts had led to her parents’ release and successful emigration to Israel. She was raised in Israel – and then moved on to study film at the London Film School. She found a comfortable career doing production work for music videos and other short productions. But then, at age 29, she had a life-changing experience.
“I had a very big car accident,” she explains. “As I was spinning so fast that my car actually took out the traffic light from the pavement, I was sure I’m going to die, and I thought … how is it possible that I’m going to die? I didn’t even make the film about my parents yet.” She further explains: “Look, it’s like, when you have a near-death experience, you realize what’s really important in life, you know. People usually say … that they’re sorry they didn’t spend more time with their loved ones. But for me it was not making the film.”
Anat left her comfortable career – and two weeks later, she began her effort to make a feature-length dramatization of her parents’ story. However, she very soon came to realize that before she could do that, she would need to make a documentary on the subject. “I always that there are many documentaries about this, but actually I found out when I started to research, that there is only, like, a lot of … 5 [or] 10 minute segments about this, which – what can you tell in 5 [or] 10 minutes, you know? But the only full-length film about this story was made in Russia.”
The fact that that film was made in Russia is problematic because that means it was made in a place where, even to this day, the reality faced by refuseniks, especially Jewish refuseniks, is officially denied – as demonstrated by statements included in Anat’s documentary made by former KGB members. This is especially critical because in Russia, the media does not enjoy the kind of independence that is traditional in the West which would be needed to blatantly contradict the official story.
For this reason, before working on the feature-length dramatization of her parents’ story, Anat made this documentary. But she couldn’t include everything she found. Many things were left out – some of them because she only learned them after the film was completed, but others, simply because only so much could be told in the length of this film, which is barely over an hour long.
For example, her father’s previous stay in prision for his work on The Phoenix is barely mentioned in the film. Nor is it mentioned that of the ten year sentence that her mother was given, only three years were for her role in the attempt at hijacking the plane, and the other seven years were for distributing “anti-Soviet propaganda”, which in her case meant any books in the Hebrew language, without any need for the Hebrew literature to actually mention the Soviet Union or anything political at all.
Upon hearing of what treatment Jews received in the Soviet Union, my reaction was to appreciate how much better I had it growing up in the comparatively more liberal environment of the United States. Growing up, the first language I learned to speak was Hebrew – but I lost the ability to speak it as a native language because, when I entered school, the school told my family to avoid speaking the language in the house under the dubious pretext that doing so would confuse our ability to speak English in school. (I later learned that such cultural repression was in general in that time period of the United States imposed on families who’s children natively spoke a language other than English.) But still, the mere study and posession of books in Hebrew was not considered a national offense of any kind.
And yes – I remember how in Junior High School, I was repeatedly bullied on account of my Jewish heritage. However, unlike in Russia, there were rules against such kind of mistreatment — rules that even, occasionally, got enforced. And Jewish holidays are treated as less important in American society than Christian holidays – but they are not forbidden. And growing up, if I missed school on Yom Kipur to attend services at the synagogue, I would receive the mark of an absence on my record – a consequence that nobody would receive for not attending school on an equivalent Christian holiday, because school would not be in session in the first place on such a day. But at least it would be an excused absence. And neither I nor anyone else in my family would risk jail time for that.
However, as I relay to Anat how appreciative I am how minor and small the mistreatment that I received growing up Jewish in East Tennessee was, her response surprises me. “But still it happened,” she explains, asserting that even the lesser mistreatment esperienced in the United States is still mistreatment. “It never happened to me,” she continues, “Never. And not because I’m lucky – just because I lived in Israel.”
She then offers her assessment of what all this means for Jews. “I think it’s also good that we don’t go to just one place and all of us stay in one place. It’s good to broaden your horizon, and it’s good to have ambassadors for us here. And everbody should live where they’re comfortable to live. But let’s face it, there is no home other than Israel for Jews. Nothing we can do about it. … Luckily it’s a nice. Lucky that it’s a nice home.”
Anat’s views may seem a bit extreme at first glance – but upon closer inspection, they’re not really that hard to reconcile with the latest FBI statistics about how over eleven percent of all hate crimes recorded in the year 2016 were directed against Jews despite Jews being only about two percent of the total population. Anyway, this sentiment is nothing new to me. Growing up in the United States as a child of Israeli parents I knew from a young age that sometimes we’re persecuted, other times we’re tolerated – but any place where Jews live outside of Israel, we live as outsiders.z
Toward the end of the interview, I learn that Anat has to deal with a situation of an unauthorized screening of her film that occurred somewhere from which she didn’t receive royalties. Some people might not understand why this is such a big deal – but the fact is that this documentary wasn’t cheap to produce, nor does her next project promise to be either. As a matter of fact, the single biggest challenge that Anat faced in producing this documentary was getting the funds necessary for making it happen. “I think I worked on the film for about four years,” she explains. “Two out of the four years were fund-raising.” This is not to mention the fact that she had to quit her paying jobs and live without a paycheck while working on the project.
But now the documentary is complete – and as Anat gears up to work on the feature-length dramatization of the story, and as she tries to get Internet-based program distribution providers (such as Netflix) to carry her documentary – she continues touring and providing screenings. She is now working on the arrangements for her next tour in February and March of 2018.
