Rebecca Naomi Jones: The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.
Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.
Archival Audio – Russia Reports with Jerry Goodman:
Welcome to Russia Reports, which brings you news about Jews in the Soviet Union. This is your host, Jerry Goodman, executive Director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Our program today features a report and a discussion on one of the problems that we may be in danger of forgetting. That is the question of the Jewish Prisoners of Conscience, or as they themselves call them prisoners of Zion.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: In the summer of 1970, a group of 16 refuseniks took over a small, 12-seater airplane in hopes of escaping the USSR and finding new lives in Israel. Dubbed “Operation Wedding,” the group booked their tickets on the small civilian aircraft under the guise of attending a wedding. Their plan: overtake and remove the pilots at one of the stops, continue on to Sweden, and then eventually, to Israel.
But on the morning of June 15, as they arrived at the airport in Leningrad to board their flight, KGB agents intercepted them. They were arrested and charged with high treason. That winter, as news of the trial spread internationally, it ignited a firestorm on behalf of the defendants– and a multi-national movement to free Soviet Jewry had begun.
From the American Jewish Historical Society, this is The Wreckage: Open Up the Gates. I’m your host, Rebecca Naomi Jones. This week, we meet The Hijackers. Our story begins with an escape plan.
Archival Audio, Russia Reports with Jerry Goodman: In December 15th, 1973, marked the third anniversary of the first Leningrad trial. A trial, which I think represented a turning point in the struggle of Soviet Jews in view of the awakening of world public opinion to their fate. There’s no question that the trial which took place December of 1970 stirred much of the world, but at quite a price.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Joining us is Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov, director of the documentary Operation Wedding.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: Operation Wedding was actually a plan to escape the Soviet Union by taking an empty plane, basically buying all the tickets to the plane by a group of Jews saying that they are going to a local wedding in the Soviet Union. And this group of Jews were my parents and also my two uncles—basically, it’s a bunch of sixteen people; out of them, twelve Jewish people.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The group was organized by 43-year-old pilot Mark Dymshits and 31-year old Eduard Kuznetzov, a Soviet Jewish dissident – and Anat’s father.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: My dad was born in 1939. He was half Russian, half Jewish, but was brought up as Russian, like his name, the way he looks—he looks Russian. And he decided by himself when he was about six that he is Jewish, and he’s going to say that he is Jewish to everyone, and he wasn’t afraid. Of course, he got beaten up, but he hit back as well. And he just felt more connected to his Jewish side. And he was always a rebel.
And he did a lot of things in his life. Like, really, by the time he was nineteen, he was a professional wrestler. He was even second place in Moscow. He studied philosophy in the university, and when he was twenty, he also started distributing an underground anti-Soviet newspaper and all—ah, before that, he was also in the Red Army because he wanted—he thought maybe he will be stationed in a different country outside the Soviet Union, and then he would escape not just the army, but the Soviet Union. This is the only reason why he enlisted.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: In addition to his underground newspaper, Eduard became a regular presence in Mayakovsky Square in Moscow – a spot that had become known for anti-Soviet gatherings, marked by poetry readings and political speeches.
In 1961, when he was just 21 years old, Eduard was arrested, tried, and convicted for publishing an anti-Soviet book of poetry called Phoenix-61. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Upon his release, he went to Riga, Latvia, which he’d heard was a safe haven for Soviet Zionists. For Eduard, who continued to live under a KGB microscope following his time in prison, his Zionism was less about the ideology behind a Jewish state, and more driven by the desire to live freely as a Jew. Israel, he felt, was where this could become a reality.
It was in Riga that he met Anat’s mother, Sylva Zalmanson.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: She was born in 1944 to a Jewish family. Not just Jewish. They were also observant. There were, you know—my grandfather’s first language was Yiddish. Also, my mother’s first language was Yiddish, not Russian—because Latvia was occupied by Russia in 1941, if I’m not mistaken. So she, from the get-go, was Jewish and was dreaming about Israel from home. They were dreaming about Israel all the time—the parents, the brothers, listening to Kol Yisrael radio, the Voice of Israel, in secret; learning Hebrew.
And by the time she was twenty, she was part of the Zionist underground movement in Latvia, and she was also traveling to distribute books about learning Hebrew to other cities like Leningrad, which is how she met the group in Leningrad and then connected to the hijacking. So very, very different lives. And also, she studied—she was in university. She studied to be an engineer. So she worked as an engineer at that time.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Leaving the USSR under Brezhnev became increasingly difficult, and for most Soviets, it was impossible. Emigrating required approval and an exit visa, and most everyone who made the request – Jewish or not – was denied.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: And when you were refused, you were also considered a traitor. Why would you want to leave your country, the country that gave you bread? So a lot of the people lost their jobs because most of the jobs were government, and sometimes they weren’t accepted to universities, etc.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Because of the potential consequences, even the act of asking for permission to leave was extremely risky. But that didn’t stop Sylva.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: She asked for permission to leave twice and was refused, and said by the visa officer, You will never see your Israel. You will always—you will rot in this country. You will never see your Israel. And after the second time she asked, she was also told that she is not allowed to ask again.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Meanwhile, pilot Mark Dymshits began to hatch a plan to escape the USSR, initially coming up with an idea that involved leaving in a hot air balloon. An acquaintance of Sylva’s, Mark traveled to Riga to find her, accompanied by his Hebrew teacher, Hillel Butman.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: And he asked my mom—this was one month after she was married with my dad, Eduard Kuznetzov—so he asked my mom, Do you see any chance of leaving this country legally?
And I must give you a side note and say that it wasn’t just about leaving the country. It was about being in Israel.
So she says, No, no chance. And he says, Well, would you like to hijack a plane with us? So she said, Yes. And then she said, You know, I just got married. My husband is a very smart man. He’s a hero. He was also in prison—because in the USSR, if you were in prison, probably you are the good guy. My dad was in prison before because he was writing and distributing a newspaper, anti-Soviet newspaper. Just for that, he received seven years in harsh conditions. And when he was released, he met my mom, and they got married, and soon enough, they start planning the escape of hijacking an empty plane.
So, the group in Leningrad then decided to back down. They said, we’re not going to do it. We’re definitely going to get caught. We’re afraid it’s going to cause harm to the movement, the Zionist movement in the Soviet Union. So my mom and dad say okay, but then they decided to still do it.
So, my dad traveled to Leningrad. He met with the pilot, Mark Dymshits. And he said, Do you still want to do this? Mark said yes. And so now they have a new plan. They’re going to take a twelve-seat plane, a smaller plane, because now they only have sixteen people: the pilot, his wife, two daughters, and twelve other people.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: On the morning of June 15, 1970, the group arrived at Smolny Airport, located in the outskirts of Leningrad. It was quite cold that morning, as the warm summer temperature had dropped overnight.
They only made it to the tarmac. Within seconds of their arrival, they were surrounded by KGB agents. Eduard, Sylva, and the other dissidents were thrown to the ground, beaten, and arrested.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: Think about it. When, at first, after they gave up the hot air balloon idea, they had to find sixty-four people, right? So they were talking to people. How many? I don’t know. A hundred? Two hundred? I don’t know how many people knew about it. Because people have to agree. So, other people don’t agree. So they tell people. They tell their friends. They tell their family. They tell their families. This is like about two hundred, three hundred people who knew. How can the KGB not know about it? The KGB knows about it. If more than two people know about it, the KGB know about it.
So, of course, they knew all along. But don’t be fooled. My parents also knew that they know. It wasn’t like—everybody knew that everybody knows. But the thing was that the group, the Operation Wedding group agenda was to be caught at the airport, and the KGB’s agenda was also to catch them at the airport. Because the group understood that if they were caught at the airport, the world would know and possibly react. And the KGB thought if they were caught in the airport, they can show the world: look at those Zionists, they’re hijacking planes.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: “MOSCOW, Dec. 15—Reliable sources said tonight that the trial of 11 persons, most of them believed to be Jews accused in a plot to hijack a Soviet airliner in June, began today in Leningrad,” reported the New York Times.
“The sources were able to provide few details on the trial. In recent weeks, however, it has been learned that those on trial are being charged with treason under Article 64 of the Russian Republic’s criminal code. Conviction under the article carries a maximum penalty of death.”
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: The trial happened six months after the arrest. So, during those six months, they didn’t have any access to lawyers, to visiting, newspaper—no contact on the outside, and terrible conditions as well. And they didn’t know what was happening, especially my mom because she was the only woman on trial, though there were other women in the group. but she was the only one left because another woman, she was pregnant, and then there was the pilot’s wife. She was not Jewish nor Zionist. And two daughters, fifteen and seventeen. But don’t be mistaken to think that the Soviets were so humanitarian that they didn’t want to trial a pregnant woman and teenagers because you know there were even kids in the labor camps, right? But in this case, because they knew it was going to be public, they didn’t want a pregnant woman and fifteen-year-old on trial. They want to portray a show that these people are dangerous.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The defendants stood accused, not of hijacking, but of charges including stealing of heavy machinery, and most seriously, of high treason.
As the person who was key in bringing together all of the dissidents, Sylva was the first to take the stand.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: Of course she knew, everybody knew, if they will apologize, then they will receive less years, less punishment. But my mom goes first on trial, and she says, If you wouldn’t have denied us the basic right to leave this country, we would have just bought a ticket and fly away. And even today on trial, I still believe that one day, I will be in Israel. And so I send a message to my people. And then she says it in Hebrew: Im eshkacheich Yerushalayim tishkach yemini. Leshanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim. And they don’t understand it. So they say you need to say it in Russian.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither,” Sylva repeated in Russian. “Next year in Jerusalem.”
One by one, the other defendants took the stand.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: And the whole group, everybody was brave. Everybody says, We don’t regret it. We just wanted to be in Israel.
Archival Audio – Walter Cronkite Reports: In Leningrad today, a Soviet court ordered the death penalty for two Russian Jews accused of masterminding a plot to hijack a Soviet airliner outta Russia. The nine other defendants in the case received prison sentences of four to 15 years. The 11 defendants were arrested last June, and according to Tass, the Soviet News Agency, 10 of them are Jews who hope to hijack the plane to Scandinavia, then eventually make their way to Israel.
The trial angered Jews in other parts of the world, and today Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir condemned the Soviet Union for its quote, “murderous policy toward Jews”, which she said harkens back to the worst days of Tsarist Russian. So strong is the reaction in Israel to the verdict that the state radio has canceled its regular schedule and is now broadcasting special programs on the trial.
Earlier in the week, there were protests in other countries, including one outside the United Nations in New York.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: On December 21, 1970, the sentences came down. Sylva Zalmanson was to serve ten years of hard labor in a prison camp; 3 years for the attempted escape, and 7 years for her work to distribute Hebrew learning books prior to Operation Wedding, which had earned her a charge of distributing quote, “anti-Soviet propaganda.” Most of the other defendants received sentences ranging from 10 to 15 years.
As the leaders of the group, Eduard Kuznetsov and Mark Dymshits were sentenced to death by firing squad – an especially harsh sentence, even by Soviet standards.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: When my mom heard it, she somehow pushed away the guards, two guards that were next to her, and ran to my dad, and she kissed him, what she thought would be their last kiss.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: News broke internationally of the death sentences, and demonstrations in support of Eduard and Mark erupted across Europe and the United States. Tens of thousands of protestors flooded the streets in support of the so-called hijackers.
In New York City, Jewish demonstrators and their allies clashed with police as they gathered outside the Soviet Mission.
Archival Audio – Jewish demonstrators clash with police: [Inaudible yelling – demonstrators clash with NYPD officers outside the Soviet Mission.]
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: The world woke up. How can they give death sentences to people who didn’t hurt anyone, who didn’t even plan to hurt anyone? They just wanted to leave. It was unproportional. So demonstration, riots, prime ministers calling from all over the world to Brezhnev, and also the pope called.
But that’s not the actual reason. I mean, in my opinion, what happened was actually thanks to Spain because in Spain, exactly at that time, there were also death sentences for six Basques who actually did kill two policemen. They received death sentences. And Generalissimo Franco—who was the last fascist, right? So, he was approached secretly from the Israeli government asking him to reduce the death sentences because they knew it would affect Brezhnev, because the communists cannot look more cruel than the fascists. Because at that time, there were demonstrations against the death sentences in the USSR saying, oh, the fascist is killing people. So it couldn’t look good, right? So the death sentences in Spain were commuted to sixty years. And two days after, my dad and the pilot were reduced the death sentences to fifteen years.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The convicted dissidents served out their amended sentences – under brutal conditions – in Soviet penal colonies. In 1972, general counsel for the Anti-Defamation League Arnold Forster spoke with one of Sylva’s cousins, who broke down in tears beside the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
Archival Audio – UJA Report:
Arnold Forster, ADL: What do you think will be accomplished by this protest demonstration on behalf of Sylva Zalmanson?
Cousin: We hope that the world will unite for the struggle for Sylva because not only for Sylva, for all the Jewish prisoners, but especially now for Sylva because now she’s very ill and because she is in danger, her life.
Forster: What exactly is the matter with her?
Cousin: She is ill with tuberculosis and also a peptic ulcer.
Forster: How old is she?
Cousin: Today, she is 27.
Forster: Did you ever see her?
Cousin: We grew up together.
Forster: You’re not an Israeli?
Cousin: I am 12 years here. I am also from Riga.
Forster: You grew up with her?
Cousin: Yes, I grew up with her?
Forster: You haven’t seen her in 12 years?
Cousin: No, I haven’t.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Sylva ultimately served four years, six months of which were spent in solitary confinement after she beat up another prisoner for making antisemitic remarks, before she was released during a prisoner swap. Mark Dymshits and Eduard Kuznetsov were released in 1979, also as part of a prisoner exchange. Sylva and Eduard reunited in Israel, and had daughter Anat, before divorcing a few years later. The family remained close until Eduard’s passing at the age of 85.
Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov: My dad passed away—it’s a funny note. It doesn’t sound funny, but it’s going to be funny at the end. My dad passed away recently in December 2024. He was almost eighty-six, a month shy of eighty-six. And there were so many articles about him, you know, also in Russian. And I scrolled through all of them. And then there was one article in Russian, in Russia, that says, Finally, the Zionist terrorist is dead. And I started laughing. My dad would have laughed so hard. Because they were so happy he was dead, but he died of old age, you know? So it’s not like you won something, right? They were so happy. (laughs)
Rebecca Naomi Jones: What began as an act of desperation and defiance inspired a movement, and the fight to free Soviet Jews became one of the largest protest movements in American history.
Archival Audio – UJA Report: [Shuli Natan singing Open the Gates in Hebrew]
Narrator: This is the spring 1972 edition of the UJA Report. In the background you are listening to Shuli Natan singing Open the Gates. The dream of Jews around the world: to open the gates of freedom so that Jews can stand proudly, unafraid, together.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: From the American Jewish Historical Society, I’m Rebecca Naomi Jones. This episode was written and produced by Gemma R. Birnbaum, Shaul Kelner, and Andrew Sperling. Recording, sound design, and mixing were done at Sound Lounge. Transcription is provided by Adept Word Management. Archival material is courtesy of the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society and its Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement, the New York Times, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive and the CBS News Archive, and the AP News Archive.
For more about Anat’s documentary Operation Wedding, episode transcripts, additional resources, and links to the collections featured in this episode, visit ajhs.org/podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform which helps others discover our series.
For episode transcripts, additional resources, and links to the collections featured in this episode, visit ajhs.org/podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform which helps others discover our series.
