POC/Zalmanson, Sylva, 1968-1978

Materials related to Sylva Zalmanson. Sylva Zalmanson graduated Riga Polytechnic University in 1968 and worked as an engineer. Repeatedly requesting and being denied exit visas 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 plan was called "Operation Wedding" or the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair. The group of 16 would buy all the tickets to a local flight from a small airport near Leningrad, 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. The group was arrested before boarding the airplane. At the "First Leningrad Trial" Sylva's husband and Major Mark Dymshits receiving death sentences which were converted to 15 years after international condemnation and protests. Sylva spent four years in Putma Labour Camp before she was exchanged for a Soviet spy caught by Israel in 1974. She worked as an engineer in Israel and became a famous artist when she started painting in 1991. Most of the group were released in 1981 in exchange for two Soviet spies caught in New York. The "First Leningrad Trial" led to worldwide outrage and galvanized the Soviet-Jewry protest movement.