On 15 June 1970, a group of 16 Jewish 'refuseniks' led by Yosef Mendelevich, Mark Dymshits, Eduard Kuznetsov, and Sylva Zalmanson attempted to hijack a civilian aircraft in a bid to escape the Soviet Union. While the operation, known as Operation Wedding, was unsuccessful and ended in the arrest of the initiators, the mission is credited with drawing international attention to the Soviet Union's human rights violations and catalyzing a massive worldwide movement to free Soviet Jewry.
Even by Soviet standards, the sentences of those who participated in the operation were extremely harsh, as all participants were sentenced to multiple years in prison. Mendelevich and Zalmanson received fifteen and ten years in jail, and Dymshits and Kuznetsov were sentenced to death, although their sentences were eventually commuted. Fortunately, only two of the Refuseniks' sentences were forced to serve out their full sentence, one of whom passed away after becoming ill.
We present here a medallion (pendant) that was created in the 1970s by the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism (CCSA) in collaboration with the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ). Sets were dedicated to a specific Jewish prisoner of conscience in the Soviet Union and consisted of two information cards and one medallion. The medallions in the shape of a six-pointed star depict a Star of David chained to a lock with the symbol of the Soviet Union and the inscription "Let my people go" in English and Hebrew. The medallion shows the name of Wolf Zalmanson, one of the convicted 'refuseniks'.
Click here to read the interesting article "Medallions for prisoners of conscience" by Dr. Vladimir Bernshtam
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