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Congressional Gold Medal.com |
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Congressional Gold Medal
Recipients
Anatoly and Avital Shcharansky
Natan
(Anatoly) Shcharansky (geb. 1948)
It is so heavy to break through to
remove the barriers those our thoughts, words and acts from each other
separates. That is the meaning of: become really free. ... I refer to
the topic, which employed me the last years: what exactly holds humans
to be real it? Zuallererst is it fear: Fear of that unknown quantities,
fear of loss, even if the size of the loss is insignificant in many
traps. To lose the life or the health; Reduction in salary; the
experience that someone affection shrinks: all functions directly. It is
clear: if one successfully mastered fear, one won little experience and
immunisiert in certain way, although, as I learned, not completely. If
one has to then lose again something, the fear is renewed because of the
possible loss. And one must again overcome it. Gradually one must free
oneself one from that slaves, which is hidden deeply inside,; that is a
task for our whole life. (from a letter Shcharanskys to its nut/mother,
written in the prison on 6 May 1984)
Anatoly Shcharansky's
February 1986 release from a Soviet labor camp and his emigration to
Israel have once again focused world attention on the plight of Soviet
religious and ethnic minorities who seek permission to leave the USSR.
Shcharansky's
wife Avital had emigrated to Israel in 1974--the day after they were
married--expecting Anatoly to follow a short time later. But Soviet
authorities would not allow him to leave. In 1978 he was tried and
convicted on charges of treason, espionage, and anti-Soviet
agitation--charges he steadfastly denied despite nearly eight years of
harsh treatment, including torture by hunger, cold, and isolation, that
would have broken a less courageous and indomitable spirit. Not
surprisingly,
Anatoly Shcharansky became a living symbol of
Soviet human-rights abuses in the post-Helsinki era.
Natan
Sharansky on Human Rights and Democracy in the Middle East December 3,
2004
Shcharansky, Anatoly.
Fear no evil: the classic memoir of one
man'striumph over a police state. EDITION: 1st Public Affairs ed.
New York: PublicAffairs, 1998 1988. xxii, 439 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
NOTES: Originally published: 1st ed. New
York;Random House, c1988. Includes index. ISBN: 1891620029 (pbk.)
SUBJECT: Shcharansky, Anatoly. Jews - - Soviet Union-- Biography
-- Refuseniks -- Political prisoners -- Civilrights.
LOCATION: Hilles: DS135.R95 S497 1988;
Lamont:DS135.R95 S497 1988; Widener: WID-LC DS135.R95 S497 1998
Shcharansky, Avital.
Next year in Jerusalem. EDITION: 1st ed.
New York: William Morrow, 1979 189 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. ISBN:
0688035523 SUBJECT: Shcharansky, Avital. Shcharansky, Anatoly.Jews
- - Soviet Union -- Biography -- Persecutions --Israel --
Emigration and immigration. OTHER: Ben-Josef, Ilana. joint author.
LOCATION: Law School: 84a 900; Russian Res
Ctr:JV8749.P3 S555 Widener: WID-LC JV8749.P3 S555
Anatoly Shcharansky became to 20. Jaenner 1948
in Donetsk born. It studied computer sciences at the Muscovite
physical-technical Institut. "I was later a picture book
Soviet", told Shcharansky. "however during a long migration
with my best friend in the Caucasus, he annoyed for any reason at me
and called themselves a ' Jid '. I believe, at that time I decided,
this no place for me was." Up to six days the war there were in
Moscow an Israeli agency. But only few Jews searched around a
withdrawal visa on, in order to be able to immigrate to Israel.
Emigration from the Soviet Union was for everyone a difficult
enterprise. When the Soviet Prime Minister Kossygin announced on 3
December 1966 in Paris, Soviet Jews could emigrate, if they wished it,
for the purpose of the family unification to Israel, rose hopes. After
that six days war the Soviet Union no more departure permission gave.
But awaking the "quiet" Jews could not be taken back no more
by political decisions.
1973 looked for Shcharansky on around exit visa,
however - like many different - for "safety reasons" were
rejected and were now a "Refusnik
Center of the seventies-years he became a
speaker of the Muscovites Dissidenten: Jews, around the emigration
ansuchten and human right activists such as Andrei Sakharov.
Shcharansky became again and again from the KGB, which arrested Soviet
secret service, supervised and several times. On 4 July 1974 he
married Avital stieglitz, which had received an exit visa for the next
day. Avital flew on 5 July to Israel ahead, in which certainty, Natan
will follow some months later. Natan remained further active for the
"Refusniks" in prominent place, and the KGB remained being
constant companion. "in the evening 15 March 1977, briefly after
six o'clock, I came from a dwelling and in the Gorky road, in the
Muscovites city center, by the KBG was kidnapped and into the
Lefortovo prison brought. There me the KGB accused of the espionage
and the betrayal against the Soviet Union, two crimes on those the
death penalty stands. I spent the next nine years in the prison and in
the labour camp, mainly with special disciplining measures, under it
more as four hundred days in punishing cells and more than two hundred
days in hunger strikes. While the long months of the hearings and the
isolation before my process and in all following years, those, which
kept me imprisoned, were, to bring decided, to break me me to it,
crimes, which I had never committed to confess. Then they wanted to
demonstrate me the world. They wanted to use me to be able to emigrate
in order to destroy the two groups, for which I had worked, - Jews,
who hoped, to Israel and Dissidenten, those for the human rights
sprachen.(Shcharansky in its book "be afraid nothing bad")
Shcharansky became the symbol of the fight of
the Jews of the Soviet Union for the right to emigrate to Israel. He
was the world-wide most well-known "prisoner Zions". From
the day of the judgement to bereiste Avital and a campaign for its
release led the whole world. Intensive diplomatic efforts and public
demands of its dismissal remained unsuccessful until 1986. To 22.
Jaenner 1986 was flown Shcharansky from the labour camp to Moscow and
came again into the Lefortovo prison. In the meantime the rumors, its
release vemehrten themselves would stand directly before in the west.
On 11 February it was gotten from its cell:
"you removal me the dresses, prison dresses, and gave me
civilian... Then I was brought to men to the airport and into an
airplane set, accompanied by four KGB. We flew direction the west, as
I noticed from the conditions of the sun. Therefore I assumed,
somewhat particularly pleasant take place. I was very excited. Then,
after two hours, when it seemed, it can be not the Urals, but the
border of the Soviet Union, began I, to require an explanation.
Finally one came the KGB of men and said themselves, he was to be
communicated entitled to me, which has highest Soviet me the Soviet
nationality denied, because of my very bad behaviour, which the honour,
a Soviet citizen undermined to be. Then I, I answered was above all
extremely content that years after my first Ansuchen to deny to me the
Soviet nationality my request already one fulfilled to thirteen."
The airplane landed in east Berlin. On the next
morning the journey was continued to the Glienicke bridge. There a
American-Soviet prisoner exchange took place. Insisted the USA on
letting go Shcharansky first and alone over the bridge in order to
stress that he was not a feeler gauge, who was exchanged for another
feeler gauge. Shchransky drove to Frankfurt, where he with Avital was
again-united, and flew together with it to Israel, where it of an
inspired quantity, under it Prime Minister Shimon Peres, when hero was
welcomed. One month, after Shcharansky had written the letter quoted
above its nut/mother, it received an honour doctorate from the Yeshiwa
university in New York, which took Avital for it in receipt: "Anatoly,
which did not know anything from the God of Israel, was educated in a
lonely cell in the Chistopol prison to its Judentum. There it was
locked up, however with the Psalmen David, and it found the expression
of its internal feelings in the songs, which it wrote to king of
Israel before thousand years... Everyone of us must the same fight
fight, must in its personal and local life for this-same goals work:
the Jewish devotion to Tora strengthen and at God, which showed us the
beginning of our release: a strengthened human concern around the
fundamental human became." Scharansky used itself immediately for
other Dissidenten and turned then its attention to the affairs of the
Soviet Jews. With its arrival in Israel he had said: "on this
luckiest day of my life I do not forget those, which I left in the
camps and prisons, those still in the exile am or those still their
fight for their emigration right and its human rights continue."
He became a chairman of the Zionisti forum, an organization, which
made its influence for the Soviet immigrants valid. it played 1987
before the second Reagan Gorbatchow summit in Washington a central
role in the organization of a large peace demonstration.
Since it was disappointed by the integration of
the mass of the Soviet Jews, it wrote again and again over this topic
and created 1995 a new party?Israel to Ba'Alijah ", in order to
support the vocational, economic and social Akkulturation of the
immigrants. With the elections of the yearly 1996 won the party sieve
Knessetsitze, and Shcharansky became a Minister for industry and trade.
In the government Barak he was Minister of the Interior, withdrew
however from disappointment over the development of the peace
discussions with the Palestinians in July 2000. After the resignation
Prime Minister Baraks in December 2000 and the new elections on 6
February 2001 became Nathan Shcharansky in the national unit government
under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Minister for housing's building.
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