Israel’s Newest Immigrant : Shcharansky Gets a Hero’s Welcome

Anatoly Shcharansky, the Soviet dissident whose imprisonment has been an irritant in East-West relations for nearly nine years, arrived to a tumultuous welcome at Ben-Gurion International Airport here Tuesday night, a free man and Israel’s newest immigrant.

Shcharansky stepped off a government executive jet into the embrace of Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who greeted him as an “unbreakable” man. The 37-year-old dissident has proven, Peres said, that “you can arrest a body but you cannot put in prison a spirit.”

While he appeared pale and slightly disoriented at first, Shcharansky seemed to gain strength as the welcoming ceremonies went on, and by the end of the evening he was leading an estimated 10,000 well-wishers at an outdoor airport rally in a rousing Hebrew folk song.

The ‘Happiest Day’

“In this happiest day of our life, I’m not going to forget those whom I left in the camps, in prison, who are still in exile or who still continue their struggle for the right to emigrate and for their human rights,” said Shcharansky, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison and labor camps as a spy for the CIA.

“And I hope that that enthusiasm, that energy, that joy which fills our hearts today--Avital’s (his wife) and mine--will help us to continue the struggle for the freedom and life of our brothers in Russia.”

Shcharansky’s arrival here marked the end of a journey into freedom which began late Tuesday morning when he walked across the snow-covered Glienicke Bridge to West Berlin as part of the most publicized East-West prisoner exchange in at least a decade.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials said that imprisoned South African black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela is expected to be released within days as a part of the deal, but the South African government denied the report, and U.S. officials in Washington said they have no information on an imminent release of Mandela.

Exchange of Letters

Israel radio said Mandela’s release was the subject of an exchange of letters between South African President Pieter W. Botha and Prime Minister Peres.

In a telephone conversation within minutes of his arrival here, Shcharansky thanked President Reagan for his help in making the dream of freedom come true.

“As you know, I was never an American spy,’ the dissident told Reagan. Nevertheless, he said, ‘I know very well how deep is the concern of your people in the problems of human rights all over the world. . . . And I want to ask you to inform all your people about our deepest gratitude for everything they do for human rights . . . and for Jews who want to emigrate from Russia to Israel in particular.”

Shcharansky, who became a key link between Jewish activists and the unofficial human rights movement in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s, was arrested on March 15, 1977, and accused of spying for the United States.

He was convicted and sentenced by a Moscow court on July 14, 1978, despite a public statement by then-President Jimmy Carter denying the espionage charges against him.

Learned of Release Monday

Israel radio reported that the dissident had learned of his impending release only Monday, when he was transferred from the Soviet Union to East Berlin in the first stage of the exchange. He was allowed to bring nothing but the ill-fitting clothes on his back.

Israelis stayed close to their radios all morning Tuesday, waiting for confirmation that Shcharansky had actually been freed. When the announcement finally came, Yuri Stern, spokesman for the Soviet Jewry Education and Information Committee in Jerusalem, said in a voice choked with emotion: “I lift my vodka and say ‘L’chaim’ “--a Hebrew toast to life.

“The fact that we won is a clear proof that we can make a difference (for Soviet Jews), and that we have a responsibility for their future,” Stern added.

Shcharansky was flown from Berlin to Frankfurt, where Israel’s ambassador to West Germany, Yitzhak Ben Ari, presented him with an Israeli passport and welcomed him as a citizen.

In Frankfurt, he boarded a specially outfitted Israeli government jet which had flown with his wife to West Germany just hours earlier. Uncertain about his physical condition, the government also provided a doctor, a nurse and basic medical equipment.

Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem said it had a private room available for Shcharansky if he needs it.

VIP Welcoming Committee

When Shcharansky’s plane touched down at Ben-Gurion Airport just before 8 p.m. local time Tuesday, a score of top government officials, including several ministers, were on hand.

From the tarmac, Shcharansky was taken to a special room in the airport terminal normally used to greet new immigrants to Israel. Hundreds of journalists, former Soviet citizens and other well-wishers stood on chairs to try to catch a glimpse of the dissident over the top of the television cameras.

Immigration Minister Yaacov Tsur presented Shcharansky with a new immigrant’s identification card and said, “We hope together that your release will be a sign of the beginning of the release of others, and to the opening of the gates of Russia.”

Nothing that Shcharansky had adopted the Hebrew first name, Natan, Peres praised the new citizen as a “great and heroic man” who had fought “under tremendous pressure, against so many difficult odds, as a proud Jew . . . as a man with a mission, as a devoted Zionist.”

Peres also praised Shcharansky’s wife, who left the Soviet Union on the day after their wedding in 1974 and who has campaigned ever since for her husband’s freedom.

“Avital fought like a lioness,” he said. “No place was too far away for her; no person was a stranger to her; no opportunity was too small for her; no declaration ever depressed her. She went from place to place, from day to day, from person to person, from a real or imaginary opportunity to continue her fight. . . .”

Passable Hebrew

Shcharansky replied first in halting but passable Hebrew and then repeated his remarks in English.

“I’m very glad to have an opportunity to speak to an audience in which my criminal contacts are represented so widely,” he quipped, in reference to several journalists in the crowd who had known him in Moscow and who were reputed by the Soviets to be his espionage contacts.

He apologized for his Hebrew, but noted: “There are such moments in our lives when it is simply impossible to describe our feelings in any language.”

Speaking at the outdoor rally a little later, Shcharansky said that there had never been “a day or a moment when I didn’t feel a connection with all of you. And even when I was in solitary I sang ‘How Good and How Pleasant It Is for Brothers to Sit Together,’ ” which is the title of an inspirational Hebrew song.

Then he began to sing, with the crowd joining in. The throng cheered wildly when Avital Shcharansky helped place a knitted blue and white skullcap on her husband’s head.

“It’s a dream come true for all of us,” said Yossi Goldman, who was one of the thousands of well-wishers bused from factories, schools, and collective farms to join in the welcome.

‘The Hand of God’

“You can see the hand of God,” added Yael Shechter.

From the rally, Shcharansky was driven the 40 miles from the airport near Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, where he stopped on the Mount of Olives for one of the best overviews of the city. Then he visited the walled Old City, where supporters carried him on their shoulders to the Western Wall, believed to be the last surviving remnant of the Second Temple, destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans, and Judaism’s holiest site.

Throughout the emotional evening, however, the theme of those still behind in the Soviet Union persisted.

Peres pledged that “we are going to continue our struggle to open the gates of Soviet Russia, which is not an enemy of ours.”

Meanwhile, on the subject of Mandela, a usually well-informed Israeli official, who requested anonymity, said the Soviet Union has sought the black nationalist’s freedom as a way to even the “public relations score” of the Shcharansky release, and that Moscow had asked through unnamed intermediaries that Israel work with South Africa “to be sure it happened.”

Shcharansky’s Canadian lawyer, Irwin Cotler, said he also understood that Mandela is to be freed. “Peres’ role as I understand it was to now go ahead and call for the release of Mandela.”

Cotler described the Israeli request as part of a device by which Botha hopes to make the African National Congress leader’s release more palatable domestically.