Refusenik Ida Nudel Receives Soviet Exit Visa
Ida Nudel, a Soviet Jewish leader whose 16-year battle to emigrate led to four years of exile in Siberia and a vigorous campaign on her behalf in the West, has received permission to leave the Soviet Union, a spokesman for the National Conference on Soviet Jewry said today.
Since the release last year of human rights advocate Natan Sharansky, Nudel, 56, has emerged as perhaps the most prominent of Soviet Jews seeking permission to leave the Soviet Union.
She became a symbol of Jews seeking to emigrate during her long fight, beginning in 1971, to leave the country and has been referred to as the “Guardian Angel of the Refuseniks”--those whose exit permits have been denied.
Nudel telephoned conference officials in New York with the news and said Soviet authorities granted the exit permit after a hearing on the application.
In 1978 she was arrested for hanging a sign from her Moscow apartment reading, “KGB Let Me Go To Israel,” and was sentenced to four years in internal exile in the Siberian town of Krivosheino. Since 1982 she has been living under surveillance in Bendery, a small town in the Moldavia region.
Conference spokesman Jerry Strober said Nudel would remain in Moscow to celebrate the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur, beginning at sundown tonight.
He said he did not know when Nudel would leave the Soviet Union, but that she plans to settle in Israel with her sister, Elana Friedman.
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