Sudden Fame Causes Problems : Nudel Fights Depression as She Adjusts to Israel

Ida Nudel, the “Guardian Angel” of Soviet Jewish dissidents who fought and finally won a 16-year battle to emigrate, says the transformation from outcast to celebrity has left her despondent and ill at ease.

Instead of enjoying freedom, Nudel is fighting depression and exhaustion as she wrestles with the demands and uncertainties of her new life in Israel.

“In a single moment, I arrived on another planet, in an absolutely different civilization and life,” the graying, 4-foot-11 Nudel told the Associated Press in her first in-depth interview since leaving the Soviet Union on Oct. 15.

“When I was left alone in my sister’s apartment for a few hours, I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the faucet,” she said. “For someone like me, this is very depressing.”

“Also, in the Soviet Union, I was accustomed to living among a hostile population. Here, the attention is too strong for me to cope with,” she said, clutching her shirt collar close to her neck and stroking the collie that was once her only companion.

“Put yourself in my place,” Nudel explained agitatedly. “When someone just looks at you and says they have goose bumps, it seems abnormal. The reaction is too strong for me to cope with.”

Nudel, 56, was first denied permission to emigrate in 1971 on grounds that she might have overheard state secrets while working as a bookkeeper for the Moscow Institute of Hydrology and Microbiological Synthesis.

Eventually fired from her job as an accountant and separated from her family, who had been allowed to come to Israel, Nudel channeled her energy into working on behalf of imprisoned Jews in the Soviet Union.