\nNudel<\/b> (watch online: <\/i>http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/4585693<\/a><\/i><\/a>)
<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n
Original archival material found <\/p>\n Screenshot from \u201cZions Captives, documentary on Ida Nudel\u201d <\/i> <\/i><\/p>\n Original archival material found Thanks to a generous grant from the Blavatnik Many video Ida Nudel Her <\/p>\n Prisoner of the Soviet Secret Police: Made by an The
\nHouston Action for Soviet Jewry Records I-500; box 35; VHS tape 022; American
\nJewish Historical Society, New York, NY; \u00a0PID http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/798129<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/78.media.tumblr.com\/e056f7e5748c62586a1c04a6902f9060\/tumblr_inline_ovlsgiX7nY1r0yq0k_540.jpg\")
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\nHouston Action for Soviet Jewry Records I-500; box 32; VHS tape 022; American
\nJewish Historical Society, New York, NY PID <\/i>http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/4585693<\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
\nFamily Foundation, American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) and Center for
\nJewish History (CJH) were able to preserve and make accessible online 272 hours
\nof historic video recordings from AJHS’ Archive of the American Soviet
\nJewry Movement (AASJM) [ajhs.org\/aasjm<\/a>]. Included in this project are over 430
\nVHS tapes found in 12 different collections, with recordings dating from 1970s
\nto 1990s, featuring interviews with Soviet Jewish Refuseniks, dissidents, and
\nPrisoners of Conscience, Western human rights activists and elected officials, television
\nprograms and news reports on Soviet Jewry, footage of Jewish communities in
\nvarious parts of the USSR and the FSU, rallies and demonstrations in the United
\nStates and in Europe, examples of the Soviet state-sanctioned Anti-Semitic and
\nAnti-Zionist propaganda films, documentaries produced by the Soviet Jewry
\nmovement organizations, and other related materials. Prior to this digitization
\nproject, the recordings were completely inaccessible and in urgent need of
\npreservation.<\/p>\n
\nrecordings in this collection provide powerful visual documentation of the
\nsystemic human rights abuses in the Soviet Union, as well as remarkable
\nexamples of individual resistance to oppression and resilience in the face of
\ninjustice. One of the digitized VHS tapes, from the Houston Action for Soviet Jewry Records I-500<\/a>, contains footage of a prominent
\nSoviet Jewish political activist Ida Nudel that was made during her exile in
\nSiberia where she was subjected to severe mental and physical torment as
\npunishment for her dissent against the totalitarian suppression of basic human
\nrights in the Soviet state.<\/p>\n
\nbecame an activist in the Soviet Jewry movement after she was refused
\npermission to leave the USSR in 1970. In 1972 she organized an unprecedentedly
\ndaring hunger strike at the Moscow headquarters of the Communist Party,
\nprotesting an unlawful arrest of a fellow Refusenik. For many years she served
\nas the lifeline between the West and the unjustly imprisoned Soviet Jewish
\nactivists and Hebrew teachers, ensuring that their stories are not forgotten and
\nthat they are supplied with food, medicine, and clothing, necessary in the
\nbrutal conditions of the Soviet prison camps. Ida directed a continuous flow of
\ncorrespondence to the Prisoners of Conscience with messages of hope and support
\nfrom all over the world. <\/p>\n
\ncourageous and fervent activism earned her the nickname “the guardian
\nangel” in the Soviet Jewish community, and four years of internal exile in
\nSiberia for \u201cmalicious hooliganism\u201d from the Soviet authorities. <\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/78.media.tumblr.com\/54de2757e624b0351bdb0c7e6172772e\/tumblr_inline_ovlshwPUBv1r0yq0k_540.jpg\")
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\nIda Nudel poster by \u00a0Student Struggle for
\nSoviet Jewry, circa 1970s; \u00a0Action for
\nSoviet Jewry records; I-487; box 162; folder 8; American Jewish Historical
\nSociety, New York, NY, PID \u00a0<\/i>http:\/\/digital.cjh.org\/<\/a><\/i>1995059
<\/a><\/p>\n
\namateur photographer in December of 1978 in the remote village of Krivosheino,
\nSiberia, the 8 mm film was smuggled out of the Soviet Union by an American
\nhuman rights activist, later transferred to a VHS tape and now made available
\nonline. It shows an ailing, fragile woman housed in a claustrophobic, tiny room
\nin a wooden barrack with no plumbing or heating, where she lived alone,
\nostracized by the locals on the order of KGB. The reel continues with Nudel wading
\nthrough the knee-deep snow in the -60\u00b0 F Siberian winter to collect
\ncontaminated drinking water from an ice hole in a lake. It concludes with Ida
\naddressing the free world, in English: \u201cWe are idealists. We believe that our
\nsuffering is not for nothing. And this belief saves us from despair at the most
\ndifficult moment of our imprisonment\u2026\u201d Ida Nudel never stopped her support for the
\nother Soviet Jewish Prisoners of Conscience, even during her own exile. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\ninformation about Ida Nudel\u2019s arrest and exile was quickly spreading outside of
\nthe Soviet Union. Her name became a household word synonymous with resistance
\nto totalitarian oppression and mind control. Demonstrations, rallies, and
\nvigils on her behalf gathered crowds of activists in the United States and
\nEurope. Soviet government offices received thousands of letters demanding Ida\u2019s
\nrelease. \u00a0Among the most vocal supporters
\nof Nudel\u2019s plight were actresses Jane Fonda and Liv Ullman, Israeli President
\nChaim Herzog and the US Secretary of State George P. Shultz.<\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/78.media.tumblr.com\/b7cf994aba6d0ebb598367d57f5335b8\/tumblr_inline_ovlskiutBj1r0yq0k_540.jpg\")
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