Public lifeאידה נודל

Ida Nudel

Ida Nudel was a Soviet-born Israeli refusenik and activist known for her work to support the Prisoners of Zion in the Soviet Union.

1931 to 2021Supporting the Prisoners of ZionStruggle for Soviet Jewish emigrationInternal exile in SiberiaFounding Mother to Mother

Born: 27 April 1931, Novorossiysk
Died: 14 September 2021, Holon
Occupation: activist, civil rights advocate, economist

Ida Nudel was born in 1931 in Novorossiysk

Nudel was born in 1931 in Novorossiysk. Her mother was a kindergarten teacher and her father an officer in the Red Army who was killed at the Battle of Stalingrad. The family moved to Moscow, and her mother tongue was Yiddish.

She studied economics at Moscow University. During the Doctors' Plot of 1953 she was the only Jew in her group and faced harassment, which drew her closer to Judaism.

After the 1970 hijacking affair she sought to leave for Israel, but the authorities refused her an exit visa. In 1972 she lost her job and organized a hunger strike to protest the arrest of Vladimir Markman. She sent prisoners of Zion food, medicine and other items, and they called her Mama.

In 1978 she hung a banner demanding her visa and was sentenced to 4 years of internal exile in Siberia. She was released in 1982 and later lived in Bender, Moldova. Campaigns in the West, including one by Jane Fonda, pressed for her release.

She arrived in Israel in 1987 and settled in Karmei Yosef. She wrote an autobiography, and in 1991 she founded Mother to Mother, a nonprofit for children of Russian immigrants. She died in 2021.