When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (33 page)

That same day, the KGB searched the houses of most of the other major activists in Riga, Leningrad, and Moscow. By November, five more people had been arrested in Leningrad, six in Kishinev. In August, they had come for Aron Shpilberg, as well as Boris Maftser, Ruth Alexandrovich, and a fourth man in Riga, Misha Shepshalovich, who had been helping to produce samizdat. Altogether, thirty-four would stand trial—and the Soviet Union would present to the world what it said was the true face of Zionism.

The cells in the Big House were each ten feet by six feet, with a metal cot, a sink, and a toilet. Mendelevich could reach up and touch the ceiling of his. Most of the activists had cellmates, who were presumably informers. Kuznetsov, familiar with prison, was able to tell immediately which ones were spying on him. He began keeping a diary, scribbling on the small strips of paper the guards were obligated to provide him so he could prepare for his trial. To obscure what he was doing, Kuznetsov started each sentence he wrote with the words
Gorky says
and then put quotation marks around what followed, making it look like he was simply recording something the great Soviet writer had penned. He knew the guards would never read carefully enough to discover the truth.

Sylva Zalmanson hardly ate anything but bread those first few weeks. Butman asked for toilet paper because he knew that the guards would bring him cut-up newspaper that he could piece together and read. They tried to communicate by tapping on the thick walls of their cells. And they all saw, at one point or another, the cell where Lenin had been imprisoned in 1896, now preserved as a historic monument. Kuznetsov wrote in his diary in his usual sardonic style, "It's kept unoccupied, a relic not to be profaned. If you look at our block from the yard down below, it's the fifth window from the right on the fifth floor that immediately catches your eye. In contrast to the gloomy regularity of the rusty shields on all the other windows, its freshly scrubbed panes flash in the light of day ... On the dawn of the Revolution—or, as a friend of mine put it, of the 'Dissolution'—they were going to destroy all the churches and prisons, they said. As far as the churches are concerned, they seem to have done the job fairly thoroughly, but something must have gone terribly wrong when they started demolishing the prisons."

The interrogations started immediately, right after the June arrest, and lasted up until the trial in December. Almost forty investigators worked on the case, moving from one room to another, trying to piece together the story of the Zionist movement and the hijacking. They used tactics that, to Kuznetsov at least, were "banal": other prisoners who were obviously informers; recording devices sticking out of walls. And then there were the psychological ploys. As Kuznetsov described it, they toyed "with the intimate details of your life, promising to mitigate your sentence and threatening to execute you."

They told Sylva that Kuznetsov had already broken and had confessed to everything. They made Kuznetsov believe that Federov, his iron-willed former campmate, had supplied them with all the details. Mendelevich's interrogators asked him to name the friend he thought was least likely to talk. He said, "Israel Zalmanson," and they laughed, saying that he had cracked long ago. They chipped away at the Jews' resolve, working slowly but steadily, using one piece of information to gain another. On Sylva and most of the others, it worked. Some even started talking, though nobody in the hijacking group widened the circle of the accused. Kuznetsov wouldn't open his mouth. Mendelevich kept quiet as well.

The investigation took its toll, and as the months went by the group grew emotionally exhausted. Mendelevich had to keep convincing himself that his friends had not really confessed—otherwise he felt his faith would collapse. Even Kuznetsov, who maintained the strongest exterior, began posing existential questions in his secret diary. "Why ever did I agree to take part in such a plot if I knew how impossible it was to fight the powers-that-be?" he wrote. "Could I really have thought I would win? My logic and my experience told me, no—a miracle was needed. And if suicide is often a cri de coeur, then so was my participation a sort of suicide, the cry of the persecuted for salvation. This is it. Whatever I said, I could never give a satisfactory explanation for what I did. Has not the whole of my life been a constant search for escape? Perhaps I never really grew up."

The trial finally began on December 15. Dymshits's wife and daughters and the now very pregnant Meri Khnokh had been released in what was called a "humanitarian gesture." The twelve remaining people would be tried together (Vulf Zalmanson, being an army officer, would be given a separate military trial). Since there was no formal anti-hijacking law in the Soviet Union, they would be charged under two different articles, both carrying a punishment of no less than eight years and possibly death by firing squad: Article 64, for treason and "betrayal of the fatherland," because of "flight abroad or refusal to return from flight abroad," and Article 93, for stealing state property. All but four of the defendants—the two non-Jews, Penson, and Bodnya—were also being tried under Articles 70 and 72, "agitation or propaganda carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening Soviet authority, or of committing particular, especially dangerous crimes against the state."

Room 48 at the Leningrad City Court could hold about two hundred people, and at 9:00
A.M.
on Tuesday, December 15, it was filled with party bureaucrats and KGB officials. TASS, the Soviet wire service, and
Pravda
were the only news organizations given permission to cover the trial. The front row on the left side of the courtroom facing the panel of judges was reserved for family—there sat the father of Sylva, Israel, and Vulf Zalmanson, looking anxious and tired; Mendelevich's father; Dymshits's wife; and Elena Bonner, who had told the court that she was Kuznetsov's aunt. After being led into the room, the defendants looked at one another for the first time in six months and saw skinnier, older versions of the people they had known. Sylva's hair now had some gray in it. They weren't allowed to talk to one another but they smiled at their families. They could feel the unsympathetic stares of the crowd.

Each of them had been given a defense lawyer but there wasn't much these men could say. They could not be seen to slander the state, so all they could do was seek leniency.

In preparation for the trial, the defendants had been allowed to read the transcripts of the interrogations. Mendelevich was worried that his friends would be as weak in court as they were in the interrogation rooms. But his fears were soothed as soon as Dymshits, the first witness, took the stand. Mendelevich couldn't believe what he was hearing. The pilot who had been scared to step into a synagogue only half a year before was now angrily denouncing Soviet anti-Semitism and recounting how his difficulty finding a job had pushed him to plotting a means of escape. Next was Sylva and then Mendelevich himself. He tried to be unapologetic, to manifest as much bravery as he could in that imposing, marble-floored room. He made it clear that he wanted nothing from the Soviet Union except to be allowed to go to his homeland. To this, the state prosecutor declared, "The Russian people have reserved Birobidzhan for you, so go there." Mendelevich looked at him and said, "Permit me to decide for myself which state and not which province is my homeland."

Over the next four days, each one of the group took the stand. Butman was brought in to testify as well. Each was asked, almost contemptuously, what kind of state secrets he was planning to pass along after arriving in Israel. They all answered similarly—they had tried to emigrate legally and were refused; this had been an act of desperation. Kuznetsov's lawyer asked him point-blank, "Did you commit this crime out of political motives?" Kuznetsov answered, "No. I was guided by considerations of a spiritual and moral nature." His lawyer continued, "Did you intend to bring harm to the USSR?" "No," Kuznetsov responded. "Were you not disturbed by how this would be taken by the enemies of the Soviet Union?" The seasoned political prisoner smiled and answered, "It's not my fault that the Soviet Union has enemies."

By Friday, the last day of questioning, it was clear that none of the defendants was going to recant—other than Bodnya, who wept and said that he had only wanted to see his mother and thanked the Soviet Union "for having opened [his] eyes" to his crime. Except for Federov (one of the non-Jews), they all pleaded guilty, arguing only that they were not being charged correctly: they hadn't intended to keep the airplane, and the crime they were being tried for had never been carried out.

The prosecution's closing speech echoed the argument used earlier that year in the televised press conference. How could the defendants claim they were being discriminated against in the Soviet Union given the percentage of Jewish students in higher education, the number of Jews who had won Heroes of the Soviet Union medals? The prosecutor focused on the criminal nature of the act and, by extension, the "intrigues of international Zionism." Interestingly, though Mendelevich's "suicide note" penned on the eve of their departure was referred to in court as a virulently anti-Soviet document, it was never admitted as evidence. If it had been, it would have revealed that in their last minutes, these supposed terrorists had explicitly said that they wished to do no harm, that they wanted only to avoid "spiritual assimilation."

After recessing for the weekend, the prosecution made its sentencing recommendation to the judge: death by firing squad for Dymshits and Kuznetsov, fifteen years for Mendelevich, ten years for Sylva, and ten to fifteen years for everyone else (except for Bodnya, whose tears got him five). The defense lawyers then tried to make their case, pointing out the absurdity of such harsh sentences for a crime that hadn't been committed. Sylva's lawyer said, "We have been speaking about 'death,' yet the pilot is safe and sound; we have been speaking about the theft of a plane but it is standing at the airport. We have been speaking about what might have been."

Kuznetsov was so angry that night, so desperate for quiet to contemplate his fate, that he beat up his cellmate, who wouldn't stop chattering about a letter he had received from his girlfriend. In the ensuing silence, Kuznetsov lay on his cot contemplating one thought: "Does it really make any difference when you die?" He was sure, entirely sure, that the judge would follow the prosecutor's recommendation, and he was concerned only about whether he would be able to face death as bravely as he'd always imagined he would.

The defendants gave their final statements the following day. Normally, this was when the accused asked for clemency. Sylva had been rehearsing all night in her cell. She remembered how much she had wanted to be an actress when she was a little girl. When she stood up, cleared her throat, and began to project loudly, the courtroom went silent. If the authorities thought they might soften up the others by letting this vulnerable-looking woman speak early on, they were wrong. "We shall never abandon the dream of being united with our people in our ancient homeland," she said. "Some of us did not believe in the success of the escape or believed in it very slightly. Already at the Finland Station [in Leningrad] we noticed that we were being followed, but we could no longer go back ... go back to our past, to the senseless waiting, to life with our luggage packed. Our dream of living in Israel was incomparably stronger than fear of the suffering we might be made to endure."

She continued, "I wanted to live over there with my family, work there. I would not have bothered about politics—all my interest in politics has been confined to the simple wish to leave. Even now I do not doubt for a minute that some time I
will
live in Israel ... This dream, illuminated by two thousand years of hope, will never leave me. Next year in Jerusalem!" Sylva was almost shaking now, but she took a deep breath and finished by quoting Psalm 137, which had been echoing in her head since the start of the trial: "And now I repeat, 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither..." And then she said the words in Hebrew, "
Im eshkachech Yerushalayim.
" The judge interrupted her, yelling that she should use a language familiar to the court. Sylva said simply, "I have finished."

The final statements all aspired to the drama of Sylva's, but none quite captured the pathos of the situation the way she had in that moment. Most of them asked the court to spare the lives of Dymshits and Kuznetsov and to give Sylva a lesser sentence. Anatoly Altman beamed his Buddhist smile and said, "Today on the day my fate is being decided, I feel wonderful and very sad: it is my hope that peace will come to Israel." Mendelevich stated that his only crime was being "indiscriminate in the means of achieving my dream."

At six in the evening the following day, Christmas Eve in the West, the defendants stood up to hear the verdict and sentencing. The Communist Party members in the courtroom had brought congratulatory bouquets of red and orange flowers for the judge. The state had decided to accept the prosecutor's recommendation in full: Dymshits and Kuznetsov would be executed. The audience burst into wild applause, passing their flowers to the judge. Sylva began weeping loudly. Dymshits stared straight ahead, not a muscle moving in his face. Kuznetsov whispered to himself, "Haven't these Bolsheviks drunk enough blood? Haven't they had their fill? That's okay. They'll soon choke on that blood." The family members, fighting to be heard above the others in the audience, stood on their wooden chairs, reaching out and shouting, tears in their voices: "Be brave," "You will be free," "Children, we will wait for you," and, most reassuring, "They know about you in the West."

They began escorting Kuznetsov out and Sylva ran up to him and pressed her wet cheek to his. Mendelevich pushed the approaching guards out of the way so the pair could embrace, but they pulled Sylva, wailing and moaning, off her husband. Kuznetsov, Dymshits, and Mendelevich quickly hugged, and then they too were taken out. Mendelevich looked back at his father, who was arguing furiously with members of the audience. He was worried the old man might have a heart attack. They should sing something defiant, Mendelevich thought as he was led out of the courtroom—"Hatikvah" or the "Song of the Palmach," something a fighter would sing. But they were all too stunned, the grip of the guards was suddenly too tight, everything was moving too fast, and the weight of history as it pressed down on them made it impossible for anything more than cries to rise out of their throats.