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"Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Soviet Jews who were denied exit visas, plots to “hijack” an empty plane and escape the USSR. It started as a fantasy, Operation Wedding, as outrageous as it was simple: Under the disguise of a trip to a local family wedding, the group members would buy every ticket on a small 12-seater plane, so there would be no passengers but them, no innocents in harm’s way. The group’s pilot would take over the controls and fly the 16 runaways into the sky, over the Soviet border, on to Sweden, bound for Israel.
Caught by the KGB a few steps from boarding, they were sentenced to years in the gulag and two were sentenced to death; they never got on a plane. While the Soviet press writes “the criminals received their punishment”, tens of thousands of people in the free world demand “Let My People Go!“ and as the Iron Curtain opens a crack for 300,000 Soviets Jews wanting to flee, the group members are held back to pay the price of freedom for everyone else.
45 years later, filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov reveals the compelling story of her parents, leading characters of the group, “heroes” in the West but “terrorists” in Russia, even today.
Guest Speaker: Israel Zalmanson
Israel Zalmanson was a member of Operation Wedding and he is Sylva Zalmanson’s younger brother. He was only 21 years old at the day of the arrest and he was sentenced to 8 years in the Gulag, which he served in full."
Southampton Arts Center
