“Operation Wedding” Post-Film Discussion with Film Director Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov

Classrooms Without Borders, in partnership with Rodef Shalom Congregation, is excited to offer the opportunity to watch the film “Operation Wedding” and engage in a post-film discussion with the film director, Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov and her mother Sylva, one of the actual hijackers! CWB scholar Avi Ben-Hur will open the discussion.

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.

Anat and her mother, Sylva, retrace the group’s journey from a Soviet airport to a KGB prison. Cigarettes and vodka fuel interviews with the parents filled with intelligence and humor. Archives, reenactments and interviews with KGB officers enhance this inspiring story of young Jews who imagined freedom and cracked the Iron Curtain.

Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov

Born and raised in Israel, Anat studied film-making in Israel and England before embarking on a film career, where she had success in both popular media and promotional productions. Anat’s most recent documentary, Operation Wedding, was released in 2016 in Israel, and has since appeared in film festivals around the world, winning awards for best documentary and best story. Although the documentary is complete, Anat feels the need to make sure that the next generation is familiar with the struggle of Soviet Jewry. She produced a film of archival materials for historians on the struggle, began pushing out materials about Soviet Jewry through social media, and developed an educational online program with Lookstein Center of Bar Ilan University, The Refusenik Project.

Sylva Zalmanson

Born in 1944, Sylva grow up in a traditional Jewish Zionist family in Riga. When Sylva was 20, she started her Zionist activity which included spreading Hebrew teaching books to USSR Zionist groups in different cities. She graduated with a degree in engineering from the Riga Polytechnic University.

Sylva had dreams of making a home in Israel. At the age of 25, in 1970, after repeatedly being denied exit from the Soviet Union, Sylva, her husband then Edward Kuznetsov, two brothers and 12 other Zionist activists, were arrested by the KGB for an escape attempt from the USSR. It is known as the “Dymshits-Kuznetsov Hijacking Affair” or “The First Leningrad Trial” or “Operation Wedding,” a code name for a plan to take an empty plane outside the Soviet borders, over to Sweden, bound for Israel.

Young, fearless, and the only woman in the dock, Sylva was ordered to stand and state her case. She proclaimed: “Even here, on trial, I still believe I’ll make it someday to Israel. This dream, illuminated by 2,000 years of hope, will never leave me. Next year in Jerusalem!” The first Leningrad trial was broadcast around the world, creating furious street protests in America, Australia, Europe, and Israel, triggering an international outcry from 24 governments. Sylva’s sentence was 10 years imprisonment but due to pressure from all over the world, she was released after 4 years and arrived in Israel.

After four years in the gulag and a worldwide campaign on her behalf, Sylva was freed. Arriving in Israel in 1974, she fought for the release of her two brothers, her husband – whose death sentence was commuted to 15 years hard labor – and other Prisoners of Zion, raising the cause with world leaders and holding a 16-day hunger strike at the United Nations. Eventually her pressure, and that of numerous other activists and world leaders, bore fruit, and most of the defendants were released before the end of their terms. In 1979, after nine years apart, Zalmanson and Kuznetsov reunited in Israel; a year later the couple had a daughter, Anat, who is now a filmmaker. For years, until her retirement in 2005, Sylva worked as a Mechanical Engineer. She is also a painter, starting in 1992. Working in acrylics and oil, her subjects are often depicted in vibrant colors, in mixed media. She exhibited in Israel, USA, UK, Italy, Romania and Finland, and was an accepted member of the “Painters and Sculptors Association of Israel”.