Natan Sharansky and “The 35s”
Dr Sheree Trotter, one of the Trustees of Jewish Lives NZ, is also a co-Director of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem. At the end of October 2024, Sheree co-convened the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem Academic Symposium with Hebrew University’s Professor Wayne Horowitz at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. The event’s keynote speaker was Natan Sharansky. Sheree took the opportunity to show Natan Sharansky a photograph of New Zealand Jewish women in the 1970s who were part of ‘The 35s’, a movement of women who advocated on behalf of Society Jewry. Watch the video below.
Transcript
In the late 1970s, a group of New Zealand Jewish women dressed in black, stood silently in Vulcan Lane, Auckland, protesting on behalf of Soviet Jews. They wore gold medallions with the name of a Soviet prisoner inscribed within a Star of David, and held placards that read ‘Free Soviet Jewry’, ‘USSR Release Anatoly Sharansky’.
Their protest was captured by the iconic New Zealand photographer, Marti Friedlander. These women were part of an international organisation called ‘The 35s’, also known as ‘The Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry’. This group was formed in 1971 in London and named in honour of a 35 year old Jewish women, Raiza Palatnik who had been imprisoned in isolation in Odessa. In response, a group of 35 British women, around the age of 35, gathered outside the Soviet consulate in the United Kingdom, dressed in black and called for Palatnik’s release. This was the beginning of a women’s activist organisation that advocated on behalf of Soviet Jewish prisoners of conscience and ‘refuseniks’ - those denied permission to emigrate and persecuted for seeking to do so. The 35s expanded to nine different countries spanning both sides of the Atlantic. As well as street protest, the New Zealand branch of The 35s kept up a letter writing campaign. They believed that if the prisoners were in receipt of hundreds of personalised letters a week, the authorities would take note and realise the degree of concern for these prisoners.
