Published: 29 December 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ON DECEMBER 24, 1970, the Leningrad municipal court issued verdicts in the cases of 11 defendants in a case that would transform the Jewish world, the State of Israel, and the Soviet Union itself.
The court sentenced two defendants, Mark Dymshits, age 43, a former military pilot, and Eduard Kuznetsov, age 30, a dissident who had already done seven years in the gulag, to death by firing squad.
Seven defendants, ages 21 to 30, were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in labour camps, with two receiving shorter sentences.
Their crime: attempting to hijack a Soviet airplane in order to escape to Israel. With two exceptions, all the defendants were Jews.
FULL STORY Hijacking history (Tablet)
Image: Detail of a painting of the arrest of four would-be hijackers in Priozersk, by Mark Dymshits, oil on canvas, Israel, 1982 (Oster Visual Documentation Centre, Museum of the Jewish People)
