Real Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Book III

Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: נתןשרנסקי‎; Russian: Ната́н Щара́нский;Ukrainian: Натан Щаранський), born Anatoly BorisovichShcharansky, is an Israeli politician, human rights activist, andauthor who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He served as Chairman ofthe Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018. Sharansky currently serves as chairman for the Institute for theStudy of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an Americannon-partisan organization.

Biography

Sharansky was born into a Jewish familyon 20 January 1948 in the city of Stalino (now Donetsk) in theUkrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union.

His father, Boris Shcharansky, ajournalist from a Zionist background who worked for an industrialjournal, died in 1980, before Natan was freed.

His mother, Ida Milgrom, visited him inprison and stubbornly waged a nine-year battle for her son's releasefrom Soviet prison and labor camps. She was permitted to follow herson to Israel six months after he left the Soviet Union.

He was attending physics andmathematics high school No.17 in Donetsk. As a child, he was a chessprodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold exhibitions,usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship inhis native Donetsk. Sharansky graduated with a degree in appliedmathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Whenincarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have maintainedhis sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind. Sharanskybeat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneousexhibition in Israel in 1996.

After Sharansky graduated fromuniversity, he began working for a secret state research laboratory.Sharansky lived near Sokolniki Park, on Kolodezniy Pereulok(Water-well Lane). In his spare time, Sharansky would coach youngchess players at the famous chess club in the park.

He took his current Hebrew name in 1986when he was freed from Soviet incarceration as part of a prisonerexchange and received an Israeli passport with his new name.

Natan Sharansky is married to AvitalSharansky and has two daughters, Rachel and Hannah. In the SovietUnion, his application to marry Avital was denied by the authorities.They were married in a friend's apartment, in a ceremony notrecognized by the government, as the USSR only recognized civilmarriage and not religious marriage.

Activism

Sharansky was denied an exit visa toIsrael in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that hehad been given access, at some point in his career, to informationvital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed toleave. After becoming a refusenik, Sharansky became a human rightsactivist, working as a translator for dissident and nuclear physicistAndrei Sakharov, and spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Group and aleader for the rights of refuseniks.

Arrest and imprisonment

On 15 March 1977 Sharansky was arrestedby the KGB, then headed by Yuri Andropov, on multiple charges,including high treason and spying for several Americans. Theaccusation stated that he passed to the West lists of over 1,300refuseniks, many of whom were denied exit visas because of theirknowledge of state secrets, which resulted in a publication by RobertC. Toth, "Russ Indirectly Reveal 'State Secrets': Clues inDenials of Jewish Visas". High treason carried the deathpenalty. The following year, in 1978, he was sentenced to 13 years offorced labor.