Sylva was sentenced to ten years in the Gulag (including six months in solitary confinement). Only 26, she was wearing a thin cotton dress to survive a decade of life in central Mordovia’s brutal Potma prison/forced labor camp.
In 1971, her first year of captivity at Potma, Moses I. Feuerstein, former president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, reported Sylva was “deteriorating physically” and had a life expectancy of “only a few years at the most.” Feuerstein’s best efforts failed to secure her release.
In 1972, her second year of imprisonment, Amnesty International stated: “The health of Sylva Zalmanson has deteriorated sharply… At present, she is in the camp hospital.” She had seriously burned her foot with hot water and couldn’t walk.
Movie star Ingrid Bergman traveled to London in March 1973 to participate in a protest held by the 35s Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry. The actress refused all food except that served to Sylva in the labor camp – one spoon of watery cabbage soup, one mouthful of dry black bread, one small potato, one slither of dried cod, and one quarter ounce of sugar and butter. “Sylva,” according to Bergman, “was an innocent victim of extreme deprivation of human rights and freedoms – the policy of her country’s leaders.”
Nothing helped. Finally, Sylva’s Israeli Uncle Avraham contacted Jewish Defense League founder Rabbi Meir Kahane, begging for help to save his niece. At Potma, said Avraham, she was refused medical care for ulcers and tuberculosis and was dying.
Raising his hand up in a fist, Kahane gave journalists a message to deliver: “Listen, Brezhnev, and listen well. If Dymshits and Kuznetsov die, Russian diplomats will die in New York… If anything happens to Sylva Zalmanson or another Jew, Soviet diplomats throughout the world will be open targets for every Jewish militant. Two Russians for every Jew!”
At JDL protests marchers, screaming slogans, were surrounded by police: “We are Jews, we couldn’t be prouder. And if you can’t hear us, we’ll shout a little louder!” In Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, Yossi Klein Halevi recalls carrying a sign reading “Up Against the Wall, Mother Russia!”
Asked how she survived all of that, Sylva replies philosophically: “A wise man once said: ‘G-d forbids us to find out how strong we are.’ For me, the idea of freedom became a goal in life which was more important than anything else, for which I was willing to do anything. I moved toward this goal without looking back, no matter what. My freedom was connected to my homeland, Israel.”
On August 22, 1974, Sylva was exchanged in a Russian spy swap and flown immediately to Israel where she was warmly hailed as an eshet chayil. She spent her days campaigning for the release of her husband Edward, her two brothers Wolf and Israel, and the others – enduring, in 1976, a 16-day hunger strike in front of the United Nations. Deeply compassionate, she befriended and stood by Avital Scharansky who was pleading for the release of her husband, Anatoly.
Veteran Jewish newspaper editor and HarperCollins author Esther Gordon remembers Sylva from those days: “I met Sylva at a conference of Jewish Federations. She stopped at my table and I asked about her bracelet. I knew it was for a Prisoner of Zion and wanted to know which one. Tears came to her eyes and ran down her face. Wiping them with her fingers, she partially covered her mouth, but I did hear the whisper, ‘My husband.’ I asked her to please sit down with me and we talked till she composed herself. I did not realize then that she was ‘the star’ of the convention – brought to show us in person why we were protesting and raising money. She was always surrounded by crowds during the several times our paths crossed at many meetings that weekend. But each time our eyes met, we acknowledged each other with understanding looks and nods. I never forgot those eyes.”