Ida Nudel

Ida Yakovlevna Nudel (; ; 27 April 1931 – 14 September 2021) was a Soviet-born Israeli refusenik and activist. She was known as the "Guardian Angel" for her efforts to help the "Prisoners of Zion" in the Soviet Union. In 1970, she first sought an exit visa to leave the USSR, saying she could not stand its discrimination against Jews. The authorities refused, saying she possessed state secrets she had learned working for the Moscow Institute of Planning and Production. Her sister, Elena, received permission to leave with her husband and son in 1972.

Efforts to support Refuseniks In the summer of 1972, she organized a hunger strike at the central office of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to protest the arrest of refusenik Vladimir Markman. After four days, the police ended the strike by blocking their entry. She started a campaign for keeping contact with prisoners of Zion who called her "Mama" and "The angel of mercy". She spread word about items the prisoners needed and were permitted to possess, and requested them from visitors from all over the world. These included vitamins, warm underwear and chocolate, as well as pens, cigarettes, and three-dimensional postcards, that could be exchanged with the guards for small favors.

She soon lost her job. In June 1978, she placed a banner in her apartment in Moscow reading "KGB, give me my visa to Israel". She was sentenced to four years of internal exile. The two became friends and Fonda launched a campaign for Nudel's release. Others involved in the campaign included Liv Ullmann, and Israeli President, Chaim Herzog, left an empty place at his Passover table in her honor. On 2 October 1987, she was informed she had been granted an exit visa. She later wrote an autobiography, A Hand in the Darkness, which was translated into English by Stefani Hoffman in 1990. The movie Mosca Addio (Farewell Moscow) by Mauro Bolognini, starring Liv Ullmann, was a dramatized version of her ordeal. In 1991, she established "Mother to Mother", a nonprofit organization funded by donations from abroad, seeking to take the children of Russian immigrants off the streets and into after-school activities.

Later life Nudel testified in the Jerusalem District Court in 2001 for Natan Sharansky during his libel suit against Yuli Nudelman. Nudelman had published a book claiming that Sharansky was a former KGB agent with connections to the Russian mafia. Four years later, she petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel to force Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to use any measures necessary to save the lives of fifteen jailed Palestinian collaborators facing execution, and spoke against Israel's upcoming disengagement plan from Gaza and part of the West Bank. She filed a petition to the High Court of Justice in 2007, demanding that Israeli Internal Security Minister, Avi Dichter withhold visitation rights from Hamas and Hezbollah prisoners in Israel, as long as the Red Cross was prevented from seeing kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldiers Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. She relocated to Rehovot in 2008 in order to live closer to her sister.

Nudel died on 14 September 2021 at the age of 90. She was interred at Yarkon Cemetery in Tel Aviv.