Avital Sharansky Avital Sharansky Avital Sharansky (born Natalia Stieglitz (, ) in Ukraine, 1950; married name also Shcharansky) is a former activist and public figure in the Soviet Jewry Movement who fought for the release of her husband, Natan Sharansky, from Soviet imprisonment. Avital and Nathan Sharansky met in October 1973. Shortly after meeting, Nathan Sharansky's exit visa was denied, and he became an active refusenik. Avital applied for a visa to Israel, and the couple began to discuss marriage. They married in 1974, one day and a half before Avital's exit visa expired. The day after their wedding, Avital left for
Natan Sharansky Natan Sharansky Natan Sharansky (, , ; born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky (, ) on 20 January 1948) is an Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He has served as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency since June 2009, to be replaced in August 2018 by Isaac Herzog. Sharansky was born in Donetsk (then called Stalino), Soviet Union on 20 January 1948 to a Jewish family. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics