Natan Brand Natan Brand Natan Brand (1944–1990) was an Israeli classical pianist. Brand was the son of a doctor, Aron Brand, and his wife, Mala, Polish Jews who immigrated to Mandate Palestine days before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. The family settled in Jerusalem. Brand began his studies as a child prodigy at the age of seven, with Haim Alexander at the Rubin Academy, where he later received an Artist's and Teacher's diploma. He made his orchestral debut at the age of 11, playing with the Israel Broadcasting Authority Symphony Orchestra. Brand married Lori Hillman, with whom he had two
Yelena Bonner Although Bonner had joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1964 while she was working as a physician, only a few years later she was becoming active in the Soviet human rights movement. Her resolve towards dissidence was strengthened in August 1968 after Soviet bloc tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in order to crush the Prague Spring movement. That event strengthened her belief that the system could not be reformed from within. At the Kaluga trial in 1970, Bonner and Sakharov met Natan Sharansky and began working together to defend Jews sentenced to death for attempting an escape from the USSR in