Avital Sharansky raised two daughters. 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,
Natan Sharansky Sharansky commented with irony that conditions had improved slightly—the stark cell now featured a thin bench bolted to the middle of the floor. He said that if that bench had existed when he was there he could have utilized it to sleep, albeit uncomfortably. As a result of an international campaign led by his wife, Avital Sharansky (including assistance from East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, New York Congressman Benjamin Gilman and Rabbi Ronald Greenwald), Sharansky was released on 11 February 1986 as part of a larger exchange of detainees. He was the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev due