US: Prisoner of Conscience ("Refusnik") medal commemorating Boris Penson; 24.5g: obverse ...

US: Prisoner of Conscience ("Refusnik") medal commemorating Boris Penson; 24.5g: obverse depicts Star of David enchained with lock bearing symbol of the Soviet Union and legend in English and Hebrew "Let My People Go"; obverse bears name of Boris Pension on raised "plaque" above legend "USSR Prisoner of Conscience". The origin of the movement promoted by this medal dervies from the Cold War when in the eastern bloc and particularly in the Soviet Union a combination of Communist/ideological anti-Zionism and ideological anti-religion (manifesting itself frequently as anti-Semitism) led many Jews to request permission to emigrate abroad. Such requests frequently branded the requesting person as a security liability or traitor, and the person either had to quit his employment in order to request permission to emigrate (or he was subsequently fired after making such a request). For political and even anti-Semitic reasons many Jewish applicants were refused permission to emigrate and they became known as "refusniks" (or "Prisoners of Conscience"). Protest medals like this were commissioned by the American "Union Council for Soviet Jewry" (UCSJ), a coalition of grass-roots action councils supporting freedom for Jews of the Soviet Union, founded in 1970. The organization exists to this day and may even be associated with the Israeli Government's "Nativ" ("Path") organization, which was founded in 1952 and subordinated to the Prime Minister's Office, to establish contact and attempt covert emigration of Jews in Communist Eastern Europe. This organizaton began to function in the Soviet Union in 1954 and operated on two tracks: "Nativ", which acted as a liason bureau ("Lishkat HaKesher") with Soviet Jews, and "Bar", which operated in western nations to foster public pressure on the Soviet Union to bring about a change in the USSR's emigration policy. Though a covert organization at that time, "Nativ's" slogan was "Let My People Go" (as it also appears on this medal). Boris Penson is a painter and artist, and was a "refusnik" from Latvia who in June 1970 participated in an attempted airplane highjacking called "Operation Wedding" (recorded in historiography as the "Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking affair"): sixteen "refusniks" positing as wedding guests attempted to highjack a local flight from Leningrad and to fly to Sweden. The group was arrested upon arrival at the airport and Penson was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in a labor camp. There followed a crackdown on Jewish and other dissident movements throughout the USSR, although international condemnation actually caused the Soviet authorities to significantly increase the emigration quota. Penson was finally released in 1979 and he emigrated to Israel where he continues to work and teach in the field of art.