The punishment cell
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.010038
My brain makes odd connections. A report yesterday about the rescued Chilean miners mentioned that they would be wearing sunglasses to protect their dark-adapted eyes as they neared the surface. That detail brought to mind someone else who spent a long time in near darkness: Natan Sharanksy .
In 1973 Sharansky wanted to leave the Soviet Union, where he worked as an applied mathematician, and emigrate to Israel. The Soviet Union’s Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to grant him and other Jews exit visas. Involuntarily, he became a refusenik ; voluntarily, he became a human rights campaigner.
Four years later Sharansky was convicted, wrongly, of spying for the US and sentenced to 13 years hard labor in a Siberian prison camp. For minor breaches of prison rules, such as sharpening his toothbrush to cut food, he was confined for long periods in one of the prison’s punishment cells. Here’s how he described the cell in his 1988 memoir Fear No Evil:
The punishment cell was in the basement, where the darkness was broken only by a dull lamp over the door so the guard could see me through the peephole. The cement floor of my cell measured about two meters by one and an half. In the middle was a little cement stump that was almost too small to sit on. The walls were moist with large wet spots, and the damp plaster was peeling off. The moisture quickly penetrated through my clothing. At first I didn’t feel the cold, but I could see that night would be difficult.
Around the world, individuals and societies, including the American Physical Society, campaigned for Sharansky’s release. In 1988 on Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge, a traditional location for cold war deals, Sharansky and three real Western bloc spies were swapped for five real Eastern bloc spies.
Like the story of the Chilean miners, Sharansky’s has a happy ending. After his release, he was reunited with his wife, emigrated—at last—to Israel, formed a political party, and was elected to the Knesset.
There’s another similarity between the miners’ rescue and Sharansky’s release. Both were possible thanks to people outside the San Jose mine and the Perm 25 camp. We might never be accidentally trapped in a mine or wrongly sent to a prison, but if we get the chance to help those who are, we should seize it.
