Chairman Natan Sharansky of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel and his wife Avital have expressed their condolences at the passing of Maria Slepak in the United States at the age of 91, one of the veterans of the Jewish movement in the former Soviet Union, a Prisoner of Zion, and wife of Vladimir Slepak, who passed away in 2015 at the age of 87. The couple was allowed to emigrate to Canada in 1987 after a 17-year struggle.
The Sharansky's said in a statement, "For almost twenty years, Volodya and Maria Slepak were, without exaggeration, the undisputed leaders of the historic movement for the spiritual and physical freedom of Soviet Jewry. They played a decisive role in maintaining strong ties between Jewish activists in the Soviet Union and the Jewish world. Their tiny communal apartment in Moscow was a true center of our movement in the seventies and eighties, hosting thousands of Jews from across the Soviet Union, as well as tourists from abroad who came to help and Western journalists. Maria had the spiritual and physical strength not only to welcome, host, and feed everyone, but even under the most difficult circumstances to support her friends with a kind word, open and sometimes sharp conversation, and jokes even in times of tears.
"Maria and Volodya could not be separated. She was his closest companion and advisor and they made all their decisions together: they were arrested together, they went to prison together, and they went to the Siberian exile together. It is thanks to Maria that Volodya was able to become a leader of the Soviet Jewry movement. But she was a great support not only for Volodya – for all of us, her friends and associates, she was a source of optimism, vivacity, and confidence in the coming victory."