‘Charismatic’ activist fought for refuseniks

TORONTO — Eugenie (Genya) Intrator will be remembered by former refusenik Natan Sharansky and countless others as a pioneering activist on behalf of Jews in the former Soviet Union who were not allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Intrator died July 31 at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, two weeks after being diagnosed with liver cancer. She was 81.

In an online memorial book, Sharansky and his wife, Avital, wrote that, in the “1970s and ’80s, the years of the most intense struggle of Soviet Jewry, the name Genya Intrator was both a symbol of the direct link and strong bond of world Jewry to our daily lives.”

Intrator was born in Moscow, emigrated with her parents to Palestine at age 7, and served as a member of the Haganah under the British Mandate and then as an officer in the Israeli army from 1948 to 1950, immediately before immigrating to Toronto with her husband, Alfred.

She found her calling when she was an adult student of literature and political science at the University of Toronto.

The BA that Intrator earned in 1974 would serve her well as a public speaker, when she used language that “was elegant and grabbed the soul,” said Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum of Beth Tzedec Congregation, who spoke at her funeral.

Because Intrator spoke Russian, Jewish student activists at the forefront of the grassroots Soviet Jewry movement asked her to translate during an initial phone call to a refusenik in 1970.

Around the same time, she was visited by the Israeli consul based in New York, who informed her that Soviet refuseniks were forbidden to emigrate until their knowledge of state secrets became obsolete, an anecdote she later recalled in a two-page contribution to a book called Voices from the Heart: a Community Celebrates 50 Years of Israel.

She also learned that refuseniks were fired from their jobs, and were made into pariahs because their requests to emigrate were considered acts of disloyalty.

The consul gave Intrator a list of refuseniks to call so that she could provide moral support, obtain information about persecution and human rights violations, and let the KGB know (as its agents monitored the calls) that western democracies were aware of the refuseniks’ plight, which was being publicized worldwide.

In 1973, Intrator met with refuseniks in Moscow, Kiev and what was then Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during her first trip to the Soviet Union. She travelled with her husband, who was attending a dental convention, said their daughter, Orna Spira.

“I knew then that I would dedicate every moment of my life to save them,” Intrator wrote in the book.

Throughout Sharansky’s nine-year imprisonment, she was in touch with his family in Moscow every week, and she organized petitions, demonstrations, sit-ins and hunger strikes with his wife, Avital.

Intrator was “one of the first visitors who brought out information to the West,” Spira said.

In 1973, Intrator founded Women for Soviet Jewry, a forerunner of the Canadian Committee for Soviet Jewry, under the auspices of Canadian Jewish Congress. She served as national president of the committee from 1975 to 1983.

Among her many other endeavours, she started refusenik support groups in organizations and synagogues across Canada, and she represented Canada in Helsinki in 1975 during the signing of the Helsinki accords, demonstrating in front of the car of then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and getting arrested in the process.

She also founded an organization called the Inter-Religious Task Force (in 1984), wrote a weekly column for the Toronto Sun from 1984 to 1994 on human rights in the Soviet Union, and served as president of Women’s Canadian ORT from 1982 to 1984.

Her efforts earned her wide recognition, including awards from Jewish organizations.

Spira told The CJN that her mother liked to say she was “in the business of saving lives.

On a personal note, she added that Intrator “was full of zest and vitality, and always wanted people over.”

She said that if someone called at 4 p.m. to let her mother know they were visiting from out of town, by 6 o’clock she had organized a “fantastic dinner party.

“She wanted to introduce everybody to somebody. She just loved people.”

Rabbi Tanenbaum said Intrator – a meticulous record-keeper whose files were recently donated to the National Archives of Canada – was “fearless… brilliant, dynamic, charismatic, larger than life, effective…  and knew how to find humour in everyday life. At the same time, she was a no-nonsense person.”

Bernie Farber, national CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress,  where Intrator served on the national executive, told The CJN that not only was she a leader at a time when it was rare for a woman to do that type of work, but she “was adored by everybody, professionals and lay leaders alike.”

Having met her when he was a teenager in 1968, Farber credited Intrator “to a significant degree” with inspiring him to work for the Canadian Jewish community.

Intrator leaves her daughters Daphne Intrator and Orna Spira. She was predeceased by her husband Alfred 10 years ago.