"Never Alone" is Natan Sharansky's autobiographical story, co-written with noted historian Gil Troy. It is an immensely powerful, moving book, lengthy, but well worth reading. Sharanksy was best-known as a "refusenik" or dissenter in Soviet Russia, once an up and coming scientist who was sent to Soviet gulags, like Andrei Sakharov, for the thought-crime of speaking out and daring to ask permission to emigrate to Israel. It is divided into three major parts, the first part being Sharansky's years in Soviet doublethink and the prison camps, including solitary, for nine years. The second part is about his life after the fall of the Soviet Empire as the first political prisoner Gorbachev released and his political life as a representative of the new Russian Jewish immigrants, over a million strong, finally after centuries of persecution released by Pharaoh. The final section is the story after Sharansky's decision to leave politics and to run the Jewish Agency, which assisted in immigration and resettlement and, in particular, his story about the airlifts to the tribe of Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jews, who dwelled in the highlands of Ethiopia for nearly two millennia, nearly unknown to the outside world.

The first section talks about a life without freedom and without identity. In the Soviet Union, there was no freedom and the Communists were constantly rewriting history, not just pulling down statutes that had fallen out of vogue, but rewriting textbooks and encyclopedias in scenes right out of Orwell's vivid imagination. "Although the restrictions on physical movement varied, the restrictions on traveling through time - by learning history - were imposed uniformly. The Soviets collectivized the past, treating it as state property." Not only was there no freedom of movement, but the Communist dictatorship existed on a network of informers and one never knew which neighbor would inform on you. And Communism "came wrapped in a package of violence directly from Marx."

Not only was freedom of thought squelched, but identity was as well. Religion was mocked and churches, mosques, and synagogues were destroyed. Ethnic identity was destroyed. There could be no individuality. Every day was a permanent loyalty test, every conversation. "Just say the wrong thing, discuss the wrong topic, make the wrong gesture, break the wrong rule, and you, too, could vanish, as people on our block had, as people in our family had."

One of the scary examples Sharansky cites about the Soviet historical revisions is that the Soviets decided the Holocaust was inconvenient and wiped it from books, discussion, thought. They paved over the cemeteries and buried any related documents. Sharansky and his young colleagues growing up post-war barely knew about the Holocaust even though many of the atrocities had taken place right there.

It was only after Israel proclaimed its independence that Sharansky understood his heritage and did the unthinkable act that could make him vanish forever in the Soviet world: he applied to emigrate to Israel. The Soviets did not like emigration because it made it look like citizens did not enjoy "the worker's paradise" of Communism. "Let My People Go," Moses said to Pharaoh in Egypt. And when Sharansky uttered these words, his fate was sealed. He was picked up by the KGB and interrogated in all matter of ways. He was offered freedom if only he would betray his people and confess his wrongdoing. But, like Nelson Mandela, who was in a prison at the same time and who followed Sharansky's story, he refused to give up, understanding, that despite hundreds of interrogations, his mission was to open the gates of the Soviet Union so that over a million Russian Jews could gain freedom from oppression and return to their homeland from which they had been exiled for two millennia. Interestingly, Sharansky was given hope by President Reagan's declaring the Soviet Union an evil empire because it proved the real world was catching on to what the Soviet Communist Empire was.

The second part of the story concerns what happened to Sharansky after he was finally released amidst the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Sharansky did what Moses never could and reached the Promised Land. But, he was just the vanguard of one of the great human rights stories of our generation, the rescue of over a million people from the Soviet oppression and return to their ancient homeland. Sharansky then took on the task of representing these people in the Knesset, the Israeli Congress. As fascinating as these years were, a lot of the stories are a sort of inside baseball that those unfamiliar with the events might not find as intriguing. But much of it concerns the lesson he learned in dealing with dictators and that you cannot make peace with them, lessons that should have been learned in dealing with Arafat's treachery and the fact that he was never anything more than a bloodthirsty terrorist, putting him as the face of the Palestinian Authority guaranteed that there would never be an end to conflict. Sharansky also talks about the shock of visiting American college campuses after 2000 and finding that they now resembled nothing less than the Soviet Union in the way in which free thought was squelched and Anti-Semitism flourished in the elite campuses.

The third part of the book concerns Sharansky's years working as a bridge to the world outside Israel. Particularly moving is his story of the airlift of the last of the Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel tribe, who journeyed barefoot for days by the thousands to get on the last planes out. In total, some 125,000 escaped Ethiopia. After thousands of years, this lost tribe got to make the exodus across the Red Sea. The third part of the book takes Sharansky's story up to the present day even to the mention of Coronavirus and the struggles, political, moral, and intellectual that are still playing out.

Overall, a fascinating book about an incredible life that has been lived with such meaning. Many thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review.