Valeriy Zaks

VALERIY ZAKS (b. 1956 in Dnipropetrovsk – d. summer 1980 in Dnipropetrovsk).
A Jewish refusenik. For an attempt to hijack a plane to fly out of the USSR, he was committed to a special psychiatric hospital, where he died.
For a long time, he sought to leave for Israel but was constantly refused by the Soviet authorities. He was fired from his job. Driven to desperation, he decided that the only realistic way to break free to the free world was to hijack a plane.
On October 15, 1978, at 3:10 p.m., an AN-24 with 42 passengers and 5 crew members took off from Simferopol Airport on a flight to Ternopil with a stopover in Odesa. Eleven minutes after takeoff, Zaks opened fire with a Margolin pistol. Threatening with an explosive device, he demanded that the crew fly to Turkey. The crew did not comply, and 9 minutes later, the plane made an emergency landing at the departure airport in Simferopol, where Zaks was neutralized. 22-year-old Zaks was declared insane and in 1979 was committed to the Dnipropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital. He was held in the 3rd ward (attending physician: Nelli Mikhailovna Butkevich). In the summer of 1980, at a medical commission, when Zaks asked when he would be released, the head of the medical unit told him that he would “croak in the special hospital.” After this, Zaks fell into a depression and, finding no strength to live on, went out with a work team and committed suicide by throwing himself from the 4th floor onto a pile of construction debris.
Author: Oleg Sofianyk. 2013.