Rips grew up in Latvia ( then part of Soviet Union ) . His mother was Jewish and from Riga , the only of nine siblings that survived the war ; the others were killed in Rumbula and other places . His father Aaron was a Jewish mathematician from Belarus ; his wife , children and all of his relatives were killed during The Holocaust . Rips was the first high school student from Latvia to participate in the International Mathematical Olympiad . In January 1969 he learnt from listening to Western radio broadcast --- then illegal in the USSR --- of the self-immolation of Czechoslovak student Jan Palach . On 13 April 1969 , Rips , then a graduate student at the University of Latvia , attempted self-immolation in a protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia . After unwrapping a self-made slogan condemning the occupation of Czechoslovakia he lit a candle and set his gasoline-soaked cloths ablaze . A group of bystanders were able to quickly put the fire out , resulting only in burns to Rips ' neck and hands . Though injured , he was first taken to the local KGB office and interrogated . The secret service wanted to make sure he was not a member of a group of would-be self-immolators . He was then incarcerated by the Soviet government for two years . It was only after his story spread among Western mathematical circles and a following wave of petitions by Western mathematicians that Rips was freed in 1971 . The following year , under further protests by mathematicians in the U.S. , he was allowed to emigrate to Israel in 1972
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Eliyahu Rips