Interviews (1996-1999) of Louis Rosenblum by his son Daniel: Involvement in the Soviet Jewry Movement 

(Transcript edited by L. Rosenblum, 2004)

Italics = Daniel Rosenblum
Print = Louis Rosenblum

DR: Today is August 13, 1996 and we are continuing the Rosenblum oral history project. Today I am interviewing Louis Rosenblum, and we’re going to continue to examine an important aspect of his life, which we haven’t touched on in any detail up until now, and that is his involvement in the Soviet Jewry movement. I guess for as long as I can remember you were always involved, you were always active in Soviet Jewry. I was born in 1961, so by the time I was old enough where I still have memories, you were very involved. I always remember it as being a constant part of your life, a constant part of our lives, and something that you cared passionately about, devoted a lot of time and energy to. It was as much your job, as far as I saw, as your 9 to 5 job at NASA. Why don’t you just explain a little bit about how you came to be involved? What was it that motivated you to make this your cause?

LR: In the early ‘60s, probably around late ’62 — I don’t recall exactly — a group of us at Beth Israel organized a social action discussion group. Basically it was just a self-learning group, with the intent to learn of significant issues in the Jewish world. The best I can recollect is that Herb Caron was one of the initiators of this activity. Herb had, as long as I’ve known him, a very strong desire to influence events. He had a very strong passion for that. As you recall, Herb, is a clinical psychologist. He worked at that time for the VA hospital.

One of the others who were much involved, was Dan Litt who at that time was the rabbi of our congregation. He had many thoughts about how we could involve ourselves Jewishly beyond the confines of Beth Israel, in the larger Jewish world. Then there were a few others — Don Bogart, Dave Gitlin, Bob Steinberg and myself. We very early came upon the Soviet Jewish issue.

DR: If I understood you correctly, it sounds like the original intent was more to study issues and understand them, or was it also to take action on them? Was that considered part of the original idea?

LR: Action was certainly never far from our minds. When we would discuss an issue, one of the questions raised was could we do anything about it? These were contemporary issues. It wasn’t that we were a group studying Talmud or Jewish culture of the last century. Our focus was on present-day issues. The Holocaust period figured prominently in our studies and discussions and was important to us as a touchstone. We asked ourselves over and again why was there so little response to the dire plight of Jews in Europe, not only from governments but, as we discovered during our reading, little real response from the Jewish community in the United States.

One of the most important pieces we came across was an essay written by Chaim Greenberg, a contemporary of the period. He was an essayist, a Jewish scholar, and a man of considerable talents. He wrote about what he called the bankruptcy of the American Jewish community in the late ‘30s and ‘40s, particularly as the outlines of the Holocaust began to emerge. Many details were known very early on to Jewish leaders, both in this country and in Europe. He condemned the Jewish leadership in the United States for continuing what he called their normal behavior of in-fighting and advantage-seeking, one organization over the other, rather than unifying and trying to create a viable force that could act politically.

That essay for us, and certainly for me — I have a very clear memory of the impact it had on me — led to the conclusion that there was a serious failure on the part of Jewish leadership in responding to the emergency of that time. And then to the question: is there a threat to Jews at present not being addressed or not being addressed as well as might be? And that led us to the Soviet Jewry situation. Here we found a Jewish population under siege. A population estimated to be about 3 million, representing well over a quarter of the world’s Jews. Anti-Semitism was widespread in the Soviet Union, much of it government inspired, and Jewish cultural and religious expression was suppressed. It appeared that Jews as Jews might likely disappear in another generation or two.

So the Soviet Jewry situation struck us as a present parallel to that of the Jews under the Nazis. The next question was, what is being done? We wanted to find out what Jewish organizations were doing, how much about Soviet Jewry was known to people in the U.S.

DR: What were your sources of information then? How did you know it was a problem?

LR: There were a number of articles that had been written by both academics as well as reporters who had been to the Soviet Union. There was a respectable body of writings providing background and specific accounts of the plight of Soviet Jews. We assembled a small library of reprints and articles and books. Among these were some by Israeli diplomats who had spent time in the Soviet Union. You’ll recall that the Soviet Union had voted in the UN in favor of recognition of Israel as a state and had diplomatic relations with Israel. There was diplomatic representation in Moscow up to the time of the infamous “Doctors’ Plot”, in 1953, and Stalin kicked out the Israeli diplomats. After Stalin’s death, relations with Israel were resumed. So the Israelis were in the USSR long enough to get a good notion of what was going on. 

Then there were reports made by the International Commission of Jurists based in Geneva. The reports represented the findings of that group concerning the “economic” trials — these were show trials — that were held in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev period. It was an attempt to clamp down on profiteering and other abuses by managers of large government industries. The show trials featured as the accused second- and third-tier managers who were usually Jews. These trials were a warning to top management that what they were doing was not going to be countenanced. The people they chose to make example of were Jews. The Jewish victims of these trials were not given a slap on the wrist and sent off to prison for a short while. No. In the USSR such crimes were capital crimes. Quite a few death sentences were handed down. This was deadly scape-goating, indeed.

Then there were the accounts of cultural deprivation. From Stalin’s time on the Jews were essentially denied any access to Jewish culture, other than what they could surreptitiously maintain in their own homes. Jewish theaters, publications, newspapers were denied to them. And the former Jewish intelligentsia a large and talented group of individuals, were in labor camps or had been killed off. Stalin took great care in wiping out that entire leadership. And, if all that deprivation was not punishment enough, there was anti-Semitism. The show trials were only one aspect of this. There were egregious government publications that depicted Jews as the Nazis had done. Cartoons from the Hitler period, with the hooked-nosed Jew were resurrected with only alteration a change in caption to fit Soviet purposes. Jews were stereotyped, setting them in the popular mind as alien and inimical to the society in which they lived. So here now was rank hatred peddeled by the government, over and above the endemic Russian anti-Semitism. All of this had sinister implications. If the economic situation worsened in the Soviet Union, Jews could be very well be the target of pogroms or worse. It was not unthinkable.

So to us, this added up to a very dire situation that somehow must be dealt with. To confirm our conclusions, we sought to get a sampling of opinion from various Jewish leaders. Herb was good with this type of thing. In March 1964, he sent out questionnaires to a group of 700 rabbis. Dan had lists of rabbis through his connections with the Central Conference of American Rabbis and lists of Orthodox and Conservative rabbis. The questionnaire concerned contemporary issues of the Jewish world. Part of it covered questions about the Jews of the Soviet Union and whether or not the rabbi had given sermons or had initiated programs or activities on Soviet Jews. It was an attempt to understand what was happening on a grassroots level among the leaders of congregations. There were 178 respondents.

In overall broad terms, the result of this questionnaire was that some rabbis were reasonably well aware of the plight of Soviet Jews. They had read the literature, read articles and were themselves knowledgeable, but in many cases had not moved to the next step of trying to do something about it within their congregation or their community. Others had occasionally preached a sermon on the subject. But overall they hadn’t done much, they were waiting for some national Jewish organization to take the leadership role and they would follow. Then there were a few rabbis who thought the Soviet Jewry issue was not a major concern, even though they knew something about the situation. And at the extreme, there were rabbis, including a prominent rabbi in Cleveland, who felt that plight of Soviet Jewry was indeed a problem; however, in the current Cold War situation there was great danger for the entire world from a nuclear holocaust and the Jewish issue would have to take a back seat until the nuclear threat was brought under control by firm international agreements. 

DR: Now this questionnaire was only directed to rabbis.

LR: Yes. It went only to rabbis. 

Before we move on, I should mention two other sources of information on Soviet Jewry. One was Moshe Decter, who headed the Minorities Research Institute, a one-man operation in New York City that did research and prepared articles and arranged public forums of experts and distinguished individuals to examine the Soviet Jewry issue. For example, Moshe organized a mock trial where charges were brought against the Soviet Union. Individuals from academia and government acted as the attorneys together with persons who acted as witnesses. And, he organized a Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews, in New York in October 1963, which issued a 7-point appeal to the conscience of the Soviet leader. Both events received good national news coverage because of the prominent people involved.

Another helpful source was Maurice Samuel. Now if you recall, Maurice Samuel was a writer, scholar, translator and lecturer. He was a person for whom I had great regard. I’d read many of his books. At home we have an entire shelf of his books. Mom and I had heard him lecture any number of times while we were at Hillel at Ohio State University and other times and places as well. I forget who it was, whether Herb or Dan, who suggested we meet with him at his apartment in New York. The arrangements were made and off we went. At that time he was in the midst of writing a book on the Beilis blood libel trial in Russia in 1913. While we in his apartment I was struck by the sight of an entire wall of shelves in his living room filled with photocopies of the original Russian transcripts of the Beilis trial. He told us that he had not known Russian previously but set himself to thoroughly learn the language so that he could tackle the primary documents. He was not one for a casual approach to researching and writing history.

We told him what we had been doing and asked what he thought of the Soviet Jewish situation and what should be done. He confirmed all that we had concluded ourselves, that the situation was dire and, as far as he knew, there was very little being done, and that there had to be, if the Jews were to survive as Jews in the Soviet Union. I remember one parting piece of advice. And it stuck with me because it proved important in organizing the effort to help Soviet Jews. He said, “If you want to work on this problem, you must burn with a cool enthusiasm.” By that he meant that the problem would not be resolved quickly or easily. Burn, but burn coolly.

DR: If you burn hot, you’re going to burn out.

LR: Right. You’ll end up a cinder. He understood the situation very well. He understood the magnitude of the difficulties.

DR: Today is September 21, 1996, and we are continuing with the Rosenblum oral history project with Lou Rosenblum. When we last talked, it was just a month or two ago, and we were talking about the Soviet Jewry movement and your early involvement in it. Why don’t we pick right up from where we left off? You had just described your visit with Maurice Samuel in New York. At that time you were also involved in efforts to find out what interest and knowledge there was among the Jewish community about this issue, what activities were already going on. You had done the survey of rabbis around the country. I gather that in the Cleveland area specifically you were seeing what else was going on, in what way you could get the community there involved.

LR: As a matter of fact, our earliest attention was to the Cleveland community and its self-appointed representative for Jewish affairs, which were the Cleveland Jewish Federation and its Community Relations Committee. We made an effort to contact the Federation and find out what they knew of the issue, whether it had been discussed internally or whether directives had came down from any national organizations concerning Soviet Jewry. And, what sort of programs had they contemplated, or committees had been set up to pursue the issue. We were surprised to learn that effectively nothing of substance was being undertaken, neither the distribution of informational material, nor was there a special subcommittee designated to investigate the matter and recommend appropriate actions to the Federation. It was essentially not on the Federation radar screen at that time. We — and when I say we, it was mainly at that time Herb Caron who was carrying the ball — appealed to them to take a stand, at least to set up a committee that would look into the issue, educate itself on the issue, and then if the committee decided something could be done, it could work within the structure of the Federation and reach out to other parts of the Cleveland Jewish community.

The Federation — the executive leadership of the Federation, that is — did after a while take this under advisement, and set up a Subcommittee on Soviet Jewry under the Community Relations Committee. And they appointed a chairperson for that subcommittee, one of their lay volunteers. Their mode of operation was to bring in someone who was active in Federation, which usually meant active in fund-raising, in whom they had confidence, and appoint that person as a committee chair. That person then would be backed up by a member of the Federation staff, who would essentially do most of the work involved. If there were a meeting, the staffer would arrange and clear dates. The staffer would set up the agenda, do most of the organizational work for the committee, any research that was needed, and so on.

It turned out in this instance to be somewhat of a token committee because as we found out in short order the person appointed as chairman of the committee was convinced there was no major issue in regard to Soviet Jewry. He was convinced of this. On what basis, I don’t know.

DR: How did he communicate to you the fact that he didn’t think it was a problem?

LR: At the first meeting he announced himself as having that position. So here you have the chairman appointed to a committee with a lack of conviction that the committee has any value. To us, the committee appeared to be a ploy to placate a bunch of nudniks. We didn’t feel they were taking the issue or us seriously. Now it’s true we were coming from left field, from nowhere, as far as they were concerned. We had little standing in the community. We certainly weren’t big donors. We were people with small reputations. Herb worked at the VA Hospital as a psychologist. Dan Litt was a rabbi of a little congregation on the West Side of Cleveland, and I was just one of many scientists at the NASA laboratory. We really didn’t expect they were going to roll over for us, but we thought they would at least be honest, and if they were setting up a committee, we would have a level playing field. 

DR: How long did it take you to conclude that this was useless? Just one meeting of the committee?

LR: Well, I guess a few meetings. We could see that little practical was coming out of the meetings. For example, the sub-committee did agree to establish a speakers’ bureau. But, in the end, it was the effort of Don Bogart and Dave Gitlin of Beth Israel who produced a slide lecture and speakers from Beth Israel that gave presentations on Soviet Jewry to organizations in the Cleveland area. So we came to the conclusion that, if anything was going to happen, we would have to organize it ourselves.

DR: This was in 1963, I gather.

LR: Yes, it was in ’63, and in the latter part of that year, in fact in October, we formally organized what we called at that time Cleveland Committee on Soviet Anti-Semitism. I remember we discussed a bit the name of the organization, and we decided tell it like it was, Soviet Anti-Semitism. Many organizations that came along subsequently would refer to themselves as a Soviet Jewry organization, in other words, supporting cause of Soviet Jews. But at that moment in time, we felt that the main task was to unmask the situation. There was government-inspired anti-Semitism, overlaid on the endemic, popular anti-Semitism. So we called ourselves the Cleveland Committee on Soviet Anti-Semitism. Herb and Dan were instrumental in lining up a group of people who would be on the board. As honorary chairman they enlisted Ralph Locher, the Mayor of Cleveland. Then the other members were Msgr. Cahill, President of St. Johns College, Bruce Whittemore, director of the Cleveland Area Church Federation and Leo Jackson, a prominent black and member of the Cleveland City Council. There weren’t many blacks on the city council in those days. We had, on paper, a very impressive organization — which helped us go out and stir up things a little bit. When you have the support of prominent people in the community, you’re taken more seriously. 

DR: Did you have any prominent Jews on the board?

LR: Yes. It was Rabbi Phil Horowitz, who at that time was an associate rabbi at Fairmont Temple. That was just prior to the time he left to start his own congregation. He was a well-known East Side Cleveland rabbi, and certainly a very staunch supporter. Herb took on the job of executive secretary for the board.

So we had a letterhead and an honorary board and were off and running. In November, we distributed our first publication, Soviet Terror Against Jews: How Cleveland Initiated An Interfaith Protest, containing a description of the Soviet Jewish problem, how we were working to address the problem, and a request that the reader sign and return to us an “Appeal to Conscience to Soviet Leaders.” And, about the same time we placed a large ad in the Cleveland newspapers with the “Appeal to Conscience” and a clip-out, return coupon for an endorsement signature. In April 1964, a second publication, To the Leaders of the Soviet Union, was distributed containing a letter to Khruschev and the names and addresses of over 600 signers of the “Appeal to Conscience.”

 All this brought us attention from the press and people all over, not only in Cleveland but elsewhere. As we gained more visibility, our mailing list grew because people who heard about us wanted to receive our mailings. Within two years we had a significant national list and over time it expanded to international correspondents.

Looking back, it seems to me somewhat bizarre, that a small group were in contact with people in New York, Los Angeles, Podunk and wherever, seeking information and kindred souls. We had no office. We used to meet periodically in Herb’s house for want of a better place.

DR: Did your letterhead give an address?

LR: Yes, it gave Herb’s address on Evergreen Drive in Parma, hardly the center of the world. But that was the beginning — a rather small beginning. But we were committed to doing what we could. We felt driven, because the more we talked to people, both within and outside of Cleveland, the more we discovered that little was being done. There was so little awareness of the plight of Soviet Jews and so few attempts to publicize the issue

DR: I wanted to ask one thing to clarify your thoughts at that time, as best you can remember them. As I understand what you’re saying then, the focus in this initial period of your concern was on the anti-Semitism being conducted as part of Soviet government policy, or just the general conditions, and the treatment of Jews, not for example emigration. Emigration had not entered as an issue at this point.

LR: Right. At the beginning, emigration was not a central issue.

DR: We’re just talking about the plight of Jews living in the Soviet Union and the fact that they were threatened with either extinction or persecution.

LR: Let me give you a little of our perspective. Our principal focus was on anti-Semitism. We recognized that there were other evils facing the Jews in the Soviet Union. Among these was cultural deprivation. In other words, Jews could not culturally retain their identity as Jews. Hebrew was forbidden as a language. As for Yiddish, it could be found only in Communist party publications. The abundant pre-and early-Soviet Yiddish publications, on every conceivable subject, weren’t available in libraries or obtainable in bookstores. Religious practice was actively discouraged. And, the possibility of reuniting with family members who had emigrated decades before was, for all intents and purposes, denied. But, we felt that with government-inspired anti-Semitism and deteriorating economic conditions in the USSR, it might lead to a fatal outcome for Soviet Jews. And surely, given Soviet history, replete with accounts of mass purges and labor camps, this was not a wild jump of imagination.

DR: So you formed a Committee on Soviet Anti-Semitism in late ’63. Then at some point in 1964 there was another sort of watershed event in the formation of the Soviet Jewry movement. A conference was held in Washington. Do you want to give the background to that?

LR: There was among the national Jewish organizations some ferment going on and quite a bit of dissension, over the question of what could be done, if anything, for Soviet Jews. 

DR: And the ferment wasn’t just coming from you in Cleveland?

LR: No. This had begun quietly — in the sense that the general Jewish public didn’t know about it. For one thing, in September 1963, Arthur Goldberg, a Supreme Court Justice, after reading accounts about Soviet Jewry invited Senators Ribicoff and Javits to meet with him to discuss what might be done. This was followed by a meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and subsequently with President Kennedy at the end of October. Goldberg reported that the President had considerable prior knowledge of the issue of Soviet Jewry. Kennedy suggested, as a first step, Goldberg and the senators meet with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin and Kennedy personally arranged for a meeting. Dobrynin denied any problem existed for Jews in the Soviet Union. Then in November, at Goldberg’s suggestion, a meeting to discuss the matter of Soviet Jewry was held with representatives of leading American Jewish organizations. He informed them his concerns and of the earlier meetings with the President and others. Goldberg said he concluded that silence in the matter of Soviet Jewry was not desirable; on the contrary, responsible action was very much in order.

Apparently, Goldberg’s meeting with the Jewish establishment reinforced their resolve to get going on Soviet Jewry. A few weeks earlier, with the prodding of Rabbi Uri Miller and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, they had met and agreed to bring together resources for public action and education. This led to convening an ad hoc conference on Soviet Jewry in 1964. 

The difficulties in getting moving had to do mainly with organizational prerogatives, jealousies. Remember, we have three independent Jewish defense organizations nationally: the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the ADL. And each may have seen the Soviet Jewry issue as a potential opportunity to expand its agenda, its fund raising and its importance. On the other hand, each was already heavily committed to other issues — at that time the major one being the fight for black civil rights. Further, collectively, they had never been able to divide up major defense issues of the day, in order to eliminate duplication of effort. A defense organization that didn’t want in on the Soviet Jewry issue, also didn’t want to see another take the lead on the issue.

The Zionists organizations wanted more done about the issue, since their hope was that eventually Jews might be allowed to leave the Soviet Union and encouraged to go to Israel. That would further their agenda. But, in general, they seemed to be waiting for others to take the lead. Among the religious organizations, Agudas Israel and the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement were deeply concerned about Soviet Jews but were adamant in taking the shtadlonus approach — silent diplomacy.

Then there was the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, which was the umbrella organization that was created to support each of the local community relations councils in most major cities in the United States. The community relations councils in earlier times were independent organizations. Later many councils were subsumed within the local Jewish Community Federation, as in Cleveland. The National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council had an interest in Soviet Jewry, too, because they saw themselves as being a player, particularly at the community level, and they felt they should have an important role. But, the Jewish defense organizations viewed such a role as poaching in their domain.

So here we have national organizations that knew of the Soviet Jewry issue, but each having their own parochial concerns and interests to maintain. Well, the upshot was they couldn’t come to any agreement. When you can’t come to agreement, what do you do? You do nothing. And basically that is when we came into the picture — in a standoff situation.

DR: A stalemate.

LR: A stalemate. But, there was some slight movement. An ad hoc conference was called in April of 1964. The National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council was appointed to organize the conference. They asked the major Jewish organizations to select delegates to attend what was call an American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry.

We heard about this and we thought it would be a golden opportunity for us. First, for us to learn more: there were plans to have major speakers, experts on the issue, as well as political figures. And, we could meet other people with an interest in Soviet Jewry. Who knows, people we hadn’t learned about? At that time there was no communication between interest groups on Soviet Jewry. There was no way of establishing such a network. So we felt this would be a tremendous opportunity for us. We applied through the Union of American Hebrew Congregations to be among the delegates from Cleveland. Well that was no big deal because they didn’t have people beating on the door saying, “You’ve got to put us on the list.” So we came as delegates from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. And incidentally, throughout the country, there were people who came not knowing anything much about Soviet Jewry. Perhaps somebody from his or her local board asked, “Hey, would you like to go to this meeting in New York? It might be fun.”

DR: Was this in New York or Washington?

LR: I’m sorry. Did I say New York? It was in Washington, D.C. So people came to Washington from all over. For some it was a great junket. And others were interested in learning more about the issue. They came from all over, representing every Jewish organization. I don’t recall exactly, but there about 500 people. The meeting was carefully orchestrated and laid out. There was an agenda, printed up ahead of time, with everything that was going to take place, including a list of resolutions for national follow-up to be voted on at the end of the meeting. There were the expected resolutions, such as a national day of prayer. But the final resolution, number 14, stated that after adjournment of the Conference, the presidents of the national Jewish organizations will meet to consider how to implement plans set out by the Conference. 

DR: Today is September 21, 1996, and I’m continuing to interview Lou Rosenblum about the Soviet Jewry movement. Why don’t you just continue from where we left off? You were talking about this American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry. 

LR: I was talking about the resolutions. Resolution 14 looked to us like a continuing cop-out. There would be no recommendation to create a national organization to lead the fight for Soviet Jews. And, well before we left Cleveland, we took action to correct that omission. (By the way, we received the agenda and resolutions well before the conference.) We composed a proposed resolution 15 to create a national Soviet Jewry organization which would continue the work of the Conference. On this matter, we wrote and phoned people we knew were interested in Soviet Jewry, or people who had an strong interest in Jewish affairs and who we knew were planning to attend the Conference. Then there were lists we got of attendees from various organizations. Not always complete lists, but enough. We wrote letters to these individuals about our trepidations as to the outcome of the conference, and we enclosed a copy of the resolution we planned to present, and asked for their support.

Well, even before we got to the conference, we got a little education real fast about the forces arrayed there. On our way from the airport we shared a taxi with Rabbi Balfour Brickner. At that time he headed up the Union of American Hebrew Congregation’s Social Action Center in Washington.

DR: He met you at the airport?

LR: I’m not clear now. He knew we were coming in, and I think Herb or Dan may have written to him. He may have been coming back from an out-of-town trip. But that’s not important. He drove with us in the taxicab. There was Herb, Dan Litt, myself and Rabbi Brickner, the four of us in the cab riding from the National Airport to the conference in downtown Washington. The conversation went something like this: “Oh, I’ve seen a copy of the resolution you’re proposing. Do you think it’s wise?” And the long and short of what he told us was “Look, I may personally think what you’re doing is right, but this is going to cause too many problems for me with my organizational hat on, and I’m asking you to cool it.” And he headed up the Social Action Center for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Ha!

DR: And you were supposed to be their Union of American Hebrew Congregations delegates from Cleveland?

LR: Yes. He was giving us the official line. In my mind I was looking at this guy and thinking, “Social action organization and you’re saying things like that?” Well, I was pretty damn naive. It was good though. I needed some reality therapy, because I hadn’t have much contact with that world.

In any event, we got to the hotel where the conference was held and we quickly met with other delegates in hotel rooms, coffee shops and everywhere. And we lobbied. We tried to explain the issue. I don’t mean the Soviet Jewry issue, but the matter of getting things moving in communities everywhere and of having a continuing, coordinated effort. “Hey, look. What’s next? When you go back to your community, what are you going to be able to tell the people back there they should be doing? There’s no national organization you’ll be able to turn to. There’s nobody you can turn to for support.” In this, I believe, we were quite persuasive.

So to make a long story short, we offered resolution 15 from the floor. There was a vigorous attempt by the chairman to quash resolution as not admissible. There was shouting and noise from the floor— “Is this democratic or not? What kind of stuff are you trying to pull off?” Finally he agreed to entertain our resolution. It was seconded and passed by an overwhelming vote. We won, we thought. 

DR: Was this a voice vote, people who—

LR: Yes. It was a voice vote, and it was mind-blowing. There were hundreds of people shouting, yes!! Following the vote, we felt elated, because we had beaten the system, or so we thought. The chairman of the conference, Isaiah Minkoff, the professional head of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, an old-line communal worker, had a fine reputation. He was up in age at that time. He must have been in his 60s, or maybe older. He took to the floor following the vote and said, “This is a mistake. A bunch of Bundists have come here and overturned this conference.” Bundists? I didn’t even know what a Bundist was in those days. I hadn’t done much reading of earlier Russian-Jewish history. I figured, “Who and what the hell is he talking about?” But he was of an age where he could recall the terrible fights between the Zionists and the Bundists in Russia, where he grew up. So in his anger he was reliving past battles.

DR: Just to make sure I understand, there was a resolution saying that this conference should be transformed into an ongoing organization.

LR: Yes, our resolution was finally folded into resolution 14 which now read, “Immediately upon the adjournment of this Conference, the Presidents of the co-sponsoring national Jewish organizations will meet for the purpose of considering how best to assure that the plans set out herein will be systematically implemented. It is our further proposal that the Presidents develop the means of continuing this Conference on an ongoing basis, adequately staffed and financed, to coordinate and implement the resolutions of this Conference.” 

DR: And so as a result of this resolution, they created the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry.

LR: Yes, as an ongoing entity. We spent time, off and on, over the next six years trying to make the Conference into an effect organization — without success. It was like pounding sand. I’ll get to that story later on.

DR: So during this period you were beginning to realize that you couldn’t count on the organized Jewish community, the established Jewish community, to do everything that you wanted to do, to carry forward the objectives that you started to see were necessary to deal with this issue. Because as I understand it, you didn’t initially see yourselves as creating a national movement in any way. You wanted to raise consciousness about the problem and maybe prod the established Jewish community into action. But you were obviously, after the experience of this conference, beginning to see that that wasn’t going to happen so easily. You may not have given up on it entirely, but it wasn’t going to happen so easily. So you were starting to think about your own actions maybe in a longer time frame, and set goals and objectives for yourselves.

LR: Yes. Let me explain first that we did not give up on the organized Jewish community. I’ve gone back through my files of correspondence and there is copious correspondence with people in the organized Jewish community at all levels. In my letters I covered everything from general to highly specific points and ideas, attempting to stimulate, to goad, to encourage them into doing more on the Soviet Jewry issue within their realm of responsibility. For example, I kept after the head of the cultural department within the American Jewish Congress to create materials for use in schools and summer camps, for use in educating Jewish youngsters about Soviet Jewry. He had previously created such materials on the subject of Israel and other Jewish issues. But nothing ever came of it. But I kept up year after year with such individuals. There were conferences, national and regional, where we express our concerns and encourage greater effort. So all that while, and that while I’m talking about is from 1964 to about 1970, we were in contact with national, as well as local, Jewish community organization. If I look back and ask, “Was much gained?” I would have to say it was hardly worth the effort. 

All during all these years I hoped that the establishment could be moved to take a more vigorous line of action. But we came to understand, if they would not, that we would have to fill that role as best we could. With that in mind, we expressly set out to develop a network of people who were, or might become, leaders on Soviet Jewry in their community. 

DR: Building up a network.

LR: Building up a network of like-minded people, people who saw the need to work on the issue, and who would be willing to devote time to it. We were volunteers. We were working on the issue part time, and we expected that we would find people like us in other cities across the United States. As a matter of fact, we did find such people over time.

Another part to our approach to fill the gaps was to produce educational materials and to develop techniques that others could use to publicize the Soviet Jewry issue. I’ll get to that a little later.

A third part, which appealed to me greatly and I know to Herb and to Dan as well, was to strategize as to the most effective ways to deal with the Soviet Jewry problem to arrive at the desired outcome. Let me talk about this now because it began soon on. I consolidated my thinking on strategy in a letter I wrote May 17, 1965, to Dr. Louis Nemzer, professor of history at Ohio State University. I became acquainted with Nemzer when I was asked to speak at an event in Columbus. He was an Jew actively involved not only at the university, but also in the Columbus community. I wrote to share with him some of the ideas that we had developed and that I had tried to refine. Let me quote briefly a passage from my letter.

“We in Cleveland are operating on the premise that vital to the solution of this problem is first that the United States government be on record as condemning Soviet anti-Semitic practices, and that second, the U.S. government be prepared at the appropriate time to exact concessions from the Soviet leaders involving their cessation of anti-Jewish policies.” 

I go on to say that to bring this about public opinion must first be developed on the issue so that political pressure can be brought on our government to speak out and act. I didn’t believe the Soviet Union would be sufficiently impressed to alter their policies by hundreds, or even thousands, of Americans demonstrating for human rights. When Stalin heard of the Pope’s condemnation of him, so the story goes, he retorted. “And how many legions does the Pope have?” We knew it would take time to develop significant public awareness and pressure, but in the long run it would be most effective in moving our government to act.

DR: So this was the long-term strategy, you might say, that you had formulated, the ultimate goal, working backwards from how can you actually help alleviate the situation. The only way to do it is to get the Soviet government to change its policies, and the only way to do that is for the U.S. government to bring pressure on them. The only way that the U.S. government will bring pressure on them is if we can bring political pressure domestically to bear on the U.S. government. So all the other things that we associate, and I associate, with the Soviet Jewry movement, in terms of helping Soviet Jews themselves by publicizing their case or by giving them aid and comfort in some way, or the kind of what you refer to as more the grassroots human rights pressures of writing letters directly to Soviet officials from just citizens, those kinds of campaigns, those were all means to the ultimate end. Those developed as mechanisms to get to this final goal.

LR: It wasn’t that these were only means to an end. These activities were also, in themselves, of value when they were carried out. They gave an important boost to the morale of Soviet Jews, particularly the activists. It showed them they were not alone. It also boosted the morale of people in this country who worked on the issue. I quickly realized that it was vital to keep up the spirit of people working day by day in the movement. They had to feel that what they were doing was productive and that there were little victories and successes along the way — that they could say, today I got back a response from a Soviet Jew; last night we had great press coverage from our appeal to the touring Bolshoi Ballet company.

DR: What, if any, sources of inspiration did you have from other social movements? I’m wondering whether, in terms of the tactics you adopted, not so much the long-term strategy. I’m thinking in terms of how you set things up, how you organized. Did you have models in, say, the civil rights movement or other causes?

LR: Yes, we did. You mentioned the civil rights movement. Also there were the protests over the war in Vietnam. And, there were student movements in colleges across the country — a great upheaval, dissatisfaction with the educational system and resentment toward authority. The tactics used by these movements were demonstrations, confrontations, street theater, sit-ins, teach-ins. These same techniques we and others associated with the Soviet Jewry movement adopted at one time or another.

DR: Why don’t you talk a little bit about some of your early organizing activities, what you did locally in Cleveland, in particular? How you built the organization?

LR: The organization, as I indicated before, started off as a letterhead-organization with prominent board members who lent us their names. But it was not an organization with a significant membership. There were a few from Beth Israel and a few who Dan and Herb knew from the East Side. It was evident we had to increase our membership and our range of activities, if we be an effective force in the community. About January 1965, we changed our name to Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism. (I suppose at the time committee had a less permanent sound to us than council.) I temporarily assumed the role of executive manager and recruited Abe Silverstein as chairman of our board. And, in a very short order, thanks to one event, we markedly increase our membership.

This event was a community rally jointly sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and us, the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism. We had been noudging the Federation that we needed an event to bring to the attention of Clevelanders what was happening to Jews in the Soviet Union. They finally agreed. The Federation provided financing and we and they provided the organizing and arranging for speakers. The Federation engaged Heights High School auditorium, a large auditorium, centrally located in the area of major Jewish settlement, a great choice. And, the rally, billed as “A Community-wide Rally to Protest Soviet Anti-Semitism” was held March 7, 1965.

It turned out that the attendance was overwhelming — a crowd of 2200. They couldn’t all find seating in the 2000-seat auditorium. So there were people standing in the halls of the building. Loud speakers were quickly brought in and placed in the hallways. This outpouring of interest was a revelation to us. It showed that concern for Soviet Jews was latent among ordinary American Jews — there was a strong desire to learn what was happening to fellow Jews in the Soviet Union. 

The program went very well. We had a number of speakers. As the principal speaker we invited George Lieberman, a New York rabbi who was quite knowledgeable about Soviet Jewry. Prominent Protestant and Catholic religious leaders provided expression of concern. And a number of political figures — local, county and state…

DR: Congressmen?

LR: No. Ohio State Senator Keating and local politicos.

For the CCSA, the immediate outcome was great. We come out of the event with over 500 new members! All because, beforehand, we took the brilliant step — brilliant, in retrospect — of printing up CCSA membership cards which were given with the program to each attendee.

DR: People sent the cards in.

LR: Yes, they sure did. 500 dues-paying new members. So for us it was a first major step in educating the Cleveland Jewish community about Soviet Jewry. And, a major step in informing the community that there was an organization dedicated to working on the problem. For us it was a success. We acquired a constituency, enough money to operate with so we didn’t have to spend time schnorring. It wasn’t a great amount, but all of us were volunteers so that it took care of basic needs for materials and supplies. It was a great encouragement. We felt we could now parlay this success into even larger ones. Perhaps, if we didn’t have such an early success, we might have soon become discouraged. Whether terminally discouraged or not, I don’t know, but I think it would have been very hard to continue for long without a number of supporters in the community. And of course the membership grew over time. We had a good base. 

DR: What other organizing activities did you undertake then? Once you had gotten a better membership base, you moved on to specific programs, specific educational efforts.

LR: It gave us then the opportunity to run programs within Cleveland. For example, we had wanted to engage in confrontation of Soviet groups who came to Cleveland. Most of those were what you would term cultural groups—a ballet company, an orchestra, a Soviet pianist, perhaps a speaker lecturing on an academic topic at a local university, events of that sort. We wanted to be able to use their appearance as an opportunity, not to embarrass the individual visitors, but to ask them to convey back to their government our concern for what was happening to Jews in the USSR. We saw such confrontations as having two major effects. One, we knew that when we spoke with people from the cultural group, it would get back directly to the Soviet government. Because accompanying each and every Soviet group is a KGB watchdog. The ‘chaperone’s’ job was to keep tabs on the group, prevent defection and ideological contamination. Our message and actions were certain to be in the KGBnik’s report to his superiors. For our immediate purpose, the report on the confrontation the next day in the local papers and radio news would provide more exposure for the Soviet Jewry issue. 

DR: Did you ever get negative feedback from people here in the community about some of those things? For example, did you ever get people saying, “Why are you picking on these poor dancers? They’re not responsible.”

LR: Exactly. It’s a reasonable question. We explained that our intent was not to single out the visitors for condemnation nor to embarrass the them personally. Our message was for their government. Now, the reality was that they were in this country as part of a bilateral cultural exchange program. A program that had been carefully negotiated between their government and the government of the U.S., strictly for political purposes. So, for better or worse, the members of the cultural group were representatives of their government. And, we believed it appropriate to ask them to take our message back to their government. The message was usual in the form of a written petition. Hardly outrageous.

DR: Did you have pickets? Would you go outside with signs?

LR: These were not picketed activities at first. Just simply a face-to-face meeting with the individuals or groups and presenting them with an appeal for them to pass on to their government. It wasn’t an antagonistic confrontation. For us, though, the trick sometimes was to get face-to-face with the Soviets. We had to carefully plan the publicity aspect, too. We’d notified the press that we were going to be there and that we would present such and such a petition to the group to take back to their government. At that time such actions were not all that common in Cleveland, so we did get the attention of the press. Protest of that sort was rather rare. As the black civil rights movement grew and student ferment grew in the colleges, protest became more general.

DR: Anti-war.

LR: As I recall, anti-war protest and all the rest peaked in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. When we started in ’64, protests were still new enough to the Cleveland community that they did get attention in the press, and we got pretty good press and supportive editorials. So we were achieving our objectives. 

For these events, we usually tried to involve a large number of people, members and non-members. There usually was a delegation of maybe six, seven that went in to see the performers backstage or where ever the opportunity presented itself. Then there were people who would pass out leaflets which would explain what we were doing and why. We tried to cover every Soviet cultural event that came to town. We did covered, I think, most all of them. It wasn’t that there were that many. And in many cases the Federation joined with us and, eventually, did it on their own.

DR: You must have already been doing direct lobbying of people in Congress or local political officials, or at least contacting them and trying to educate them, because the fact that they came to that rally you had, that event in March of ’65 and so on, indicates that there was already some kind of a political education effort going on.

LR: Well, there was some, but we really didn’t put much effort into it at that point of time because we didn’t see that there was any opportunity to parlay a Soviet misstep, a serious, very public misstep, into anger and action on the part of the public and Congress. Such a blunder did occurred in 1970 and in 1972.

DR: So your effort was more on raising general public awareness and getting stories in the media and so on. Were you doing anything educationally, trying to get things into the religious schools and synagogues?

LR: Yes. Now, one of my efforts — in fact, I concentrated a good deal on this — was to produce material that could be used by communities in their activities, both educational and action oriented programs on behalf of Soviet Jews. I created the handbook that you, Daniel, were involved with (sound of booklet being pulled out). You were one of the people who helped assembled the pages of this book. I don’t know if you remember. 

DR: I have a vague memory of that.

LR: You do?

DR: This is a collection of essays, articles—

LR: And then pieces that I wrote on action programs — how to go about it, which ones we found to be successful, and general encouragement to get moving.

DR: It looks like what I’m holding here is the third edition. It came out in 1970. But the first edition came out in 1965.

LR: Yes. In its early form it was about half that size, about 40 pages. It grew in time because we —locally and elsewhere — learned more about how to carry out effective action oriented projects. I also uncovered more material that would be valuable to both adults and young people in the community and in religious school programs. So I incorporated that.

DR: So we have, for example, right near the front here, Passover Poster Project, and you give a specific example of a protest poster that was made by a Soviet Jewry group in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. Then the next one is a protest seal that was a way of “providing the man in the street with a tangible means of expressing his concern for Soviet Jewry.” So you’re giving people specific suggestions of how to use…

LR: Exactly. We did feel, or I did feel, because I was the moving force behind this, that anything short of the concrete wasn’t going to grab people. If we could get them involved, it had to be something they would feel was helpful. Not just make-work.

DR: And we have here “suggested prayers for incorporation in an appropriate prayer service,” prayers that deal specifically with the issues faced by Soviet Jews.

LR: That was directed to rabbis or leaders of a congregation who might want to have a Soviet Jewry Awareness Day, or something of that sort, and build a service around it.

DR: And then there’s a whole section on a teacher’s guide, a teaching unit on Soviet Jewry, how to integrate this into a course of study. So it touches on all aspects.

LR: Yes. I tried to be as complete as possible because I realized that any Soviet Jewry handbook would have to include all those aspects, if it was to be helpful to a broad public. The handbook was sold to a slew of individuals, organizations and libraries throughout the country. For the third edition the Cleveland Federation provided us with a grant so that we were able sent free copies to each of the Hillels in the United States and Canada.

DR: What were some of the other things that you did to publicize during these years? I remember you made a movie which Miriam had a cameo appearance in as part of a typical Soviet Jewish family. She played the part of the daughter. That was another technique for educating people.

LR: Yes. That came in that same time period. I started it in ’66. At that time there was available only a couple of motion picture films that dealt with the issue of Soviet Jewry. And, for the most part, they were a bit dated and somewhat stilted and did not give an adequate sense of the seriousness of the problem facing Soviet Jews.

DR: Who had done those films?

LR: One of them was produced by the Chautauqua Society of the UAHC. Edward G. Robinson was cast in the role of prosecuting attorney with a trial setup and the Soviet Union in absentia in the dock. The witnesses were two dozen prominent individuals remarking on deprivations suffered by Soviet Jews. However, important aspects of the overall problem were not covered. And 24 talking heads in 29 minutes is a bit much. 

DR: So you were looking for something —

LR: Something that we felt could be understood by both young and old. And used as a springboard perhaps for an evening discussion, or just stand on its own as a presentation of the Soviet Jewry problem.

DR: So did you yourself actually help put this film together?

LR: Well, it was my idea to make a film. And naturally when you have an idea you find out that you better do all the groundwork, if you want to get it started (laughter). I was fortunate, I found several people who could take over the several aspects of filmmaking — individuals who were very capable. My first concern was for a camera crew who had access to the appropriate equipment and laboratory facilities. I was a friend of a fellow who headed up the motion picture section of the NASA laboratory in Cleveland, Art Laufman. Art was someone I had worked with before at NASA — one or two films on scientific work I had carried out. He was a member of our temple, who had always been helpful in volunteering his services. So I asked if he would be willing to support me. I told him it might mean going to another city to do filming. Fine. He would do that. He knew where to rent equipment, professional motion picture equipment, and everything else we would need. Also, he said he could get one or two people who worked with him at NASA to come along, if we paid for their time. I then asked Mort Epstein to be the artistic director for the movie, to give it substance and spirit in an aesthetically pleasing way. I knew Mort could pull that off because he had a superb talent for communicating a message and a great sense of image and design. He readily agreed. I took on the producers job.

So with that team lined up, I looked around for a personality to take a lead role and who also might help with the script. The person who I thought would be ideal was Elie Wiesel. I knew Elie from a previous involvement of mine having to do with broadcasting Yiddish programs into the Soviet Union from pirate stations outside the Soviet Union. I had asked Elie to support us in that effort. He lent us his name for that activity. He, of course, had also visited the Soviet Union, just recently, and had profound personal encounters with Soviet Jews, which he wrote of in a book, published subsequently. I thought he would be an excellent person to be our lead.

DR: Incidentally, to interrupt for a minute, where were these pirate stations broadcasting Yiddish going to be located, or did that actually happen?

LR: (Laughs) We identified a few such stations. That was another project. Don’t divert me. If you want to get back to it I can. The fellow who headed that project was a guy by the name of Ron Blum who worked for Voice of America in Washington. That’s another story. In any event, I contacted Elie and I spoke to him about the movie project and gave him the general outline of what we had in mind. And, asked if he would do two things: one, write the script and then act as overall narrator, or introduce whatever the action would be called for in the script. He indicated he was interested, but he wanted to talk about it a bit more. So I said, “Okay. We’ll come to New York and we’ll talk it over.” So Mort and I got on a plane one day, went to New York and met with Elie. To make a long story short, it turned out that he insisted on conditions that were not feasible from the filming end of things. He felt that anything he took part in had to be “authentic”. And if we, for example, were to present images of present day Soviet Jews, they had to be actual Soviet Jews in the Soviet Union. Really, we saw no way we could pull off getting all the camera and sound equipment and a filming and directing crew into the USSR and then do filming at several locations — all undetected by the KGB. No way in 1967. 

DR: Plus you didn’t have the resources.

LR: And we certainly didn’t have the resources for that either. I think Elie knew that, too, because he had been to the Soviet Union, but these were his conditions and we respected that. So we left it there.

We went home and regrouped. I tried to think who else I knew of who was a prominent figure in the Jewish world, who had a deep understanding of the Soviet Jewry problem, who else could we find? And almost immediately I thought of Rabbi Heschel. Remember him? Abraham Joshua Heschel, who had been very outspoken on the Soviet Jewry issue. In fact, he incurred the wrath of his colleagues because he was insistent that they had to do more and take more action. He used very strong language—”We cannot stand by the blood of our brothers.” It caused quite a controversy at the time. And, of course, I had read his book that deals with the Sabbath and Eastern European Jewry, and his accounts of the beauty and glory of that culture. So I felt he had the qualifications we required. But I had no idea how receptive he would be. I gave him a call and he was quite interested. The long and short of it was that we arranged to go to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where he taught, to see about filming there. He took us to his office which when I first talked to him I thought might do the filming. But his office was absolutely—

DR: A shambles?

LR: No, not a shambles. It was a tiny office. From floor to ceiling there were bookcases on all sides, and his desk was in the middle of the remaining area. It was just impossible to even conceive of filming in there. You couldn’t get a camera in. You might get a limited view for one camera looking in from doorway, but not placement for the two cameras we were planning to use. It was just impossible. So we trotted down and spoke to the chancellor, Rabbi Greenberg. He had a large executive office and agreed to let us use the office for our project. Now we had a place for the filming. Also, Mort could described it to Art Laufman who was the chief cameraman so he could figure how he would set up his cameras.

On the agreed-upon date, we flew to New York and rented the camera equipment. There was a lot of it. We needed two complete sound cameras in soundproof enclosures so that the whirling of the motors doesn’t carry out to the sound recorders — fairly massive equipment — together with two, heavy tripods on wheeled mounts. The two camera guys, Art Laufman and his assistant, Cliff, lugged the stuff along, with Mort and I attempting to help where we could. At the Jewish Theological Seminary, we set up in Rabbi Greenberg’s office. And Rabbi Heschel came down to meet us. I had prepared ahead of time a couple of pages of questions that I planned to pose to Heschel as lead-ins. I had drafted an outline of a script, and these particular questions, were to lead him to those issues we wanted to work in to the movie. His method for prepping was fascinating. He would say, “Lou, read me your question?” and I would read it to him. He put his head on the desk where he was seated and was quite still for several minutes, finally, he raise up and said, “ready.” The cameras would roll, and he would deliver for two minutes, or so, a beautiful concise exposition on the subject of my question. An absolute gem. It was amazing. I went through the list of questions and we rarely had to repeat a take. He was that good. 

DR: Now of course you didn’t use all this in the film?

LR: No, we didn’t use it all. We wanted to keep the movie to 25 minutes overall and there were parts other than Rabbi Heschel’s to be included. We felt that too much talking by one individual, no matter how animated he was and how cogent his remarks, would be too much to take. The Heschel filming went off very well. The operation was accomplished in one morning and afternoon.

The rest of the film we put together in bits and pieces which were assembled in an artistic fashion by Mort who used a lot of visuals, still images, that I got for him. For example, I knew of Roman Vishniak’s photos made in Eastern Europe just before the Holocaust period — very compelling images of the Jews and their communities. I went through a book of Vishniak’s pictures with Mort, and he picked out a number that he thought he could use. I telephoned Vishniak. We’d never met before. I told him about the project we were on and who was involved and I asked if could I come and talk with him about using some of his images. He said, “Come on.” So I took a quick trip to New York and up to his apartment. He greeted me effusively. His wife, a Russian, was a lovely woman who cooked superbly. I know, because I enjoyed their hospitality for lunch. Vishniak showed me about his apartment. He took great pride in his extensive collection of Asiatic objects — beautiful miniatures and gorgeous sculptures. Then we got down to my business. I showed him the list of prints I wanted. He said, “Yes, yes, I will make these for you.” And he was good to his word. Shortly after, he mailed me a set of images for our project made from his original negatives. Incidentally, those are the photos that Miriam has hanging on her living room wall and the rest are in the hallway here at home.

I found other visual material in old art books and so on. Also, there were images I was able to get from Nehemia Levanon — photos of the aftermath of pogroms from around the turn of the century. So from one source or another I assembled quite a bit. Then the process of integrating it all. I wrote a script that presented a historical background— the period from the last tsars up through the Soviet commissars — in a few brief paragraphs. Dorothy Silver agreed to do the narration. She and her husband, Reuben Silver, are well known Cleveland actors. She has a lovely voice. For this section of the movie, Mort integrated the images and the narration in a way to hold the interest of a viewer. 

DR: It had images associated with it.

LR: Yes, it ended up to be a production that was part live film footage — Heschel’s bit— and part footage created from still images in the studio, using the same techniques used nowadays by Ken Burns for his historical documentaries. For example, using a pan in or across a photograph with the movie camera that lends a sense of motion. Mort used these techniques. It made for a lively film. We got funding for the production from the Cleveland Federation — really part of a story of how we got funding from them to help us finance special projects that would have been normally out of our reach.

DR: So how did you get money from the Cleveland Jewish Federation?

LR: I’m trying to remember the year —’66 I think. Yes. We approached them in ’66. Our relations were never what I would call unfriendly. We always kept a line of communication open with them; and they with us, because we were becoming a force in the community, and they realized that we were a serious organization. So about this time we decided to seek some funding from them. They were receptive but said any funding granted must be for specific projects. This suited us, because we had a number of specific projects that we wanted to carry out but did not for lack of money. Among these was the movie project. So we came to an agreement with the Federation. Each year we submitted to them a list of projects and a budget, and if they approved, they would provide us with the money. My notes show it averaged to about $5,000 a year over about six years, ’66 to ’72. So in that period of time it was a substantial contribution to our effort. And because we operated on a shoestring, with volunteer help, we were able to leverage the Federation’s contribution. As in the case of the movie — the major outlays were for travel, one cameraman, the camera equipment rental, film and processing.

DR: Now you also sold some materials to raise money, too — the protest seals that we were talking about before and the buttons.

LR: When I first came to Mort, in early 1967, with the suggestion of a protest seal it took him only a few day to come up with a design. And, it had just the right touch. We located a company in the business of printing seals and off we went. From 1967 through 1978, we sold an enormous quantity of the seals, hundreds of thousands of sheets, 50 stamps to a sheet. Organizations all over the U.S. and Canada purchased them from us in bulk. The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in New York, Jacob Birnbaum’s and Glen Richter’s group was our best customer. Over the years we sold them caseloads of sheets. The protest seals were immensely popular. Now the advantage to an organization — to which we wholesaled the stamps and kept just a small profit — was that they would sell a sheet of seals for 50 cents or a dollar. It was a wonderful fund-raiser for an organization and the purchaser would use the seals on their mailings carrying the message: “Protest the Oppression of Soviet Jewry.” This was among our earliest fund-raising activity linked with getting the message out.

Also, early on, in 1966 I believe, Mort designed a pin-on button. It carried the image of a shofar and the message, in Hebrew and English: “I am my brothers keeper.” We turned around Cain’s response “Am I my brother’s keeper?” These we also sold far and wide.

DR: And you also sold this handbook that we were looking at before. You would charge for that to raise funds.

LR: Yes. But more times than not we charged at cost, because our intent was to get the book in the hands of people who could use it. We felt it was more important to charge them a price they couldn’t refuse. In conversations in later years with people who had used the handbook, they were extremely complimentary. It helped a lot of people get started. It gave them the confidence to get started, because the book gave cases of actual things that others had done and provide a whole range program ideas.

DR: Was funding money something that you were constantly concerned about or devoting attention to, or did you not have to because you were so dependent on volunteer help? You were operating on a shoestring as you put it. Was it something that occupied a lot of your time worrying about where is the money going to come from?

LR: It did not occupy a great deal of our time. I should say it did occupy some of my time, because after a while I became the principle person involved. Dan Litt had to withdraw early on because of marital difficulties, which ended in divorce. It was a very unfortunate affair for him. And then he changed careers. He dropped out of the rabbinate at that point and decided to return to school for a degree in psychology. So he wasn’t available. Herb had commitments that grew at the VA Hospital, and also he may not have had a great interest in the kind of organizational and administrative work I was doing. He tended to be more of an idea person. He didn’t drop out completely. He was there for a few years, one way or another, but he wasn’t making day-to-day decisions. So it fell to me. Not that I was carrying it alone. There were other people. Lenore Singer who was my office manager at that time. Without her I couldn’t have done most of the things I did do. She took care of it all the phone calls, the typing, the mimeographing, the mailings, filled the orders for all of the materials we were creating — loads of materials that we sold to other people, other communities — and so much more. Without her, it couldn’t have been done. I had enough just to keep up with the current correspondence, making contacts, writing and preparing new material and projects and whatnot. She worked 5 days a week, 9 to 5, and on weekends when needed. And she did this from 1966 through 1978. Also, there was Henry Slone, who was our treasurer. He kept the books and kept everything right and tight. Of course, there were others from Beth Israel, young and old. We had East Siders like Marv Warshay and Goldie and Ann Robinson, the Mandels, and many many more, who directed or worked on specific projects and on the many tasks involved over the years. We enjoyed great and wonderful support year after year.

DR: And all volunteers.

LR: Yep, all volunteers! There wasn’t a paid person in the lot.

Let me mention at this point the role of Spotlight. That was Herb’s baby. It was our newsletter. The first issue was in 1965 and it was published sporadically through 1969. (In that period there was no other newsletter on Soviet Jewry.) Herb was the editor and the creator of Spotlight. It was a successful because Herb is a very fine writer, with good style, and he also drew the cartoons and line art that embellished each issue — an amazing talent. I contributed an editorial or two, and I also took care of the page on action programs as well as materials that were available through the CCSA. By the late 60s, Spotlight had a distribution of several thousand copies.

DR: It didn’t just go to members of CCSA?

LR: Right. It did go to members of the CCSA, but our biggest circulation was outside of Cleveland. What I encouraged were distribution centers in other communities. I found people who were willing to take on the responsibility of getting the Spotlight to as many Jewish institutions in their city as wanted to receive it, perhaps several copies to each synagogue and secular Jewish organization And so we would send 100 copies to, let’s say, Houston, Texas and 300 to Los Angeles, or wherever. In that way our circulation swelled. Our materials were advertised in Spotlight — a whole page full — items such as reprints of brief articles by scholars and people in public life on the Soviet Jewry issue. Items like the protest seals and the handbook. And also, the movie when it was released. Copies of the movie we either rented or sold outright. Most organizations rented. There were loads of rentals but we did sell some copies. The Jewish community in South Africa bought, I think, at least a half of dozen copies. And there were orders from organizations in Canada and England.

I’d like to mention here that all of these effort to produce educational an informational materials had an important fall out — I found more and more like minded people in other communities. They passionately wanted to get their communities moving to help Soviet Jew. These I would try to encourage and nourish — provide with as much material as they could use, be available to give advice, or just lend a shoulder to cry on. I was often able to do this face to face; because of trips I took as part of my job at NASA. Usually, I would try to have the business portion of my trip start on a Monday or end on a Friday, so I would have a weekend free to meet with nascent local leaders. The close rapport I had with those who later organized local councils for Soviet Jews grew from such meetings.

DR: Today is September 22, 1996, and I’m continuing to interview Lou Rosenblum. We talked about some of your efforts to form a grassroots movement in Cleveland, and you mentioned there was a particular event, this rally in early 1965, where you expanded your membership tremendously. In the subsequent years, why don’t we just touch briefly on some of the other significant milestone events, public events that took place that indicated what was happening in the movement that you were trying to create. There was something that you began talking about called the Day of Dedication for Soviet Jewry, December of 1966. What was that about?

LR: This was an attempt to move outside of the Cleveland area, to try to organize an event, a major event, on behalf of Soviet Jews, for a multi-state region. What triggered the idea in my mind was a particular protest activity I had learned about that took place in New York City. The activity had originated with Congregation Zichron Ephraim, located across the street from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. The congregation, under the leadership of Rabbi Schneier, decided to erect a plaque outside of their building facing the Soviet Mission. Inscribed on the plaque was “Hear the cry of the oppressed,” a quotation from Psalms, and beneath that line was “The Jewish Community in the Soviet Union.” Before the unveiling of the plaque hundreds of people met in the synagogue for a protest meeting addressed by Senator Robert Kennedy, Mayor Wagner of New York and other notables. It was a major event and attracted a lot of media attention. 

In our region, we obviously couldn’t replicate the placement of a protest message opposite a Soviet building. But the idea of holding a protest meeting in a synagogue tied in with the dedication of a replicate the Zichron Ephraim plaque was something worth doing on a regional scale. So I decided it to give it a try. I discussed the idea with Rabbi Chuck Mintz, who at that time was the regional director of the Ohio Valley Region of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and he thought it was great. With his blessing, I undertook to contact all of the Reform congregations in the region. I believe that takes in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and…

DR: West Virginia.

LR: West Virginia. It was a large group of states and a large number of congregations, about75. I sent mailings to all of the congregations apprising them of the project and enclosed a letter from Chuck Mintz endorsing the project. We made it easy for the congregations to participate. We provided for them prepared sermons, sample press releases, informational and educational items. And we also arranged to provide them with a bronze plaque, at cost. If you go into Beth Israel temple today, you’ll see one such plaque mounted over the door leading into the main sanctuary. There were probably several dozen congregations — I don’t remember the exact number — that opted to participate. It was a very heartening response.

DR: You also did something that you called leadership training during this period. I assume this was training for people to be able to do their own community-based projects on Soviet Jewry. Who participated in that? Was that more than just Cleveland?

LR: Well, it was held in Cleveland, but invitations went out to a much larger mailing that covered cities in Ohio — Cincinnati, Columbus and so on — as well as nearby states. The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland cosponsored the event with us because we felt that it was important they be involved. The more they became invested in these kind of activities, the more sympathetic they would be to supporting us. And also we wanted their hekhsher, their imprimatur. We had two of these events over the years. One was in 1966 in August. At that time we invited in as the major speaker a man who had recently visited the Soviet Union. His name was David Weiss. He was an immunologist from Berkeley, California who I got to know on one of my visits to the West Coast. I was extremely impressed by the man. He was an astute observer and had written a very fine article about his trip. He turned out to be an extremely persuasive speaker, presenting the urgency of action. He was followed by workshops on specific types of action appropriate for communities, appropriate for individuals and so on. The attendance there—I don’t recall what it was, but it was probably in the order of about 50 people, mainly from Cleveland, but also several from elsewhere.

In 1970 we held a Midwest Regional Conference on Soviet Jewry. This again was cosponsored with the Federation and, in addition, we had the sponsorship of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry. They came in, I would say, reluctantly. Because, if they stayed away, they would have look bad. By that time our activities and that of other grass-root councils had received a lot of attention. And by then we — the grass-root councils — were collectively the de facto Soviet Jewry movement in the United States. Although we hadn’t as yet organized into what was to be Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, we were recognized as where you went, if you wanted to find out what to do. The National Conference, on the other hand, was not the address to go for help. The National Conference’s half time and only staff person, Abe Bayer, attended. And with Abe came one of Nehemia’s minions, Yoram Dinstein. (Nehemia Levanon, the head of the Israeli “Office Without a Name”). Dinstein was officially a member of the Israeli Consulate in New York. We drew in people from as far west as Chicago and Milwaukee as well as from surrounding states like Pennsylvania.

DR: And again you held workshops.

LR: Yes. This time we had several speakers, among them was Zev Yaroslavsky. He was a college student at that time. And, he was an excellent speaker. He had been to the Soviet Union. He not only spoke about his encounters there with Soviet Jews and also as an activist who had been working for several years in the Los Angeles area. And we had workshops. Don Bogart and Herb Caron presented workshops among others. It was, I believe, a highly successful workshop.

DR: Now another area of activity that you started getting into in those early years that you haven’t mentioned up until now is letter writing campaigns to Soviet officials on behalf of prisoners of conscience. That was something that began in this period. The first question is how did you identify the prisoners of consciences that you would write on behalf of? How did you get the information about them? And then, how did you actually carry out the campaign to publicize it?

LR: The prisoner of conscience program started in the latter part of the ‘60s. We received information from two sources: from news accounts, which were fairly sparse, and from contacts in Israel who were in touch with Jews in the Soviet Union and with newly arrived Soviet Jews. We plugged into this unofficial network of information. News and specific reports about individuals was passed on to us by an Israeli woman by the name of Ann Shankar who assembled the information.

DR: Ann Shankar was the main source for a lot of this information?

LR: Yes. She was the main source for most of it. And the information was highly specific on what was happening at any given time with those who were under threat, either of losing their jobs, or of being brought up on charges that might lead to long years in a prison camp.

DR: Where did you come up with the phrase “prisoner of conscience?”

LR: That was not a phrase that we in the Soviet Jewry movement invented. As I recollect, Amnesty International coined the term.

DR: So you collected information about these people through networks and so on, partly coming from Israel and people who had come there from the Soviet Union. And then you presumably identified particular cases that were especially dire.

LR: The information contained the prisoner’s camp address and, in some cases, the particular section of the camp. And often the details would include the phone number of the commandant of the prison, which was quite valuable for us. With this information like the address we could start a letter writing campaign that might provide hope to the prisoners that the outside world knew about them. We realized that few, if any, of the letters would get through, but we calculated that even if not one letter got through, the letters would find their way into the official files in the Soviet Union and might give the government pause over a rising public outcry.

DR: So who was actually writing the letters? You would get people who were members of CCSA?

LR: Yes, and others. I would prepare a one or two page flyer for which I wrote a short article about the prisoner —his or her background, charges, trial, sentence, and present situation. Then I included an action that the recipient of the flyer could take. Basically, the message was, “Okay, you’ve read about this. You see how serious the situation is. Here’s what you can do to help.” In most cases I was able to get pictures of the prisoner to add to the flyer. I would then have Lenore mail these out to our lists that included the CCSA people and contacts all over the country.

DR: One thing that strikes me is that type of action was not very common at that time, or maybe I’m wrong. The idea of a public letter writing campaign to officials of a foreign government protesting their treatment of their citizens, which now has become pretty commonplace through organizations like Amnesty International and others. My impression is that maybe in the mid and late ‘60s this was still a relatively new form of action.

LR: Absolutely. Amnesty International that started up in 1961 probably originated the idea. At the time when we were beginning to work on the Soviet Jewish problem, the so-called democratic movement was developing within the Soviet Union. This led the Soviets to crack down on the dissidents by imprisonment in the Gulag or confinement in a psychiatric facility. Amnesty International and other organizations supporting the Soviet dissidents made good use the letter writing in behalf of the dissidents.

DR: You’ve alluded to some things in this period where your activities in Cleveland intersected with what was happening nationally, and also some of your efforts to broaden the scope of what you were doing somewhat beyond Cleveland. At what point did you and others realize that it was time to create a national organization? What were the events that led up to the decision to have a “Union of Councils”?

LR: Let me return to the April 1964 American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, which I had talked about before. When we left the conference, we had high hopes. We had pushed through with almost unanimous support a resolution that would, we thought, provide funding and staffing for a national organization. Such an organization might then be a force promoting activities for Soviet Jewry in the United States. Its headquarters would probably be in New York where most of the headquarters of major Jewish organizations were. And they would provide the guidance and leadership that was needed. Well, very shortly we found that that was not the intent of the people in charge — the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council and the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations. What they did was assign a National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council staff member — Al Chernin — part time, as the sole staff member of the continuing American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry. As far as we knew, and we knew quite a bit, because we had information from people within the Jewish establishment who were appalled with the situation. So we recognized this as but a cosmetic attempt to honor the resolution.

Every two years, the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry — this organization with a part-time person and no letterhead — would call a national conference, a biennial meeting. So in ’66 and ’68 a meeting was held. They would invite people from all over the country to attend. As the first time, invitations were not necessarily given to people working on Soviet Jewry, but to whoever the local chapters of the major Jewish organizations chose ask. And the same routine would be played out as before. We felt we were reliving ’64. There would be the usual set of feel-good resolutions. And, each time we fought successfully for a resolution calling for staff and funding. Each time our resolution spelled out the sum of money to be allocated and described the staff that was needed. Each time the resolution passed by a substantial majority. And each time the resolution was subsequently ignored and no budget or adequate staff provided. It was all farce. After the third biennial, I think most of the people who were seriously committed to helping Soviet Jewry realized that there was no hope of making the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry a viable entity.

DR: What was this part-time guy doing, if anything? Al Chernin.

LR: Al Chernin was the part-time staff person up to 1970 and then Abe Bayer became the part-time staff person. The part-timer arranged from time to time to provide, what might be called, a national presence by making some representation to the U.S. government on Soviet Jewry. For example, one of the presidents of a major Jewish organization was asked to meet with a Congressperson or someone in the Administration. The part-timer did encourage communities to hold a day of prayer, rallies and events of that sort. The part-timer did organize a few national rallies. These efforts were called sporadically and lacked follow up. But, the part-timer couldn’t provide timely or adequate response to fast breaking actions by Soviet authorities that threatened Soviet Jews such as the Leningrad trials in 1970. 

Rather than recalling more from memory, let me look for an article I wrote on the Conference back then. Let’s take a break and I’ll ferret it out. 

DR: Today is September 22, 1996, and I’m continuing to interview Lou Rosenblum.

LR: This is from an article I wrote that appeared in Focus on Soviet Jewry, May/June 1971, titled “The Sin of Indifference: Years of Neglect”. I had this to say: “To mount a credible national Soviet Jewry effort would take on the order of a half a million dollars a year — or so thought the majority of the delegates in a 1968 biennial meeting of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry. This amount would provide a full-time staff including public relations and community development, money for a newsletter, journal and resource materials, so sorely needed. Five hundred thousand dollars — only about 1/2% of the money collected annually by the American Jewish Welfare Fund Appeal. Is it not strange that the nominal leaders of the richest Jewish community in history have not been able to find resources adequate to fund, on a regular basis, an effort to aid three million of their people in the Soviet Union?” I was pretty steamed and had been for years. I was indignant over the of neglect and indifference and cover up by the national organizations. 

This exasperation of mine — and others — fueled the ultimate formation of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. The first tentative move in that direction came in April 1968. I wrote to a number of my friends and colleagues who I knew would be attending the Conference biennial in New York. I suggested that it would be opportune for us to caucus for a discussion on the future of the Soviet Jewry movement. I not only invited grass-root leaders like myself but some who I knew were part of the establishment — Moshe Decter and Meir Rosenne, Israeli Counselor in New York. It was an ‘open’ meeting. I wanted word of what we were discussing to get back to the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry and the rest of the establishment. I wanted perhaps to …

DR: Fire a shot across the bow.

LR: Fire a shot across their bow, as you say, to let them know that we were actively considering an alternative to their organization. The other attendees at our caucus were, for the most part, people who I worked with in the past. Like Irene Eber and Zev Yaroslavsky from California. Like Jacob Birnbaum from New York. Like Joe Yanich from Miami, Florida. Joe headed up the American Jewish Congress office in Miami. He was a professional who one might expect to have a stake in not antagonizing his bosses, but he was an individualist, and also had a keen idea of what was going on. He did everything in his power to bring Soviet Jewry to the attention not only of his organization’s membership but to the entire Miami community. At times he had his wrists slapped by his bosses in New York for stepping out ahead, but he persevered nevertheless. He was a man of great integrity. I posed to caucus the dilemma we faced. Here was the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry that was effectively impotent for lack of funds and staff. On the other hand, most of us saw things coming to a head for Jews in the Soviet Union. We were entering a critical period. 

A month later, May 11th, I arranged another meeting to which a smaller group was invited — mainly those who would later to be part of the Union of Councils. At that meeting we discussed practical matters such as organization purpose and structure. I volunteered to be head of a “committee of correspondence” — shades of the Revolutionary War period (laughs). We would continue to develop our ideas and, when the time was right, we could move on the matter. I would say that was the beginning. The seed was planted. The soil was fertile. And it was only two years later that we moved to form the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.

DR: You mentioned the people who you met with to discuss the idea of forming your own organization in 1968, at the time of that American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry. And at other times, you’ve mentioned people in other parts of the country that played a role in some events. You mentioned Zev Yaroslavsky, for example. I’m wondering, of the many people you encountered during those years, not just before 1970, but throughout the period you were involved, which of them really stick out in your mind as having made an impression on you, that you formed some bond with them that you really treasured.

LR: There were a number of people. I’ll mention just a few. Let me start with Zev. He was one of the earliest people I came into contact with outside of Cleveland. He lived in Los Angeles, which he still does. He was a high school student when I first got to know him back in about 1966. It came about this way. I learned from Henry Slone of an engineer he had met at Rocketdyne whose wife had organized a group to publicize the Soviet Jewry problem. So on one of my trips for NASA to California I looked her up. Irene Eber — that was her name — had a fascinating background. She was born in Germany and brought up in Poland. She was a survivor of Auschwitz, afterwards came to the U.S. and later earned a doctorate in Sinology. At the time I met Irene, she was teaching at Pomona College. And she was active in the Los Angeles area trying to organize and get the word out about the situation in the Soviet Union. One of the people helping her was Zev Yaroslavsky. When I first met Zev it was hard to believe he was high school senior. He seemed much older — the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, and his self-assurance. An amazing young man. And, I took a great liking to him, and it was reciprocated. We still keep in touch. 

Si Frumkin I met later in California, maybe five years later. He, in my estimation, was a phenomenon. He was born in Lithuania. He and his father ended up in Dachau where his father perished. He was 14 when the camp was liberated and he spent the next several years in Europe, England and South America and finally moved to the U.S. He was in the drapery business in Los Angeles when I first met him. Along the way he also managed to acquire an MA degree in history. He had wonderful qualities. He was direct. He was extremely imaginative and articulate in a way that very few people are. He knew how to engage others to work on an issue. He was audacious and understood clearly how to use his boldness to achieve his goal without being abusive or a nuisance.

DR: It wasn’t boldness for its own sake. It had a defined end.

LR: Yes, a defined end. Zev and Si got together, I believe, in the ’69, ’70 period and from then on they were like Mutt and Jeff. Whenever you thought of one, you thought of the other. Between the two of them, they accomplished outstanding results in the southern California area, making their communities aware, deeply aware, of the Soviet Jewish problem and providing ways of addressing the issue. Their style was what I would call California: spacious, vivid, and dramatic. It was great. 

Another person who I remember with considerable fondness and regard was Irene Manekowsky from Washington, D.C. Irene was a member of the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry when I met her in 1969. She took over the leadership of the committee in the mid-‘70s and things really moved in Washington — which was a vital center for us because of the need we then had to play a direct role on the political scene. She was extremely capable, and when she finally did assume a position of leadership, it changed the whole complexion of the Washington Committee. Prior to that the leadership fell to a fellow by the name of Moshe Brodetsky. A sweet guy who in his earlier days fought with the Irgun in Palestine. Unfortunately he lacked balance in his approach to what needed to be done. What he did do was great. For instance, he organized the noon vigil that gathered every weekday across the street from the Soviet Embassy. But the valuable political work that could be done in Washington, apparently, was off his map. He was a loner and seldom consulted with other members of the committee. They deferred to him, not wanting to hurt his feelings. Moshe was a character. I recall a trip to Washington to meet with several Committee people. Moshe asked me to drop by his office beforehand. He worked for HUD at that time. You’ve probably been in that building.

DR: Well, I’ve been in similar government buildings.

LR: Doors and doors but no names on door — down long endless corridors. I finally found the room, opened the door, and what did I see — 12 or so men, wearing tallisim and tefilin, davaning. Moshe ran a daily minyan in his office, in HUD. (Laughter) I mean, talk about a character! He made aliyah sometime in the late ‘70s 

In Florida, I already mentioned Joe Yanich who was the head of the American Jewish Congress office in Miami. He was a prince of a person, a real mensch. And he did a lot of wonderful stuff down in Florida. And it turned out that the man who I worked closely with, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, at the Jewish Community Federation, Ed Rosenthal…

DR: In Cleveland.

LR: In Cleveland — Ed left in the mid-70s and took on a position with the Federation in Miami. He got to know Joe and formed a great friendship because they were like-minded people. Ed Rosenthal was a kind and helpful person. He was bright and independent minded. I’ve always cherish my friendship with him.

DR: What about Hal Light? That name sticks in my mind for some reason. What was his role?

LR: Hal Light was the head of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews. Hal and I had what I would not call a friendship, because it was hard to be a friend to Hal. He was the kind of person who demanded that you accept what he said or wanted to do and not question. He was authoritarian in his approach. He compromised at times, but not terribly gracefully. There were other Soviet Jewry groups that emerged in the Bay Area from time to time. They formed, in part, from individuals who split off the Bay Area Council, because you had to do it Hal’s way or…. You know that kind of thing. And Hal had a highly developed sense of turf. This caused problems in San Francisco. On one occasion I was called in as a mediator, since the unfortunate “upstart” group was also a member of the Union of Councils. It was terribly painful for me to see how destructive Hal’s obsession was. But on the other hand, he did create a very effective organization in terms of the results, in his authoritarian way. 

He also had ties to the Zionist Revisionist, on the right wing of Zionist spectrum. He had contacts and friends that at times caused me some grief. In fact a lot of grief. Let me give you a couple of instances. One has to do with Meir Kahane. 

DR: Talk about right wing.

LR: And talk about lunatic. But Kahane was a brilliant lunatic, I mean, for his own causes and ideology. The incident goes back to 1971. We planned a Union of Council meeting for that year in Philadelphia, in September. A month or two earlier, I was in New York with Hal on Union of Councils business. For lunch he suggested we meet with a friend of his, Morris Brafman, a manufacturer of women’s lingerie, who was chairman of the International League for Repatriation of Russian Jews. (The League was a Zionist Revisionist organization.) Hal said it might be a good idea to invite this fellow to attend the upcoming Union of Councils meeting. I said, “ Fine we’re always interested in developing contacts with people working on the same issue.” After lunch, Hal raised another question, “How ‘bout if we would invite Meir Kahane to the meeting?” “Hal,” I said, “we have enough tsuris as it is with our organization. Let’s not do anything as rash as that. Kahane has a style, an operation, which is anathema to the organized Jewish community and is abhorrent to most of us in the Union of Councils. It will do us no good. I’m adamantly opposed to such an invitation.” So Hal let it drop. He said, “Okay. Fine.”

In Philadelphia we’re setting up for the meeting. We have a room set aside for a few of us on the executive committee to meet. And we’re sitting discussing the coming sessions. There’s a knock on the door. In walks Rabbi Kahane. Invited by who? Okay. So he was there. I greeted him and asked what was his reason for dropping in. With no preliminaries, he launched into a long statement: he was prepared to allow us to continue using our name, we would not have to take on the name of his organization, but, he would insist that we follow his direction, he would send down the orders as to what we should do and how we should do it; this was in the greater interest of promoting Soviet Jewry activities; and, since we were people fed up with the establishment, we should welcome this opportunity that he was offering. He went on like that for 15 minutes or so. That was the gist of it. He was making us an offer we couldn’t refuse. Well, I listened to him — heard him out patiently — and then said, “Thank you for coming. We’ll think about it.” And he left. I don’t think I ever forgave Hal Light for that business.

There was another unpleasant situation that I think Hal was responsible for. In 1972, the Union of Councils decided we needed a person in England who could brief and debrief American college student who were going to the Soviet Union. In those days there was a lot of student travel during the summer. And many students found it less expensive to go to England and take cheap flights from there. We thought that if we could hire, for the summer, a bright student who had some experience with Soviet Jewry, he or she could brief others on what to expect and provide names and addresses of Soviet Jews they might visit. Then, when the tourist returned they could report back who they met with and in what circumstances they found them. We thought that the value of this project would be to keep us current on what was going on with the Soviet Jewish activists and also awaken students to the plight of Soviet Jews, through a learning adventure. 

A fellow by the name of Doug Kahn was recommended to take on the job. He was a college graduate from California. He had worked with some of the committees in California on Soviet Jewry, so he was knowledgeable about the issue. We provided him with a little funding to cover his travel, housing expenses, and food and he set himself up in London. He didn’t need an office or anything like that. And people coming from the States who we knew were going to the USSR via London we would direct to see Doug. And there were a fair number of people who fit that bill.

DR: How did you find out, by the way, about people traveling? Did they come to you because they had heard of the Union of Councils? In other words, like students or something. How would you have found out?

LR: Oh, we knew about this just from talking with members of our Union of Councils. Some Councils were exclusively composed of students. For example, the Toronto Student Council for Soviet Jews and the Montreal Student Struggle for Soviet Jews were student groups, campus based. And, we had contacts in this country with student groups on various campuses. So Doug went and he set up. I did ask him to report every once in a while on names of the students who had checked in with him and also to let me know immediately when something important in the way of information came his way. A short time after Doug arrived in London, I heard from Hal. He said he had been in London, that he had seen Doug and talked with him and introduced him to some of his friends. At the time, I thought that that was very fatherly of Hal to make Doug feel at home by introducing him to local friends. 

Weeks past and I wasn’t getting much of anything back from Doug. Then, in the middle of August, out of the blue, I get a call from Doug from London. It’s a frantic call. He said he’s in a terrible situation. He doesn’t know what to do about it. At that point he’s cut off. Somebody else gets on and says, “We’re trying to help Doug here. He’s been cooperating with us, but we’re not sure he understands what’s going on.” It was all very cryptic and weird. From Doug’s voice it was obvious he was very agitated and frightened. So when I finished that conversation, I quickly called the only person I knew in London who had contacts in the community. That was Colin Schindler who had been editor of a Soviet Jewry bulletin. He was a person who I hadn’t met personally, but had corresponded with. He was a solid guy, as far as I knew. I said, “Look, I’m sitting here in Cleveland and there’s something going on in London with Doug which sound somewhat sinister. Would you please check it out?” And he said he would.

The next day Colin called back and said that Doug has somehow become captive to a local JDL group. That immediately reminded me of Hal and his friendship with the Zionist Revisionists, the Kahane business, and Hal’s call to me earlier that summer about seeing Doug in London and introducing him to friends. It seemed clear that Doug was co-opted by crazies and the project was now down the drain. So I called Doug and said, “You’re in over your head. Just get out. I want you to shut down and return home”. He left, returned to the States. And never contacted me again. In the end, I figured, okay, that’s a chapter we’ll put behind us. I was busy with many other things and I never pursue it further.

I held my peace and I did not confront Hal on any of these incidents, simply because he was doing a good job in San Francisco for the cause. And I was not about to make unnecessary enemies. My role in the Union was to act as coordinator, encourager and, on occasion, peacemaker. I had no authority over any of the individual councils. Each council leader, in his or her own right, was qualified to do what they were doing. And they had been accepted as such in their own community. 

DR: And the Union was set up as a rather decentralized organization, right?

LR: When we decided to launched the Union of Councils, I sent to each of the councils a letter in which I defined our new organization as a confederation. I did that deliberately, because I was aware that the head each council was a strong minded individual and that each council had its own style of operation. I felt we could only endure if we respected each other and worked together in those area we could agree upon and not try to compel a uniform response. 

DR: Are there any other people — I mentioned Hal Light — but is there anyone else from other cities or other councils that you really had a lot of contact with and a long relationship with?

LR: Yes. There was Liz Hoffman from Denver, who was the chairperson of the Colorado Committee of Concern for Soviet Jewry. A wonderful, determined woman who I had contact with over the years, mostly by correspondence, but visits every now and then. There was Abie Ingber, who headed up the Montreal Student Struggle for Soviet Jews. He was a college student when I first met him in ‘69. Abie was — and is — a gregarious, thoughtful, creative guy. After college he went to HUC and eventually ended up as the Hillel rabbi at the University of Cincinnati. So I was able to visit with Abie whenever Mom and I drove down to Cincinnati to visit Miriam and Sheldon.

There were other people who were not members of the Union of Councils who I respected highly and with whom I had much contact and developed fruitful relationships. There was Jacob Birnbaum and Glen Richter of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in New York City, who I came to know very early on — in 1964. And then there were those elsewhere like Marsha Yugend, Judy Silverman and Rabbi Moshe Sacks of the Minnesota Action Committee for Soviet Jews. That group didn’t join the Union of Councils, because they were directly funded by the Minneapolis Jewish Community Federation. It just wasn’t politic for them to join the Union. It wasn’t because their Federation people had concerns about our legitimacy or responsibility — quite to the contrary. It had to do with the Federation not wanting to be expose to grief from the national office if the Committee formally affiliated with us. I had excellent personal relations with them. In fact I was invited a couple of times to Minneapolis to meet with the leadership and discuss to programming and tactics. And, through the 70’s the Committee actively participated in several Union of Councils programs. For example, in they assumed complete responsibility for creating and maintaining the database of financial aid sent to Jews in the Soviet Union.

DR: Today is August 13, 1997. We’re in South Lake Tahoe, California, and I’m continuing to interview Louis Rosenblum about the Soviet Jewry movement and his involvement in it. We led up to the point of the formation of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews which was the culmination of efforts that had begun seven or eight years before. Could you just briefly talk about what it was that led you to form this national organization? What led up to it?

LR: I had mentioned previously that, in May 1968, a group of us who had been working on Soviet Jewry took the opportunity to meet privately. We discussed the present state of affairs and the future of the Soviet Jewry movement and concluded that a new organization was needed. Afterwards we kept in communication with one another on the matter. And, by 1970 the situation had—

DR: Ripened.

LR: Ripened. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for. The situation had ripened to the point where there was no question that this was what we should and could do. There were six organizations that were ready for the plunge. There was Joe Yanich in south Florida. There was Zev Yaroslavsky and Si Frumkin in southern California. Zev headed up a student group and Si headed the Southern California Council. There was the Washington Committee and Hal Light’s Bay Area Council. And finally, the CCSA in Cleveland. I was asked to write the statement defining the nature of our organization and send out an announcement of its inauguration. This was the kickoff for the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews — April 6, 1970. In my letter I tried to define what I thought was our purpose and raison d’etre.

DR: Sort of a mission statement.

LR: A mission statement, if you will. Let me read you briefly from a copy: “As agreed by all, we” — meaning the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews — “shall continue to supplement and complement the work of the AJCSJ and act as ‘loyal opposition’ to spur the national Jewish organizations to greater activity. We shall act independently and when necessary to bring about greater public awareness of, and activity for Soviet Jews. We shall avoid guiding our policy or actions by the political exigencies of either the governments of Israel or the U.S.” We wished to maintain independence from governmental pressure — mainly from the Israeli government. (I’ll get into that later when we talk about Israel’s role in the Soviet Jewry movement.) We didn’t want to be tied to anybody else’s wagon. Not that we knew it all. Certainly, we still had a lot to learn. But each of the councils had been active for a few years. We each had a base of experience. And with that comes confidence. So we started our enterprise with the belief that we would succeed.

DR: So this happened early 1970, you issued this letter.

LR: It was April 6, 1970 that we agreed would be the start date. 

DR: And then what you had was this initial group of six or so councils, and then you grew from there.

LR: Right, very rapidly. I recently went back and looked at the records and I see by a year later, in April 1971, we had grown from six to ten councils. And in the next year, by the end of ’72, we reached 16, and then by 1973 we topped out for a while at 18. That was fairly rapid growth, and we had good coverage, too, in terms of regional distribution. In addition to that, we were able to pick up, what I would call allies, who, for their own good reasons did not want to directly affiliate with us, but worked actively and closely with us. For example the Minnesota council that I mentioned earlier. We also had good ongoing relationships with the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. 

DR: Now was there an immediate election or selection of a chairman or a board? Who was the leadership?

LR: That came a little fitfully, in the very first few months. I was reluctant to take on the leadership responsibility. It would be a national responsibility, in addition to being chairman of the CCSA in Cleveland. Besides, I felt I had not really been putting enough time into my NASA job. I could get by, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t—how shall I say — doing my professional best. So I didn’t want to take on another load. Several people were suggested to head up the Union of Councils. It turns out none of them really wanted to take on the job. Most didn’t feel they had enough experience as yet for that. It ended up by default that I—

DR: It came to you.

LR: It came to me, and I reluctantly said okay. From that point on I served for three years.

DR: But the fact that you became chairman was the result of sort of just an informal consensus? 

LR: That’s right.

DR: There wasn’t a vote or something?

LR: No. It devolved to me.

DR: Were there other officers or other positions created?

LR: Yes. That came a little later that year, as we added councils. Hal Light was asked to be a vice-president and so was Si Frumkin. Zev Yaroslavsky and Abbie Ingber, among others, were asked to be on a steering committee. It wasn’t until September 1971 that we held our first annual conference, approved a constitution and held an election of officers and members of the steering committee. 

DR: Am I right that the actual content of what you did didn’t change that much? Maybe you had already been playing a role as a kind of mentor to the other groups, and so in terms of the day-to-day responsibilities you continued doing what you had been doing.

LR: Exactly, except the pace picked up because I now had the responsibility for keeping things moving, and also acting as a mediator when called upon, or a sounding board, or whatever. The phone traffic went up considerably.

DR: It’s August 12, 1997. This is South Lake Tahoe, California . We were talking about the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and its formation. Tell me briefly what it was that made the council a council. In other words, how did you collaborate among the councils and what was your financial connection one to another?

LR: I think our most intimate bonding resulted from shared projects that we mounted. These projects had a spin off which also was extremely beneficial in that many, not all, but many of them generated revenue for the Union of Councils. If we had a nationwide project — and I’ll describe some of these to you in a minute — we agreed that a certain percentage of what each of the councils would realize from the project would go toward financing the Union of Councils for commonly agreed upon purposes. It might be for political activities or what have you. So, all in all, it was the projects themselves that brought us closer together, and also provided us with resources to do the overall job.

DR: What were some examples of the projects that you worked on together?

LR: One of the earliest, and I think the most successful in many ways, was the greeting card project. That started in Cleveland in 1970, early in the year, with Passover cards we prepared and packaged in sets of five together with the addresses of five Soviet Jews who wished to receive communications from people in the West. The card packet also included information about the problems facing Soviet Jews and a encouragement to the purchaser to include with the Passover card a written note of their own.

DR: Something personalized.

LR: Right, exactly, or a photograph of their family. It was up to them what they would include. The responses from this mailing of cards were overwhelming. I never expected such an outpouring of response from the Soviet Union. And, those in this country who had sent Passover greeting cards and received responses were overjoyed. They had made contact with a Soviet Jew, one who wrote back to them. For them the issue was no longer the plight of faceless millions but was personified by an individual or family who had written to them. It was very moving. 

Let me return to how the greeting card project came about. I had, in early ’70, received a list of about 75 Soviet Jews from Moscow, Leningrad and other cities, who had petitioned their government to leave. They had also sent similar petitions to the U.N. General Assembly and other international bodies. These were signed with the names and addresses of the petitioners, who publicly put themselves on the line. Because of this I felt that these individuals would make the start of a potential mailing list. I was encouraged in this idea by contacts in Israel. These were contacts with private individuals working with Soviet Jews who had been arriving in Israel for several years, in small numbers. When I asked the Israelis…

DR: This was Ann Shankar?

LR: Ann Shankar mainly. There were several others involved, but Ann Shankar was my main contact in the early days. They said that those who had signed the petitions would love to communicate with people in the West. So I was emboldened to go ahead.

DR: Let me just interject something. The reason why you say you were emboldened to go ahead with it is you might have hesitated to do so if you thought that by writing to them you would somehow be endangering them. But in fact they were encouraging. They welcomed this.

LR: Yes, they would welcomed this. Ann told me, based on discussions she had with new arrivals from the Soviet Union, that Soviet Jews who had gone public about their desire to leave felt that knowledge of their situation by Westerners would help shield them from the authorites. My next move was to talk to the Cleveland Federation about the Passover card project. I thought it would be helpful in many ways to have them directly involved. So I spoke to Ed Rosenthal to see if the Federation would partner with us on this project. If we were going to undertake the project, I wanted to get the maximum coverage possible. And, it turned out that Ed was very interested. He and I talked to his bosses. I assured them we had solid information that this project would not bring harm to anyone, and, to the contrary, it would be helpful. And they said, “Okay. Give it a try.”

The next thing was to get the cards made up. Ed arranged a luncheon meeting with Irving Stone, who was the head of American Greeting Card Company that is based in Cleveland. I explained to Irving about the project and he was interested in helping. He offered to print greeting cards for us and have his calligraphers work up the Russian text, if we would provide him the copy. And he agreed to sell us the cards at cost — just for the paper and the printing. We settled on the text that read “ Happy Passover” in Yiddish and Russian followed by “the Jews of the USA to the Jews of the USSR — We have not forgotten you.” 

Next was packaging. We put 5 cards and envelopes in a clear plastic envelope together with mailing instructions and 5 names and addresses. This was rather simple. And we asked the kids and adults at Beth Israel to volunteer to do the packaging. You probably remember that.

DR: Yes, I remember doing that, and there’s a picture of me in the newspaper, Reuben and I, stuffing the envelopes.

LR: Right. The Jewish News came down to interview and take pictures. And, as I already mentioned, we got wonderful responses from Soviet Jews who received the Passover cards. So we felt it was important to continue with the idea. Later that year, for Rosh Hashannah, I had printed a second set of cards designed by American Greeting Card Co. These were their standard pictorial Rosh Hashannah cards but imprinted inside with the message “ Happy New Year” in Russian, English, Georgian, German, French and Hebrew. By then we had a larger list of Soviet Jews — 196, as I recollect. And, most importantly, the member councils of the Union of Council adopted the project as well. The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and other unaffiliated groups also picked up on the project. And this is where it really began taking off. Not only in Cleveland and vicinity, but throughout the country. There must have been, I would estimate, about 60,000 cards sold. We don’t know, of course, how many of those sold were sent. But presumably a good many were, and the responses, again, were overwhelming.

DR: You mean the replies back.

LR: The replies back from Soviet Jews. The replies, I think, produced a vital turning points in awareness for many American Jews of what was happening in the Soviet Union. Now, it wasn’t an academic issue that they might read about in a newspaper or magazine. The Soviet Jewry issue became personal and immediate — it was embodied in the Soviet Jew who replied to their greeting card. For us was a revelation. We realized we couldn’t possibly generate this level of identification with the Soviet Jewry issue with meetings or informational mailings. This was much more effective.

By the way, when we, in Cleveland, prepared the packets of New Year greeting cards I had printed an informational insert that I titled “Rosh Hashannah People-to-People Project.” This proved to be the first in a series of similar projects, all termed people-to-people.

DR: So you had a series of other people-to-people things.

LR: I’ll come back to that later on. But first let me complete the greeting card projects. These continued on. Si Frumkin took on the design, printing and distribution of the cards for the Union of Councils during the next two years. All in all, I would estimate that the number of cards sold, from 1970 through 1972, was about a half a million. And, in that period our list of possible Soviet Jewish recipients increased to several hundred.

A side effect of the project — and a welcome one — was that income from the sale of these cards began to flow in to our member councils. We’d sell these cards to individuals for a dollar a packet of five cards. Production cost was like under 20 cents. So whoever was producing the cards, whether it was Cleveland or California, would sell them at cost to a member council. As a result the local councils began to realize a new source of income to help run the office, buy equipment, pay for mailings and the telephone bill and a lot more. Before this, people involved in the operation of a local council often would dip into their own pockets to cover expenses. That’s how things were done up to that point. So now with more income all of us could begin to consider taking on more activities. We weren’t becoming wealthy, but we were able to do most things we wanted without having to solicit funds from a Federation or find a sugar daddy.

DR: Which allowed you to maintain your independence.

LR: Exactly, exactly, which was really precious to us.

DR: Now you also at this time were making telephone calls, or you began making direct calls to people in the Soviet Union.

LR: Yes, that began in 1971. At that time I began distributing lists of telephone numbers. The information came from Ann Shankar and the group of recently arrived Soviet Jews who she was working with. The lists provided names and telephone numbers, and the languages that members of the family could speak. There were people on the list, I remember, who spoke English and others spoke one or more of the European languages. They were — 

DR: French or German.

LR: Yes, right. There was even a person who spoke Farsi. These lists were sent to the Union of Council member councils and to our special mailing list, a list I built up over the years of people who I considered to be activists.

DR: Initially when you started making the calls, the calls were not blocked or interrupted by the Soviet authorities.

LR: No difficulties.

DR: Maybe because they didn’t know what was going on?

LR: I suspect they were very slow in recognizing what was happening because, after all, it did build up slowly. It was a new idea. Not everybody picked up on it immediately but it began to grow in popularity. So after a while, if the Soviets were monitoring the traffic, the non-commercial traffic, they would have seen a great rise in personal telephone calls. I would estimate there must have been a hundred calls made each week by the end of 1971. And by 1973, the calls probably reached one thousand a week, all and all, from the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. Now the interesting thing is that we didn’t tell people how they should organize their phone calls. We left it to their discretion. Some people invited friends to their home, place a call and took turns speaking. Or, they might rig the phone to an amplifier and speaker. (At that time, speaker phones didn’t exist but with a little ingenuity and a few electronic parts…) 

DR: I seem to recall having one of those calls made at Beth Israel hooked up to a speaker with a large group of people there.

LR: Yes, right. That was an approach organizations and synagogues chose. They might have a meeting of one sort or another, perhaps a Soviet Jewry rally, or a general meeting, and they would use that opportunity to make a phone call and bring those present into contact with a real live Soviet Jew. And this became, I would say, the rage. It went on throughout the country in different venues. I often received transcripts of the recorded phone call afterwards.

DR: And did you ask for the transcripts or did people just voluntarily send them?

LR: In the cover letter we sent out with the lists we would say we’d like to hear from you, what success you’ve had, any news passed on to you by the person you called. Let us know. And people took it seriously. 

DR: So that was a big success.

LR: It was extremely successful. 

DR: Now you had a few other of these people-to-people type of programs that you may just want to touch on briefly — prisoners of conscience, adopt a family. Prisoners of conscience, I remember there being these medallions that people would buy that had the name of the prisoner of conscience. This obviously involved people who had been jailed for their activities.

LR: Yes, exactly. But let me go back a bit because the medallions came later on. Following the Six Day War in 1967, there was a flowering of Jewish national feeling among Jews in the USSR, which lead to a flood of applications to leave for Israel. The Soviet government trotted out its usual tools of intimidation and repression against ‘enemies of the State’. One favorite was the show trial — arrest, try and sentence to the Gulag selected ‘dissidents’. And boom — we saw a fast rise in Jewish prisoners of conscience. Rather than depending on my memory let me quote from a brochure I prepared in November 1971 on prisoners of conscience titled, POTMA – Repression of Jews in the Soviet Union. “The present wave of repression began with the arrest of Boris Kochubyevsky in Dec. 1968 and his trial in May 1969. Following this came the secret trial in Riazan, Feb. 1970, and the infamous Leningrad hi-jacking trial of Dec. 1970, and the recent trials in Riga, Leningrad, Kishinev, Odessa, Sverdlovsk, Kharkov, and Cherovitz. In general, those arrested have been charged with ‘political crimes’ under RSFSR Criminal Code Statute 70 (anti-Soviet organization) and Statute 72 (anti-Soviet organization)… Sentences up to 15 years in strict or special regime labor camps were meted out”.

In the booklet I listed 46 prisoners of conscience sentenced to prisons or labor camps between mid-1969 to mid-1971. The most publicized of the trials by the Western press was the Leningrad hi-jacking trial. Eleven people — 9 Jews and 2 Russians — were put on trial for planning to seize a 12-seat plane and escape the country. They were arrested on arriving at the airport, because the KGB apparently had been monitoring their activities. They were charged with fleeing the country. That in the Soviet Union was a capital crime. Two were sentenced to death and the others given very long sentences in special regime labor camp. The strong outcry from the free world at what was called ‘juridical murder’ caused the Soviets to back off a bit and commute the death sentences to 15 years in special regime camp — the worst of the worst.

Then there were others who were tried and sentenced for activities hardly worthy of notice anywhere but in the Soviet Union. For example, a Lithuanian Jew by the name of Simonas Girillus was arrested in 1969 for possession of books for studying Hebrew and records of Hebrew songs. He was sentenced to 5 years strict regime in the Gulag.

DR: Isn’t there one case of people unfurling a banner outside their balcony saying, “Let me go to Israel.”

LR: Yes, any public protest certainly was forbidden. In some instances, particularly in Moscow or Leningrad where reporters from the Western press could move about, the ‘culprits’ were often given a short sentence in the local drunk tank. Elsewhere, off limit to Westerners, the punishments for minor infractions were often draconian. 

Getting back to our project. The POTMA booklet was meant to provide background material for such a project. It provided information about the labor camps where most of the Jewish prisoners were held — things like diet and work details — and personal information about the prisoners and their sentences. One part of the project was aimed at encouraging individuals to send letters and cards to prisoners. Another part was to request individuals and groups to send material help to prisoners in the form of food packages. Because of the semi-starvation labor camp diet, we felt it was important that an attempt be made to supplement their diet. We knew very well not all parcels would get through. But we had heard from the families of prisoners that some parcels they sent were delivered. So it was worth a try, especially with the number we believed would come from all over the States.

We ran a pilot test of the project in the Cleveland area in late 1971. For that I prepared a detailed instruction guide, a how-to-do-it: how to send parcels, list of permitted foods, names and addresses of prisoners, and name and address of each prisoner’s relative. That last item was important because, if the parcel could not be delivered to the prisoner, the Soviet parcel regulations allowed delivery to and alternate address. The project was picked up by other councils and continued as a nationwide program for the next few years. I think overall it was helpful. It also put a spotlight on the prisoners and their situation. There was coverage over the country; the newspapers locally were picking up on what hometown people were doing to help victims of Soviet repression.

Another part of the prisoners of conscience project, which I shouldn’t neglect to mention, is that we also advised that financial help be sent to the families of the prisoners. Some of these families were destitute or experiencing hard times because the breadwinner of the family was absent. The interesting thing is once you get into a project like this, it has so many facets, that opportunities to help multiply. And that means more opportunity for people-to-people activities.

DR: And that’s where you started getting into things like the bracelets and the medallions and all these other ways of making people feel like they had a connection to the prisoners.

LR: Exactly. Si Frumkin came up with this idea. He came up with the design — Magen David medallion necklaces, each with the name of a different prisoner of conscience. And he found a outfit to manufacture them. It was a real hit. And it also produced income for the councils because the medallions were produced fairly inexpensively and could be sold for a nominal sum of a buck or a buck-and-a-half apiece. Later on Si had bracelets made up along the same lines. 

DR: One last aspect about prisoners of conscience before we leave this, I think you said that there were some non-Jewish prisoners who were on your list.

LR: Yes. There were two from the Leningrad hi-jacking trial. One was Yuri Fedorov and the other Aleksey Murzhenko. For their own reasons, they too wanted to get out of the Soviet Union. In 1974 when I visited the Soviet Union, I met Fedorov’s wife, Natasha, in Benjamin Levich’s apartment and talked with her through a translator, she spoke only Russian. She was being helped by the Jewish activists in Moscow but was quite worried about her husband. The Jewish prisoners on the whole had received a fair amount of attention by the Western press but her husband had not. This lack of recognition disturbed Soviet Jewish activists in Moscow. I talked to Vladimir Slepak and Victor Polsky during that same visit. They said, we hear that lists of prisoners in the U.S. omit Murzhenko and Fedorov; we think this is terrible, these two stood with our people. I told them that the lists I prepare for the Union of Councils have had these two names from the beginning. I was asked to check into the matter and I did when I returned home. I found that lists circulated by the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry did not mention Fedorov and Murzhenko. And guess who prepared these list — none other than the Israeli “Office Without a Name.” 

You know, I don’t think I mentioned before about the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. Well, by late 1970, the growing ferment by Soviet Jews and the harsh crackdown by the Soviet authorities highlighted the impotence of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry to respond rapidly or effectively. Further, the Federations and Israeli “Office Without a Name” felt threatened by the rapid rise of the Union of Councils on the national scene. What to do? Well, after much dickering back and forth by the establishment organizations, the AJCSJ was left in place and a new organization, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, was set up in 1971 with funding from the Federations and a limited mandate. The NCSJ was to be a East Coast-based operation whose function was to make contact with the Administration and Congress and provide press releases. It was not to contact or provide information to community groups — that was the province of the AJCSJ. Jerry Goodman, from the American Jewish Committee, was hired as executive director of NCSJ. 

DR: Today is August 14, 1997, and we’re continuing to interview Louis Rosenblum about the Soviet Jewry movement and his involvement in it. We were talking about the various people-to-people programs, and I think another one of these programs that you mentioned to me in advance was called adopt a family. What was that about?

LR: It started in 1971, when it became apparent that there was a need for material assistance among Soviet Jews who had declared their intention of immigrating to Israel. Most of those who applied to leave lost their jobs. Further, the vagaries of the application and approval process were such that it could take months and even years, or end in refusal. So requests for help came to us through tourists who had visited Jews in the Soviet Union, from our contacts in Israel, and directly by telephone from Soviet Jewish activists. At first the project centered on asking individuals to send packages of goods, such as clothing and blankets, to a needy family in the USSR. The goods could then be sold in the gray market for roubles. Later, direct money transfers were suggested. So in 1971, as the numbers began to grow…

DR: The numbers of people applying — 

LR: Applying to emigrate, and consequently the number of people who were experiencing financial difficulties. We took on the responsibility of trying to help. We realized we could not cover every case of need. But, at least those that we knew about, we felt we should try to help. We distributed names as far and wide as we could with the anticipation that a congregation, or a community, or an individual would adopt a needful Soviet Jewish family. This did happen, there was a good response. At first we didn’t provide any coordination. Later on though, we realized that the number of people needing assistance had grown to the point that we had to kept close tabs on the flow of requests and responses and provide overall coordination.

So early in ’73, the Minnesota-Dakotas Committee — which I remind you was not a member of the Union of Councils, but had worked closely with us and was attune to our way of operating — volunteered to establish a data bank in which names of those requiring assistance and the donor and amount sent would be entered. We had our end reasonably organized and had established accountability. At the other end things were more difficult to manage. At our urging in the ’73-’74 period, the refuseniks established a committee of three or four people — Dina Beilina and a few others — who would keep track of the aid arriving and provided us with feedback as to whether or not the intended recipient did in fact receive assistance, and they also funneled requests for assistance to us. So, in that period the operation was reasonably in hand, considering that there was a large physical separation and a hostile government between the donors and the people receiving the aid. 

Then in 1975, the operation within the Soviet Union began to unravel for a couple of reasons. First, tensions always present among various factions of refuseniks in Moscow had escalated, exacerbated by the question of who makes decisions about need and distributes the moneys. Then, there was the loose canon effect. American tourists began going to the Soviet Union in greater numbers than ever before and few, if any, were brief on the situation or the Adopt-a-Family program. With great but uninformed compassion, many who met with Soviet Jews would give them money on the spot. As a result of all this we began hearing from sources in the Soviet Union that charges were leveled of favoritism and manipulation and allegations made of “Swiss bank accounts”. Dina Beilina and her associates, who all along were running an enormous personal risk for what they were doing, now felt much more vulnerable. So they retired from the field about June 1975. Another group — Ilya Essas and four other young men — took over the responsibility. They were an unknown quantity to us, but we didn’t have a choice in the selection. We soon discovered they were not familiar with the procedure that had been established before. By October 1975 Judy Silverman, who was in charge of the Data Bank, Stu Wurtman, who was then president of the UCSJ, and I decided we had to share our concerns with the Soviet Jewish activists. Judy and I composed a letter to Essas (as well as other key refuseniks) detailing at length the Adopt-a-Family program, the Data Bank, reviewing how the program had been coordinated up to date, and describing the complicating and confounding factors, as we saw them, both at our end and at theirs. We closed by asking them for their comments and suggestions. I transmitted the letter Oct. 15th by special channels.

In early November 1975, the UCSJ and the Data Bank felt that in view of the uncertainties action could no longer be delayed and recommended a 6-month moratorium on money sent into the Soviet Union. Then on Dec. 26, I received through a special channel a letter from Essas and his group and a letter from Slepak, Lerner, Lutnz, Beilina, and Scharansky. The Essas group said their main activity had been controlling distribution of checks given to refuseniks by tourists, they knew nothing of the Adopt-a-Family program, and they have sent no request for funds to us. The Slepak and company letter said that for over 6 months they have had nothing to do with the distribution of financial aid to refuseniks. Both letters highlighted a major new problem. The Soviet government had announced that starting Jan 1, 1976 the exchange rate for dollar to rubles — already artificially high — would increase approximately 6-fold. Sending dollars to the USSR would be like throwing money down a rat hole. So that in effect put to rest the Adopt-a-Family program. Slepak and his friends recognized this, because in their letter they said, it’s sad but at least it will had one good consequence — one of the reasons for mutual aggravation will disappear. They were of course referring to the acrimony and accusations that had been roiling the refusenik community for months.

DR: I guess any time you have a program that involves material aid of some kind you’re almost inevitably going to have controversy and conflict. It’s different than something that involves giving moral support, sending cards, simple correspondence, publicity, etc. When you’re getting into material items, it changes the nature of it.

LR: Yes, it does indeed, and the whole idea of trying to do this in an unstructured environment, in retrospect, was very audacious of us to consider. And maybe foolhardy. Because even in this country, where you have a government or private social agency involved, there are a host of problems which arise concerning accountability and assessment of need.

DR: Now there’s one other program that you mentioned to me in advance that was under this heading of people-to-people, and that was something called Project Sefer.

LR: Yes, that addressed another constituency within the Soviet Union, which was a fairly sizeable group and grew rapidly. These were the individuals who were interested in learning Hebrew, not only read but also speak Hebrew. I believe, in general, their purposes were twofold. One, they wanted to contact their Jewish roots and the Hebrew language was an important element. It’s the language of Jewish liturgy and the Bible, the language of the modern-day State of Israel. Hebrew is a connection with the Jewish past and present. Additionally, they were hoping to make aliya. And, were they successful in leaving the Soviet Union, their integration into Israel would be speeded up, if they had a knew Hebrew. Ulpanim were established. These were self-organized, non-official groups held in someone’s flat. A person who had some knowledge of Hebrew would tutor others. I first became aware of this activity in 1972 through telephone conversation with Soviet Jewish activists. My main source of information at that time was Boris Einbinder. Through one of the contacts I had in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and I was able to get to Einbinder a few special Hebrew books. 

DR: Just let me ask you, before you go on, you mentioned that you had a contact at the embassy, who helped you get the books in. Generally what was your relationship like with the U.S. embassy and the State Department in these efforts? Did you cooperate at all closely? Was it just an incidental sort of contact?

LR: I had no official connection with anyone either in the State Department or in the embassy in Moscow. I was able to enlist the help of a few Americans working in Moscow who I learned were sympathetic to helping Soviet Jewish activists.

DR: How did you learn about these people?

LR: Several ways. When I went to talk about the Soviet Jewry issue throughout the country, I would meet people who would say, “I know of so and so who might be of help to you.” I would ask tourists who had been in the Soviet Union and had the occasion to visit the embassy for their suggestions. And I learned of journalists who were friendly with some of the refuseniks. I tried not to overuse these channels to avoid wearing out my welcome but I must say they were most gracious. 

DR: Before you finish up on project Sefer which you were talking about, I just want to explore this just briefly, this issue in that you or others who went to Russia, to the Soviet Union, didn’t check in with the embassy, get debriefed by the embassy or whatever. This was done totally independently of the U.S. government, or maybe not. I guess that’s more of a question that a statement.

LR: The answer to your question is simple. I neither asked for or received U.S. government sanction for the trip. At the end of April ’74, Si Frumkin, Zev Yaroslavsky and Bob Wolf, who was the chairperson of the South Florida Council, and myself booked on a regular tourist package trip and went. Once in the USSR we didn’t make contact or check in with the U.S. embassy or consulate.

Weeks before I left for the USSR, I informed my bosses at NASA of the trip. A few days before leaving, I spoke with Richard Perle in Sen. Jackson’s office to let him know I was going and to be briefed on the latest on the Jackson-Vanik legislation and the backroom negotiations with the administration. I also spoke with Marc Ginsberg from Sen. Kennedy’s office about a refusenik, Polina Epelman, whose case the senator was working on and who I planned to visit in Leningrad. And, I also contacted a handful of others knowledgeable on Soviet affairs to discuss my trip and get their advice. Now, when I returned home I was approached by the CIA and asked if I would be willing to give them an account of my trip. They knew because I told people at NASA that I was going. I gave the CIA person a general account of my trip. That was it. I knew it wouldn’t come as a surprise to them that I had been working on the Soviet Jewish issue. I had been since 1963, 11 years before. 

DR: This was the first time you had ever been approached by the CIA, after your trip?

LR: Yes, it was. Of course, I was approached after any overseas trip I took on NASA business. That was routine. When I went to Japan, for example, and Southeast Asia, I would be asked if I would be willing to give them an account of the trip.

DR: Oh, really? That’s interesting. That was routine for people at NASA.

LR: That was routine, I think, especially at my level. I was chief of a division and I was visiting companies and, in many cases, government agencies. I think they were trying to understand what was going on, and gathering a piece of information here and there that would go into their mill and be evaluated.

DR: I realize this is a little off the subject, but I’m interested now that you’re talking about this. Did you have a security clearance?

LR: Oh, yes.

DR: And security classification?

LR: Well, the only security clearance you needed was if you worked in atomic energy, the nuclear area. And, in the 60’s when some of my work touched on nuclear systems, I had a Q clearance. That was about the highest nuclear clearance, I guess, at that time for the areas I worked in.

DR: You said you talked to your bosses at NASA before going on your trip to the Soviet Union in ’74. At that time, or any other time, no one ever raised an objection and said, “Hey, Lou, you shouldn’t get messed up in this stuff. You know secrets. You know classified stuff. You don’t want to get messed up with the Soviet Union.”

LR: No. There was not the slightest intimation that this was the case. And I was very happy for that fact. In my own mind what I was doing was perfectly legitimate. I involved myself in a human rights activity, and I think my superiors looked upon it that way, too. It didn’t hurt that Abe Silverstein was the director of the NASA laboratory in Cleveland when we first began to work on Soviet Jewry in 1963. As a matter of fact, he also was the first chairman of the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism. But Abe soon left to go to Washington to begin the Mercury and Apollo space programs. Essentially there was a laissez-faire policy in terms of outside activities at the laboratory. And my Soviet Jewry activities were considered to be in that category. 

DR: Yes. And after your trip in ’74 when the CIA asked you to give a report, did they approach you again subsequent to that?

LR: That was the only time.

DR: Anyway, back to project Sefer.

LR: Well, Project Sefer had some other interesting aspects that I think you may appreciate. In late 1973 I was able to make what I would call a mega-shipment of books, and this happened because I learned through the Washington Committee about a man who had contacts with the Arena Theater company, a professional theater group in D.C. He introduced me to the manager of the company, the director, and several of the actors. At that time they were planning a trip to the Soviet Union, under a bilateral cultural exchange program. I was able to impress them on the need of Soviet Jews for Hebrew materials. And as you know, a theater group travels with props, with costumes. They have a lot of baggage.

DR: Right, not all of which would be examined closely.

LR: Exactly. And they were not at all reluctant to help. In fact, I would said they were enthusiastic. They were interested in human rights issues. And some of them knew about the plight of Soviet Jews from friends in the Washington Committee. I assembled a large library of books. There must have been, I would say a few dozen volumes. Among them Hebrew-Hebrew dictionaries. There were books on history, sociological and philosophical, all in Hebrew. Some of the refuseniks in the Hebrew learning groups had become quite expert in Hebrew and able to handle advanced literature. So all together a very large block of books. I shouldn’t neglect to mention that I also included a Hebrew typewriter so they could prepare Hebrew language material on their own. All this the Arena Theater people took in and delivered. They did a wonderful job and also met in the course of their trip other Soviet Jews and learned firsthand about the situation. Among their contacts was a person who had written a novel that couldn’t be published it in the Soviet Union. He gave the group a copy to take it with them and get to a publisher. This caused an unfortunate disagreement on who should do what among the theater people. And there was a falling out. On the evening they returned home, I got a phone call from one of the members of the company, Diane Wiest.

DR: Oh, who later became a famous movie actress?

LR: Yes. She knew me from the briefings I had given to the Arena Theater Company before they left on their trip. She spent a teary half hour on the phone describing how badly she felt about a falling out among several members of the company. Diane’s phone call was the first I heard about the book and the author. I later learned a more about the incident. I don’t know how long the quarreling continued on. These things get a rather personal. Nevertheless, the Hebrew materials mission was accomplished beautifully.

Over the succeeding years, our best approach to getting books to the Soviet Union was through responsible tourists who we could meet and brief ahead of time and then explain who was to receive what and why the books were important. Motivation and understanding was the key. This kind of tourist would often take in any number of books and distribute them just as was needed based on requests from a Hebrew-learning group in Leningrad or Moscow or wherever.

DR: I’m assuming that in some cases the books were confiscated before they reached the intended destination.

LR: Yes, that’s absolutely correct, but it’s amazing how many did get through. The Soviet custom inspections were similar to what was done in the United States, as far as I was able to tell. They do random searches. Other than that, they merely ask, do you have anything to declare? 

DR: I’m assuming that there were others who were interested in this area of Jews in wanting to learn Hebrew, for example, the Israelis. Were the Israelis involved in these efforts at all?

LR: To my knowledge most of the flow of books was handled by private groups in Israel. There was an effort made by the government of Israel to produce books. They had printing companies in Israel prepare special publications, for example, reprinting Shapiro’s Russian-Hebrew dictionary from an earlier time, long out of print. 

As Jews began to leave the Soviet Union for Israel in greater numbers, among them were several of the Hebrew teachers. Several of them felt a strong obligation to help their fellows who were still in the Soviet Union. One of these who I had prior contact with, Moshe Palchan, soon became a good and invaluable friend. When Mom and I were in Israel in December 1972, I met with Moshe in Haifa, where he was living. We discussed how we could coordinate our activities. He had been sending Hebrew material from Israel with modest success. He asked if I would help by sending similar material from the States — items that he would provide plus a list of other material I would purchase. I readily agreed. Here was someone who had been through the fire. He knew the Hebrew teachers in the Soviet Union and how they worked, their needs, and what they were up against. What better guide could we have? So we developed a continuing relationship. He provided me with updated lists of names and addresses of Hebrew teachers, names and addresses of people to receive the books and other materials, such as filmstrips for teaching aids. That went on for quite a few years.

All the activities I was involved with were dependent on networking — establishing friendships, establishing relationships. Without that I really couldn’t have accomplished very much. In my mind, Moshe Palchan is a great example of such a relationship. 

Before we go on, I should mention one other small but intriguing scheme I worked out in support of the Hebrew teachers. In early 1973, a special problem came to my attention. Clearly, the study of Hebrew was long regarded with suspicion by the Soviet authorities and suspects were often harassed and Hebrew books confiscated. Now, the self-taught Hebrew teachers were told that they were engaging in an illegal activity by teaching without certification. A Catch 22. So among all the other miseries of being a refusenik was now the threat of being thrown into jail. One of the ways that I thought might help is if they could be tested and certified by an internationally recognized and accredited institution. With that in mind I approached the director of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Cleveland, Henry Margolis. I said, “Henry, how would you like a trip to the Soviet Union?” and followed with an explanation of the scheme. Henry said yes and we were off and running. We worked up a Hebrew teacher’s license to be translated and inscribed in Russian, based the standard license issued by the Bureau of Jewish Education. The CCSA paid for the trip. Henry was briefed. I arranged ahead of time that people in Moscow and Leningrad would know he was coming.

He spent about a week each in Moscow and Leningrad and was able to test and certify 32 teachers. Another benefit of the trip was when he got back he was fired up. He wrote a “dear colleague” letter to Jewish educators all over the United States. He described his trip, how important it was to get material to Soviet Jewish Hebrew study groups, and provided a list of needed materials. He was a great advocate and a great help for what we were trying to do to support the Hebrew-speaking group in the Soviet Union. 

The Russian language certificates, which were prepared here with the aid of Russian speaking local people, unfortunately had errors in translation. We had them redone and I arranged for the corrected certificates to be delivered soon after.

DR: Now did the Soviet authorities ever recognize these? Were there ever situations where someone presented their certificate and — 

LR: I wish I knew. I never got any feedback on this. As Henry Margolis said, if nothing else they were a morale booster.

DR: Today is March 8, 1998. We’re in Bethesda, Maryland, and we’re continuing to interview Louis Rosenblum about his involvement in the Soviet Jewry movement. When we last were interviewing you, Dad, we were talking about some of the people-to-people programs that you engaged in with the Union of Councils, and before that the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism. . Now we’re going to move into a new area, the area of political action. I guess the first question is what was it that made you realize that this was something you had to be involved in, in order to further the objectives of the Soviet Jewry movement?

LR: To begin answering that question let me point out the connection between the people-to-people programs and political action. I recognized, as did other leaders, that to direct the efforts of large numbers of people to political action on behalf of Soviet Jews — to visit members of Congress and the Administration, to write letters to elected officials and editors of newspapers, and to keep steady on — these people would have to be deeply convinced that the Soviet Jewry problem was severe and deserved their utmost attention. The projects we carried out, in addition to the help provided to Soviet Jews, served to educate and motivate large numbers of Americans. These Americans would sooner or later form a constituency dedicated to pressing the U.S. government to assist Soviet Jews.

By the early 1970s, it was evident that the Soviet Jewry movement in the U.S. had grown, thanks to the growth of our own Union of Councils and allied and independent councils. We knew from the responses we were getting from our programs that we were reaching and involving many people throughout the country. So, it was a good time to consider political action. And, from another point of view, it was timely. The Soviets, in crude attempts to stifle the growing number of Jews applying for immigration, were making a number of serious mistakes in terms of their public image. The infamous Soviet show trial was much in the news from 1970 through 1971. Between the Leningrad trials and several other in the USSR, four dozen Jewish were condemned to long sentences in the Gulag. Other general punitive measures were taken by the authority against those seeking to immigrate such as immediate loss of employment and, particularly for young Jews, being drafted into the army. Public opinion in this country was outraged at Soviet behavior. 

All of us in the Union of Councils had no doubt that the time was ripe for political action. We knew that moral pressure alone was of limited value in moving the Soviet government. Only economic pressure was likely to effect significant change. So, at our first annual meeting of the UCSJ in October 1971 we adopted as the policy of our organization to engage in political action to support and sponsor legislation that would makes free emigration of Soviet Jews a condition of any trade agreement with the USSR. This was a big leap forward and, again, we were leading the pack.

In the weeks following the annual meeting, I had conversations with people in our Washington council who were politically savvy. And based on their recommendations, I arranged to meet with two individuals who were well acquainted with the legislative process and had valuable political connections. On New Year’s Day 1972 I flew down to Washington and met with Nat Lewin and Harvey Lieber in Nat’s office. Nat is a nationally prominent lawyer. He worked under Bobby Kennedy in the Justice Department, has pleaded cases before the Supreme Court, and has actively support many Jewish issues in Federal courts. Harvey was, and is, a professor of political science at American University, School of Public Affairs. We discussed strategy for the introduction of freedom of emigration legislation in Congress. Nat proposed that the Export Administration Act of 1969, coming up for renewal during the 1972 legislative year, offered an appropriate vehicle for a freedom of emigration amendment. As I remember, Nat asked us to excuse him for a few minutes and went into an adjoining room. He was gone for maybe 15 minutes and returned with a hand written draft of a bill to amend the Export Administration Act of 1969. 

DR: He just drafted it?

LR: He drafted a bill. In length it ran about a dozen and a half lines. The heart of the amendment was the statement “ It is the policy of the United States to use export controls to oppose the denial by any country of the rights of its Jewish and other citizens to free emigration and the free exercise of religion.” Harvey agreed to assist in the work needed to introduce the bill into Congress and with all the related activities. So we were off and running. 

Harvey and several of his graduate students prepared detailed background and position papers on the issues of trade, economic considerations and legislative strategy. Si Frumkin’s convinced his Congressman, Tom Rees, to introduce the bill in the House of Representatives. This was a well-considered choice, since Rees was a member of the House Banking Committee, which deals with matters of export control. The bill — titled, a bill to amend the Export Administration Act of 1969 in order to promote freedom of emigration — was introduced in the House May 4, 1972. And, with the help of Harvey Lieber and a member of the Washington Council, Karen Kravette, 30 cosponsors for the bill were soon lined up. 

About the same time, it became clear that we needed a fast response political action team — each team member responsible for a different section of the country. For this purpose, and with the help of the other councils, I was able to locate 35 political savvy volunteers. 

DR: Now these were people who were well connected with their local Congress people?

LR: These people had contact in their region with Congress people and also with party leaders, political donors and so forth who could exercise political pressure. I asked Carol Mandel from our Cleveland council to head up this political action telephone network. We called it Action Central. (In the next two years when the Jackson-Vanik legislation was before the Congress, Action Central grew to about 75 members.) One of our outstanding team members, as I remember, was Lorel Pollack of Chicago. She was indefatigable. Her territory covered Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana — she delivered the “vote” time and again.

DR: Let me just ask you one question here about the genesis of this idea of denying trade privileges as a form of pressure for progress on immigration. Did you have reason to believe that we were going to grant trade privileges to the Soviet Union, and that you were anticipating that, and then therefore we should use that as a lever because at the time we didn’t have a normal trading relationship with the Soviet Union as a result of the Cold War anyway? So what was it that made you think this was an opportunity?

LR: If you recall, at that time the Administration was backing away from a restrictive trade policy. Nixon and Kissinger were committed to working with the Soviets on détente.

DR: Okay. So that was part of what was going on, too.

LR: Yes. The Soviets intensely wanted to obtain our hi-tech items, advanced industrial plants, licenses to patents, and joint ventures. They were falling well behind their production needs. For example, at that time, negotiations were taking place with the Mack Truck Company to build a truck factory in the USSR with Soviet capital. 

DR: So you were talking about the network that you had, the Action Central network.

LR: Yes. Well, now that we had all our bases covered, or so we thought, we believed there was a good chance that the House Banking Committee would report the out the renewal of the Export Administration Act with the Rees amendment attached. But it wasn’t to be. We were blind-sided by Jerry Goodman, head of the National Conference for Soviet Jews. Jerry gratuitously offered Congressman Rees his opinion that the bill did not meet with the approval of his organization, that private negotiations with the Soviet government was a better approach. Rees was taken aback by this. He naturally supposed that the Jewish community was in favor of a bill to pressure the Soviet Union to allow free emigration of Jews. As a result, Rees was ready to pull out. Congressman Burt Podell, Harvey Lieber, Karen Kravette (who was now the Union of Councils’ representative in Washington) and myself met with Rees and with difficulty convinced him to hold in. But the damage was done, thanks to NCSJ. We made a desperate attempt to muster votes in the House Banking Committee in favor of the bill. But when the showdown vote came in mid-July the Rees bill was two votes shy of approval. 

However, a month later the Soviets committed an egregious blunder. An ukase was promulgated imposing an education tax on anyone granted an exit permit — allegedly to pay back the cost of their education. These exit fees ranged up to more than 26,000 roubles for people with higher education. This punitive tax or ransom, as it was characterized in the press, outraged public opinion in the West. Soon after, Charlie Vanik in the House and Scoop Jackson in the Senate introduced bills that would deny most-favored-nation status to any country that denies its citizens the right to emigrate. 

DR: So the impetus for Jackson-Vanik — we’re still talking about 1972, right?

LR: Right, 1972. The Vanik and Jackson bills were introduced in the fall of 1972.

DR: And Senator Jackson and Congressman Vanik, or their staff, decided on their own to do that? That was something that an outside group came to them.

LR: Well, there may have been, but I have no knowledge of that. 

DR: But it wasn’t the Union of Councils?

LR: No, it wasn’t the Union of Councils. At that time we were involved with two activities that consumed a lot of time and energy. Following the loss of the Rees amendment, we turned our attention to economic pressure of another kind — boycott. The Pepsi-Cola Company, which had recently concluded a trade agreement with the USSR, became our prime target. The boycott effort started in December 1972 and continued on as a national effort for many months. The other activity began shortly after the education tax was imposed. We were inundated with messages from the Soviet Union saying, “We need help, we need help. We’ve got a chance to get out and this tax now bars us from leaving. We don’t have enough money or if we pay the tax, we’ll be destitute.” From September 1972 and for several months after, I was occupied gleaning information from associates in Israel and from Jewish activists in the Soviet Union and writing articles and reports on the crisis. My last report, February 1973, was titled “Your Money or Your Life: Payment of the Education Tax” It gave an overview of the situation in the USSR, with particular emphasis on the desperate measures some were taking to find money to pay the tax and the potential consequences. 

But returning to the matter of legislation… Needless to say we were overjoyed that two highly respected members of Congress like Vanik and Jackson took the lead to introduce legislation with teeth to it. And, we immediately signed on as major supporters. Let me just give you some of the broad aspects of what was going on because I don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of all of our work on the Jackson-Vanik, because from October ’72 when it was introduced to the late fall of 1974 when it was finally passed, there was much activity back and forth. I’ll only try to point out a few highlights or personal things of interest. But you can appreciate that in a two-year period all of us in the Union of Councils were busy with political action a good deal of the time. We had our troops out whenever necessary, whenever it looked like the bill was threatened in one way or another, because, as you know, the administration — the President and Kissinger — were dead set against the legislation. They did everything in their power to undercut it. On the other side, in Congress, there were some excellent people. Two in particular, Mark Talisman on Vanik’s staff and Richard Perle on Jackson’s staff, played a decisive role. We worked closely with them throughout the entire period, to great advantage all the way around. During my frequent trips to Washington and exchanges over the phone, I got a first-hand knowledge of the talents of both of these guys. And, respect for their strong dedication.

In addition to the more routine work we engaged with on the legislative front, there were several specific events in which I had a direct hand in the outcome. Let me tell you about one — a threat to the legislation from within the Jewish community. A friend of Nixon’s, a wealthy Detroit Jew by the name of Max Fischer…

DR: Oh, I’ve heard of that name.

LR: You’ve probably have. He was a financial supporter of Nixon. Presumably he was asked by Nixon and Kissinger to do what he could to get the Jewish establishment to undercut the Jackson-Vanik legislation. Well, Max Fisher was a buddy of Jacob Stein, who was then the president of the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations. He asked Stein and 14 of his fellow presidents to meet with Nixon and Kissinger. And what Jewish leader would ever turn down a private meeting with the President of the United States? The meeting took place April 19, 1973. On leaving their meeting, Stein and company met with the press and issued a statement. In the statement they applauded the administration and Congress for their efforts on behalf of Soviet Jews but significantly omitted any reference to the Jackson-Vanik legislation. Were they supporting or not supporting Jackson-Vanik? They were apparently divided on that, so they sidestepped the issue. 

It was important to nip this potentially divisive stand in the bud. Two days later, I was able to reach Kyrill Khenkin in Moscow. Kyrill and I had been in phone contact for some time. He was a very bright guy, spoke several languages —impeccable English — had been a journalist and translator before joining the Jewish activist movement. I presented to Kyrill the exact situation and I said, “We need from you and your friends a statement addressed to the Conference of Presidents of Jewish Organizations telling them where you stand on Jackson-Vanik and where you want them to stand. Don’t pull any punches.” Kyrill understood completely and followed through. Within two days, a message of support for Jackson-Vanik signed by 10 of the Soviet Jewish activists was channeled to Jacob Stein and his colleagues. It did the trick. This timely reminder from those whose lives were on the line when added to the angry and indignant cries of betrayal from American Jews everywhere, stiffened the resolve of this wavering group of Jewish ‘leaders’. The result — a public statement of support for Jackson-Vanik.

DR: Today is March 8, 1998. We’re in Bethesda, Maryland interviewing Lou Rosenblum about the Soviet Jewry movement and his involvement in it. We were talking about the Jackson-Vanik amendment and political action of the Soviet Jewry movement. Let’s pick up from where we left off.

LR: OK. Here’s the background. By early 1974, there was a new game afoot in the trade-legislation battle. The House, in December of ‘73, passed a trade bill with the Jackson-Vanik amendment by an overwhelming vote. And, a head count in the Senate indicated that over three-quarters supported Jackson-Vanik. Nixon and Kissinger knew they were not going to win out. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, they initiated talks with both the Soviets and the Jackson-Vanik people to find mutually acceptable concessions. I was apprised of the negotiations by my contact in the Jackson office, Richard Perle. (During my frequent visits to Washigton, I often met with Richard in his office or at his home in the evening.) With negotiations in play, it was evident that what was needed was timely information on specific problems experienced by Jews applying to emigrate from the USSR. And, the best source for such information was the Jewish activists in Moscow. In this regard, I should mention that early in ‘74, the Soviet authorities began to cut off telephone service to the homes of Jewish activists. The cut-offs started in February 1974 and by April the phone quarantine was wholesale — a serious problem. The flow of news that was collected and relayed to us by Soviet Jewish activist was dwindling and day-to-day contact with specific Soviet Jews in the leadership was near impossible. 

It was clear to me that now was the time to make a trip to the Soviet Union. Did I discuss with you earlier my trip with Si Frumkin, Zev Yaroslavsky and Bob Wolf?

DR: I think you mentioned it in another context, but we actually didn’t go into it.

LR: Si, Zev, and Bob were firm friends and great associates in the UCSJ. I called them, discussed the need to visit our Soviet Jewish friends, and they were game to go. I quickly arranged through a travel agent in New York for a package tourist trip to the Soviet Union for the four of us. The earliest one available that fit our needs was for April 28th through May 4th, with 4 days in Moscow and 3 in Leningrad. A few days before leaving I called Richard Perle for an update on the negotiations and to let him know where I was headed. He said that on the issue of compromise they had informed Kissinger that — and I’ll quote here from a transcript of our recorded conversation — “we would not compromise on the principle of immigration, on the principle that the first to leave would be the people who waited the longest, and on the requirement that harassment be terminated. The one area we are willing to compromise is on the rate of flow…we have given Kissinger a very specific number, an absolute minimum.” Richard also said he was assigned to prepare a detailed memorandum on harassment that would be included in an anticipated final agreement. 

Our trip to the Soviet Union was intense but rewarding in many ways. We met with over 60 Soviet Jewish activists. Among these were representatives of most of the factions and interests that made up the Soviet Jewish aliyah movement. But, I don’t want to digress here by giving you all the details, so on with Jackson-Vanik matters. In meetings with the leading people like Alex Lutz, Vlodya Slepak, Alex Lerner and Victor Polsky, I emphasized the need for timely reports on problems in emigration from the Soviet Union — a brief review of the situation, analysis, and recommendations. The first, of what became a series of reports, arrived when tripartite compromise negotiation between Kissinger and the Soviets and Kissinger and Jackson was in its final stage. It was a two-page report that dealt with factors essential to assuring the effectiveness of a possible compromise. The report, written in Russian and signed by Alexander Luntz, Alexander Lerner, Vladimir Slepak, Victor Bailovsky and Lev Kogan, was sent September 5th from Moscow and was received by me, in Cleveland, September 27th. I sent the Russian document to Si Frumkin, who quickly translated it and telephoned me back with the English text. On September 30th I mailed the document and the translation to Sen. Jackson.

The report was apparently timely and helpful. I have here a copy of the exchange of letters of understanding between Senator Jackson and Secretary Kissinger, October 18, 1974. Jackson stated in his one-page letter (paragraphs 2, 3 and 4) that it was his and Kissinger’s understanding that “certain specific impediments, punitive actions and reprisals against persons seeking to emigrate would not be permitted by the government of the USSR.” And, the specific impediments, punitive actions and reprisals mentioned were the very ones highlighted in the report by Luntz and company.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the closing paragraphs of both the Moscow report and Jackson’s letter hit same vital point. I’ll read them for you. 

The Moscow report: “In order for controls to be effective, information about what is happening inside the USSR is essential. For this, the least requirement is for working phones and functioning mail service. None of these exist now.”

Senator Jackson’s letter: “Finally, in order adequately to verify compliance with the standard set forth in these letters, we understand that communication by telephone, telegraph and post will be permitted.”

I like to think that this was a bit of long-delayed justice for Soviet Jews — to be given a voice in the bargaining over their fate.

DR: Now in retrospect, having seen what transpired in the years after Jackson-Vanik passed, do you think it was effective?

LR: One answer to that comes from the enemy camp, from the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin. He served in Washington from 1962 through 1986. In his book, In Confidence, published in 1995, he writes about Jackson-Vanik, “Our biggest mistake was to stand on pride and not let as many Jews go as wanted to leave. It would have cost us little and gained us much. Instead our leadership turned it into a test of wills and we eventually lost.”

 

(Continued on tapes 37-40 with Jackson-Vanik, The White Book of Exodus, boycott of American companies doing business with the Soviet Union, and the role played in the Soviet Jewry movement by the government of Israel through the Lishkat HaKesher (aka, Office Without a Name and Nativ)

END NOTE by Daniel Rosenblum
Correction and revision of the transcripts of the tape-recorded interview sessions was required. To begin with, the person hired to transcribe the tapes was unfamiliar with names, places, activities and so forth that were discussed during the interviews and would not always spell unfamiliar words correctly. Next, repetition of some topics was inevitable during 10 interview sessions in a period of 4 years. These I edited out. Lastly, in reading over the interviews, I recognized or suspected factual errors on my part. These I investigated carefully by researching primary source material available near by and then making appropriate corrections to the text.
The primary source material mentioned is available to any researcher at the Jewish Archives of the Western Reserve Historical Society, in Cleveland, Ohio. This material consists of two manuscript collections: MS 4011, Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism Records (1960-1983) and MS 4926, Louis Rosenblum Papers (1964-2004) and the associated photographic, audio tape/CD, motion picture/video collections. Records of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews are included in MS 4011. Incidentally, these collections probably constitute the largest and most comprehensive source of information on the Soviet Jewry movement in North America for the first decade and a half of its existence.