My husband and I met at a demonstration, SSSJ-Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry Fast-In For Soviet Jewry, Tisha B'Av, the 9th of Av, 1967. We had both been attracted to the Jewish struggle for human, civil and religious rights of Jews in the USSR. Why spend our time protesting for negro (as it was then called) civil rights in the US, when our fellow Jews were suffering even worse atrocities?
Gal Beckerman on the Desperation of the Soviet Jews from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.
The story featured in this extract happened about a decade afterwards. It took a full generation or more for the Soviets to fully allow its Jewish population to emigrate freely. Other Soviet citizens continued to be forced to stay until the Soviet Union disintegrated. For someone raised in the 1950's like myself, during the worst of the "Cold War," it is inconceivable that the fierce enemy of the free world had actually been so fragile.
Ironically, today the economy of Communist China is much healthier than that of the United States. Who knows what the future holds?
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