[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 125 (Friday, September 29, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1974-E1975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            INTRODUCING A RESOLUTION TO HONOR JACOB BIRNBAUM

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JERROLD NADLER

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, September 29, 2006

  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, with the approach of International Human 
Rights Day on December 10, I would like to take this opportunity to 
chronicle for the national record the life and work of a remarkable 
human rights activist, Jacob Birnbaum of New York. It is interesting to 
note that he was actually born on December 10, 1926. As December 10, 
2006 will mark his 80th birthday, it is entirely appropriate that his 
work should be portrayed in the Record of the Congress of the United 
States.
  Jacob Birnbaum's immediate family fled the Nazis and settled in the 
United Kingdom. In 1946, following the end of World War II, the 19-
year-old Jacob Birnbaum devoted several years to providing relief for 
younger survivors of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian systems. From the 
young Polish Jews who managed to exit the USSR after the war, he became 
familiar with the iniquities of the Soviet system. This early 
experience fueled his later passion to mobilize American Jewry in the 
drive to rescue Jews from the oppression they faced in the Soviet 
Union.
  In the mid-1950s and early 1960s, he became involved in assisting 
people from the disintegrating Jewish communities of North Africa 
caught up in the struggles of their host countries for independence 
from France.
  Thereafter, traveling the United States, he decided to create a 
national student spearhead to activate the grassroots of American 
Jewry. Settling in New York in 1964, he set up his first student 
committee; then he concentrated on building a student core at Yeshiva 
University. Finally, he called a national founding meeting at Columbia 
University on April 27, 1964, followed by a large student demonstration 
four days later on the Soviet holiday May Day in front of the Soviet UN 
Mission. The authoritative Center for Jewish History has listed the 
demonstration as the beginning of the public struggle for Soviet Jewry. 
Mr. Birnbaum named the new organization Student Struggle for Soviet 
Jewry (SSSJ).
  Throughout the rest of the 1960s, under his direction, the Student 
Struggle continued working full time in response to the oppression of 
Soviet Jewry.
  As we know, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia led to the 
imprisonment of Soviet Jews behind the Iron Curtain. Jewish culture, 
Jewish religion and Jewish communal life were forcibly extinguished 
under the Soviet regime, which also indulged in numerous anti-Semitic 
manifestations. Even after Stalin's death, the Soviet kingdom of fear 
abated only slightly. The Cold War effectively continued to cut off the 
Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe from their co-religionists in the 
West.
  Nevertheless, expressions of outrage began to accumulate in the early 
1960s, with a few pioneers leading the way. In April, 1964 the major 
Jewish organizations met in Washington, DC and an American Conference 
on Soviet Jewry was established. The same month, Mr. Birnbaum created 
the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry for the purpose of fashioning a 
student spearhead to ``mobilize a tidal wave of public opinion.'' 
(First SSSJ Handbook)
  After the mass arrests of young Jewish dissidents on June 15, 1970, 
and after the Leningrad Trial of December 1970 with its death 
sentences, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry was created. The 
Greater New York Conference, under the direction of the young activist 
Malcolm Hoenlein, initiated the profoundly important Solidarity Day 
marches, modeled after Birnbaum's Jericho, Redemption, and Exodus 
Marches and rallies of the 1960s. Mr. Hoenlein is now the Executive 
Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish 
Organizations. Of great significance was the creation in 1970 of the 
Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, a coalition of non-Establishment 
regional groups, under the chairmanship of Dr. Louis Rosenblum, with 
whom Mr. Birnbaum had worked for many years.
  Mr. Hoenlein has publicly stated that he considers Mr. Birnbaum ``the 
father of the Soviet Jewry movement.'' Similar statements have been 
made by other major public figures such as Dr. Meir Rosenne, who worked 
closely with Mr. Birnbaum in the early formative period 1964-1967. Dr. 
Rosenne later became Israel's Ambassador to France and then to the 
United States. Sir Martin Gilbert, the official British historian of 
Winston Churchill, has made a similar statement.
  In May, 1965, Mr. Birnbaum was the first to testify before a 
Congressional Committee on the importance of utilizing economic 
leverage on the Kremlin. When the late Senator Henry Jackson initiated 
the legislation which finally resulted in the passage of the Jackson-
Vanik Amendment in 1975, Mr. Birnbaum worked closely with the director 
of Senator Jackson's office, Dorothy Fosdick, and, of course, Richard 
Perle, who played a major role in the initiation and development of the 
legislation.
  The idea of placing economic pressure on Communist states to increase 
emigration

[[Page E1975]]

played a key role in softening up the Kremlin regimes to make possible 
the Soviet Jewry demand to ``Let My People Go.'' For the first time, 
there was legislation to put teeth into the previous congressional 
humanitarian resolutions.

  From 1976 to 1986, Jacob Birnbaum conducted annual Most Favored 
Nation campaigns, based on Jackson-Vanik, to pressure Romania to 
increase emigration and release prisoners. He testified annually before 
both Senate and House committees.
  In the latter 1970s, Mr. Birnbaum enlarged his Soviet Jewry strategy. 
He expanded the slogan ``Let My People Go'' by adding ``Let My People 
Know'' (their heritage). The Kremlin had pulverized Jewish religious, 
cultural, and community life, and, in the 1960s, the Soviet Jewish 
resistance underground began to generate Jewish self-education 
cultural, religious, and Hebrew- speaking groups. Mr. Birnbaum 
conducted numerous campaigns for their protection, enlisting the aid of 
many Christian religious denominations. These efforts reached a high 
point when he organized and led a delegation of the Synagogue Council 
of America to meet with the Deputy Secretary of State and the 
Department's Human Rights Director, Warren Zimmermann, in September, 
1985.
  Mr. Birnbaum's vision was partially realized with Malcolm Hoenlein's 
Solidarity Rallies in New York, and, finally, by the great national 
rally in Washington on December 7, 1987 on the eve of Gorbachev's 
meeting with President Reagan.
  Finally, in 1990, the Kremlin conceded and permitted a mass 
emigration which now totals two million (one million to Israel and one 
million elsewhere, mostly to the United States). This was no small 
accomplishment, and many people played a role in making it happen.
  In addition to the courageous work of Mr. Birnbaum, tribute ought to 
be paid to the pioneers and the national organizations which fought so 
strenuously for the liberation of Soviet Jews.
  The pioneers and the national organizations that Mr. Birnbaum asked 
me to publicly acknowledge for their support in this noble effort 
include:
  Morris Abram, U.S. human rights commissioner; Dr. Moshe Deeter, the 
scholar whose research fueled the early movement; Justice Arthur 
Goldberg; the distinguished theologian Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Heschel; 
Senator Jacob Javits; NASA scientist Dr. Louis Rosenblum of the 
Cleveland Committee on Soviet Anti-Semitism; and Elie Wiesel, whose 
book ``The Jews of Silence'' was so influential.
  Furthermore, Mr. Birnbaum recalls the important roles played by 
colleagues in the following national organizations:
  Agudath Israel of America; Center for Russian Jewry with Student 
Struggle for Soviet Jewry, of which he is the founder and national 
director; Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish 
organizations; Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, whose 
founding director was Malcolm Hoenlein; International League for the 
Repatriation of Russian Jews, founding chairman Morris Brafman; Senator 
Jacob Javits; Nehemiah Levanon, Israel Liaison Bureau for Soviet Jewry; 
the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement; National Conference on Soviet Jewry; 
Honorable Richard Maass, founding chairman; National Community 
Relations Advisory Council; Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, founding 
chairman Dr. Louis Rosenblum; and Ambassador Dr. Meir Rosenne.
  Following the collapse of the Soviet regime, Mr. Birnbaum spent a 
substantial part of the 1990s in combating anti-Semitic manifestations 
in former Soviet Central Asia, mostly in Uzbekistan, intervening via 
the State Department and enlisting Malcolm Hoenlein's aid in engaging 
the Uzbek Ambassador in Washington.
  In his 80th year, Mr. Birnbaum continues to support groups engaged in 
the Jewish education of former Soviet Jews and their children.
  For all of these reasons, the House of Representatives ought to honor 
the life and six decades of public service of Jacob Birnbaum and 
especially his commitment to freeing Soviet Jews from religious, 
cultural, and communal extinction. He is a true hero.

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