[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 98 (Monday, June 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H6605-H6607]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING THE LIFE OF JACOB BIRNBAUM

  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the 
resolution (H. Res. 137) honoring the life and six decades of public 
service of Jacob Birnbaum and especially his commitment freeing Soviet 
Jews from religious, cultural, and communal extinction, as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
  The text of the resolution is as follows:

                              H. Res. 137

       Whereas Jacob Birnbaum was born on December 10, 1926, and 
     December 10 is International Human Rights Day;
       Whereas Birnbaum performed relief work with victims of Nazi 
     and Soviet totalitarianism from 1946 through 1951, then 
     worked with the disintegrating Jewish communities of North 
     Africa in the mid-1950s and early 1960s;
       Whereas, in 1964, Birnbaum moved to New York and founded 
     the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) on April 27 of 
     that year;
       Whereas four days later Birnbaum organized approximately 
     1,000 students who marched for four hours in front of the 
     Mission to the United Nations of the Soviet Union on May 1, 
     1964, to begin the direct action public struggle for Soviet 
     Jewry;
       Whereas the SSSJ utilized nonviolent methods, including 
     marches, rallies, publication of extensive educational 
     materials, and meetings with government officials, to 
     organize and activate students to take direct action in the 
     cause of freeing Soviet Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain, 
     utilizing the slogan ``Let My People Go'';
       Whereas, on April 4, 1965, Birnbaum organized the Jericho 
     March, in which students encircled the Soviet Mission and 
     sounded shofars from all around the building and proceeded to 
     rally at the United Nations;
       Whereas, on April 12, 1965, petitions were presented at the 
     United Nations's Isaiah Wall;
       Whereas Birnbaum organized a Jericho Ride to Washington, 
     DC, on May 20, 1965, where he and the first SSSJ chairman 
     Rabbi Shlomo Riskin met with senior Soviet diplomat Anatoly 
     Myshkov, and thereafter the students circled the Embassy of 
     the Soviet Union to the sound of shofars, then moved on to 
     the Department of State for a vigorous discussion, and 
     finally arrived in Lafayette Park in front of the White House 
     for a rally addressed by Members of Congress and the reading 
     of an Appeal to Conscience;
       Whereas Birnbaum and his student steering committee 
     organized approximately thirty events in SSSJ's first two 
     years to awaken the Jewish community in New York and beyond 
     to the plight of Soviet Jews;
       Whereas Birnbaum's important New York marches and rallies 
     in the 1960s were the instrumental precursors of the great 
     Solidarity events of the 1970s organized by the Greater New 
     York Conference on Soviet Jewry under the direction of 
     Malcolm Hoenlein, the founding director;
       Whereas Birnbaum has testified before committees of the 
     House of Representatives and the Senate and the Helsinki 
     Commission;
       Whereas Birnbaum advocated utilizing economic leverage at a 
     Congressional hearing as early as May 1965;
       Whereas Birnbaum worked closely in the early 1970s with 
     Senator Henry Jackson, who introduced legislation linking 
     United States trade benefits and capital flow to the Soviet 
     Union with increased Soviet emigration;
       Whereas Birnbaum was one of the most persistent of those 
     individuals who fought for passage of the Jackson-Vanik 
     amendment to allow Soviet Jews and other East European Jews 
     to escape oppression and religious, cultural, and communal 
     extinction in the Soviet bloc;
       Whereas Birnbaum conducted a number of campaigns with 
     Presidents and Congress for the protection of Soviet Jewish 
     underground self-education groups and organized a delegation 
     of the Synagogue Council of America to meet with the Deputy 
     Secretary of State in 1985;
       Whereas Birnbaum received the Prophet in Our Time Award in 
     1974 on the tenth anniversary of the SSSJ;
       Whereas Birnbaum received the Yeshiva University Community 
     Service Award in 1988 and the Freedom Award in 2004 from the 
     Manhattan Beach Jewish Center;
       Whereas Birnbaum was honored in 2004 by the Conference of 
     Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on the 40th 
     anniversary of the initiation of the Soviet Jewry movement;
       Whereas during the 1990s Birnbaum was engaged in a number 
     of interventions in the former Soviet republics of Central 
     Asia, especially Uzbekistan; and
       Whereas Birnbaum continues to assist institutions for the 
     Jewish education of former Soviet Jews as part of his ``Let 
     My People Know'' campaign: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved,  That the House of Representatives honors 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.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Watson) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-
Lehtinen) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California.


                             General Leave

  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include 
extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.

[[Page H6606]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution. 
I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
  I would first like to commend our distinguished colleague, Mr. Nadler 
of New York, for introducing this resolution. The resolution before the 
House honors one man, but it also honors all that he symbolizes in the 
name of human rights and freedom of worship.
  Before the Holocaust, the Jewish population of the Society Union 
numbered 5 million. After the war, only 2 million remained. The pain of 
these Holocaust survivors was compounded. They became the targets of a 
ruthless and systematic campaign to strip them of their communal rights 
and Jewish identity.
  This resolution pays tribute to a remarkable man who stood up for 
these victims of brutality. Jacob Birnbaum launched an effort, which 
turned into a groundswell, to protest the Soviet Union's abhorrent 
efforts to extinguish the religious, cultural and communal identity of 
the Jewish people.
  His movement began in 1964 as a humble yet bold student group 
organized to march on the Soviet Union to the United Nations. Over the 
years, the group conducted rallies in New York and Washington, 
circulated petitions, and used every possible means to keep world 
attention on the plight of the Soviet Jews. This social activism 
snowballed into the solidarity marches of the 1970s that gathered 
millions of individuals to fight for the cause.
  Birnbaum also worked with the authors of the historic Jackson-Vanik 
amendment to help free Soviet Jews looking to emigrate. In this way, he 
helped to elevate the movement so that the U.S. Federal Government had 
to pay attention and to act. But his dogged and determined work 
continued, even as the Soviet bloc crumbled and anti-Semitism flared in 
incidents across the region. Mr. Birmbaum continues to work with 
educational institutions for former Jews as part of the ``Let My People 
Know'' campaign.
  Through the years, Jacob Birnbaum has received numerous honors for 
his services to mankind. He deserves this further accolade on behalf of 
a grateful Congress for engaging so energetically in a cause that we 
have long supported, helping to free Soviet Jews from oppression and to 
help them thrive.
  To Jews in Russia and the former Soviet Republic, the name Jacob 
Birnbaum refers not only to one dedicated man but to the very cause of 
freedom itself.
  I support this resolution and urge my colleagues to do the same.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of Mr. Nadler's resolution, 
House Resolution 137, honoring the life and public service of Jacob 
Birnbaum and especially his commitment to freeing Soviet Jews from 
religious, cultural and communal extinction.
  For decades, Mr. Birnbaum has been at the forefront of the nonviolent 
struggle for Soviet Jewry, establishing the Student Struggle for Soviet 
Jewry, and organizing marches, rallies and publication of educational 
materials aimed at freeing Jews trapped in the Soviet Union.
  Mr. Birnbaum worked closely with Members of the United States 
Congress, testified at congressional hearings and consistently pushed 
for the United States to use our economic leverage against the Soviet 
Union to pressure that country so they could allow Soviet Jews and 
other East European Jews to escape the oppression of a religious and 
cultural nature in the Soviet Union. Throughout the decades, Mr. 
Birnbaum's persistence and commitment to human rights and religious 
freedom have been invaluable in freeing Soviet Jews and preserving 
their religious and cultural heritage.
  Mr. Birnbaum's commitment to this cause has not diminished to this 
day. He continues to help Jewish educational institutions and former 
Soviet Jews even today. And Mr. Nadler's resolution before us honors 
Mr. Birnbaum and his years of public service. I urge Members to support 
this important resolution.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Nadler).
  Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentlelady for her support, and I thank Ms. 
Ros-Lehtinen for her support.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to join me in 
supporting House Resolution 137, a resolution to honor the life and six 
decades of public service of Jacob Birnbaum, known more familiarly as 
Jacob Birnbaum, especially his commitment freeing Soviet Jews from 
religious, cultural and communal extinction.
  It is fitting that Jacob Birnbaum was born on December 10, which is 
also International Human Rights Day. This past December, Mr. Birnbaum 
celebrated his 80th birthday. It is time for this body to honor the 
life and work, the 60 years of public service of this remarkable human 
rights activist. I am very proud to call him a fellow New Yorker.
  Jacob Birnbaum was born in Germany, and during World War II, his 
family fled the Nazis and settled in the United Kingdom. Throughout the 
war, the Birnbaum family knew the plight of Jews, especially their own 
relatives, under the Nazis. His personal experience with the horrors of 
evil sparked the activism of Jacob Birnbaum.
  Beginning in 1946, following the end of the war, 19-year-old Jacob 
Birnbaum devoted several years to providing relief for younger 
survivors of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian systems. Through his work 
with young Polish Jews who managed to leave the USSR after the war, he 
became familiar with the iniquities of the Soviet system. These earlier 
experiences fueled his later passion to mobilize American Jewry in the 
drive to rescue Jews from oppression 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 the host countries for independence from 
France and in the persecution of the Jews of North Africa after the 
independence of Israel.
  His activism did not end then. After traveling to the United States, 
he decided to create a national student organization to activate the 
grass roots of the American Jewish community. Settling in New York, in 
1964, he set up his first student committee. Then he concentrated on 
building a student core at Yeshiva University. Mr. Birnbaum named the 
new organization the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, known 
familiarly as the SSSJ.
  Finally, he called a national founding meeting at Columbia University 
on April 27, 1964, followed by a large student demonstration 4 days 
later on the Soviet holiday May Day in front of the Soviet United 
Nations Mission. The authoritative Center for Jewish History has listed 
the demonstration as the beginning of the public struggle for the 
freedom of Soviet Jews.
  Many consider this action as the reason to consider Mr. Birnbaum the 
father of the movement to liberate Soviet Jewry. Indeed, the evidence 
supports this notion. Throughout the rest of the 1960s, under his 
direction, the Student Struggle continued working full time in response 
to the oppression of Soviet Jews.
  As we know, the Bolshevik Resolution 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 
actions.
  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 fellow Jews in the West, and 
almost all expressions of Jewish religion and culture continued to be 
prohibited.
  Nevertheless, expressions of outrage began to accumulate in the early 
1960s, with a few pioneers leading the way. Shortly after the initial 
organizing by Jacob Birnbaum, the major Jewish organizations met in 
Washington, D.C., and established the American Conference on Soviet 
Jewry. The SSSJ that Mr. Birnbaum had established functioned as its 
handbook said, to mobilize a tidal wave of public opinion.
  After the mass arrests of young Jewish dissidents on June 15, 1970, 
and the

[[Page H6607]]

death sentences handed down to them in the Leningrad trial of December 
1970, the National Conference on Soviet Jewry was created.

                              {time}  1700

  The Greater New York Conference, under the direction of the then 
young activist Malcolm Hoenlein, initiated the profoundly important 
Solidarity Day marches, modeled after Jacob 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-established regional groups, under the chairmanship of Dr. Louis 
Rosenblum, with whom Jacob Birnbaum 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 of 1964 to 
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 and his times, has made a similar 
statement.
  In May, 1965, Mr. Birnbaum was the first person to testify before a 
congressional committee on the importance of utilizing economic 
leverage on the Kremlin to secure the liberation of Soviet Jews. When 
the late Senator Henry Jackson initiated the legislation which finally 
resulted in the passage of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in 1974, Mr. 
Birnbaum worked closely with the director of Senator Jackson's office, 
Dorothy Fosdick, and, of course, with his other aide, 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 played a key role in softening up the Kremlin regimes to 
make possible the Soviet Jewry demand of ``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 various 
countries, including Romania, to increase emigration and to 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.'' Let them 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 in the Soviet Union.
  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 President 
Gorbachev's meeting with President Reagan.
  Finally, in 1990, the Kremlin conceded to all the pressure and 
permitted a mass emigration, which has now totaled more than 2 million 
people, about 1 million to Israel and 1 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 many pioneers and the other national organizations which 
fought so strenuously for the liberation of Soviet Jews:
  Morris Abram, U.S. Human Rights Commissioner; Dr. Moshe Deeter, the 
scholar whose research fueled the early movement; former 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.
  Many organizations also played an important role, and I will name 
them in my extended remarks.
  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 
through the State Department and enlisting Malcolm Hoenlein's aid in 
engaging the Uzbek Ambassador in Washington.
  In his 81st year, Mr. Birnbaum continues to support groups engaged in 
the Jewish education of former Soviet Jews and their children. His 
dedication to his beliefs remains as strong as ever.
  For all these reasons, Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives 
ought to honor the life and six decades of public service of Jacob 
Birnbaum and especially his successful commitment to freeing Soviet 
Jews from religious, cultural, and communal extinction. He is a true 
hero.
  I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), chairman 
of the Foreign Affairs Committee, for moving this resolution quickly 
through his committee. I would also like to thank the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Watson) for managing the consideration of this 
resolution today, and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) 
for her leadership on this.
  Again, I urge all my colleagues to join me in passing this resolution 
to honor this work of this unique hero of this century.
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, 
and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson) that the House suspend the 
rules and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 137, as amended.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the resolution, as amended, was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________