George Shultz Recalls Experiences Fighting to Free Soviet Jews
Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz mesmerized an audience of more than 500 attendees with his personal account of participating in the American Soviet Jewry Movement. Secretary Shultz recounted his decision in 1987 to attend a Freedom Seder with Jewish refuseniks in the US Embassy in Moscow, and he revealed that his eyes filled with tears when he received a call from Ida Nudel in 1987 that she began by saying, "I'm in Jerusalem, I'm home."
MLK Speech Discovered
A reel-to-reel tape of a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry in December 1966 was discovered by our project archivists this month, part of AJHS’ Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement, spear-headed by former AJHS Board Chairman Ken Bialkin. The 5-minute speech was heard, over the telephone, in 32 communities around the nation. The tape has been transferred to CD-ROM and AJHS hopes to make it available to scholars and the public online.
New Collections Acquired for AASJM
An estimated 650 linear feet of documents, photographs, posters, audio tapes and film representing the work of individuals and organizations active on behalf of Soviet Jewry, were transferred from the University of Colorado at Boulder to AJHS in New York. The collections are currently being organized and will be made accessible to researchers as the archival process is completed.
