Poster from the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews Records: “Mr. Gorbachev, before you talk arms, let’s talk bodies.” For the march and rally for Soviet Jews Pre-Summit, December 6, 1987. American Jewish Historical Society.
Thanks to generous support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC),…
In memory of the Beilis Trial: “Beilis Not Guilty, Jews Guilty” (circa 1913). From YIVO Collections.
The dramatic postcard above is a commentary on the notorious 1911 Beilis Trial, which escalated the already rampant anti-Semitic sentiment in tsarist Russia. In a case strikingly similar to the that of the Trial of Trent almost 400 years earlier, it revolved around blood libel.
Menahem…
Row of Jewish-owned stores near Great Synagogue, Lumobl, Poland (now Ukraine), 1925. (Collection of Photographs and Measurement Drawings, neg. 23441. Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. All rights reserved. Image courtesy the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress).
The prevailing image of the shtetl is the one in Fiddler on the Roof: a small, dirt-poor, strictly Jewish village. But shtetls…
Conducting Research on Jewish Fighters, WWII
With a Focus on Ukraine, Belarus and Russia
by J.D. Arden, Reference Services Assistant
with assistance from Aurora Zinder, Volunteer, and David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Reference Services Research Coordinator, Center for Jewish History
Above image: Kniga Pamiati Voinov-Evreev and Biographical Dictionary of Jewish Resistance
In the Lillian Goldman Reading Room here at the Center…
Refuseniks (отказники)
by Anna Khomina, Research and Special Projects Intern, Center for Jewish History
The refuseniks were Soviet Jews who sought and were denied permission to emigrate out of the USSR in the ‘60s and ’70s, and who organized protests (such as the ones pictured above) to call attention to their plight. Jews in the Soviet Union were systematically discriminated against…