Wallenberg, Raoul, 1912-1947

The records of Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry (CASJ, after 1991 known as Chicago Action for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, CAJFSU), a grassroots volunteer organization dedicated to helping Soviet Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union and protecting the Refuseniks. CASJ was founded in the early 1970s as a result of the formation of the national organization, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, which included approximately 50 other local councils. The collection documents the CASJs activities from its inception until it closed in 2010. The collection also features materials related to the activities of CASJ’s umbrella organization, Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and its legal arm Soviet Jewry Legal Advocacy Center. The materials include correspondence, memoranda, case files, trip reports, publications, photographs, posters, audio, video, and three-dimensional artifacts.

This collection documents the parental families of Peter Gomori – primarily pertaining to his mother, Charlotte née Nadas Gomori – and of Jannette Katz- Gomori – pertaining to her parents, Anne née Wolff Katz and Rudolf Katz; documents are from before, during, and after World War II and the Holocaust. The collection consists mostly of family photographs and includes one family album; two death certificates; travel documents; handwritten and typewritten correspondences; a handwritten will; inventories of wedding presents and furniture purchases; and a prayer book.

The collection documents the activities of a human rights non-government organization on behalf of Soviet Jewry and Jews in the Former Soviet Union. Organized by Harold Light in San Francisco in 1967, the group worked to bring the Soviet Jewry issue to national and international attention. The collection contains correspondence, minutes, case files, publications, newspaper clippings, card files of Refuseniks, subject files, audio/visual materials, and information on other Soviet Jewry and interreligious organizations. Also included are materials relating to Soviet Jewish emigration, Cold War relations, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and human rights conditions in Russia and the former Soviet republics.

The collection contains the records of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), an umbrella institution for approximately 50 grassroots organizations active in the movement to free Soviet Jews. The records documenting the UCSJ's operations, programs, and campaigns relate primarily to the 1980's, when the rescue movement reached its pinnacle of success and international attention, and to the 1990's, reflecting UCSJ's work on behalf of human rights after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The records include materials of UCSJ individual councils; materials by the Soviet Jewry Legal Advocacy Center, an affiliate of UCSJ; and a large volume of case files of Prisoners of Conscience, Refuseniks, and Soviet Jews who were allowed to emigrate to the West.

William Korey Papers document life and works of a prominent human rights expert who played a leadership role in the American Soviet Jewry movement. Dr. Korey served as a regional director of Anti-Defamation League and later as a founding director of B'nai Brith International's U.N. office which worked on the problem of discrimination faced by the Jews in the Soviet Union. Dr. Korey was deeply involved in the processes pivotal to the success of the Sovet Jewry movement, such as the defense of the Helsinki Accords and the adoption of the Jackson-Vanik amendment. Parallel to his work on behalf of Soviet Jewry Dr. Korey participated in the efforts to realize the U.S. ratification of the genocide treaty that eventually came to fruition in 1988. William Korey authored hundreds of articles and essays and a number of books on the subjects related to the Jews in the Soviet Union. He taught at the Long Island University, City College of New York, Columbia University, Brooklyn College and several other major universities. The William Korey papers include materials from the late 1940s through 2010, and the bulk of the collection is dated 1970s-1990s. The documents include manuscripts, correspondence, notes, publications, news clippings, photographs and a data CD.