Kathleen M. Hyman Papers

The Papers of Kathleen M. Hyman represent one collection housed within the Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement (AASJM). These papers reflect the effort, beginning in the 1960s through the late 1980s, of thousands of American Jews of all denominations and political orientations to stop the persecution and discrimination of Jews in the Soviet Union. The American Soviet Jewry Movement (ASJM) is considered to be the most influential Movement of the American Jewish community in the 20th century. The beginnings of the organized American Soviet Jewry Movement became a model for efforts to aid Soviet Jews in other countries, among them Great Britain, Canada, and France. The movement can be traced to the early 1960s, when the first organizations were created to address the specific problem of the persecution and isolation of Soviet Jews by the government of the Soviet Union.

Papers of Kathleen M. Hyman reflect her work on behalf of Jews in the U.S.S.R.

Kathleen M. Hyman of La Grange Park, IL was involved with the Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry, a grass-roots non-profit organization that advocated for Jews in the USSR. In 1976 she accompanied her husband Lloyd Hyman, a High Energy Physicist affiliated with the Argonne National Laboratory, to a physics conference in the U.S.S.R. During the trip she met with the Refuseniks Vladimir and Maria Slepak, Ida Nudel, Alexander Lerner and Nahum Meiman. Upon her return to the United States, Mrs. Hyman took advantage of her knowledge of Russian and continued corresponding with those individuals, and other Refuseniks, while supporting them in their efforts to leave the Soviet Union. Mrs. Hyman has been involved with the West Suburban Synagogue in Oak Park and their adopted village Penza in the Former Soviet Union. During the decade of 2000s she was the liaison between her synagogue, Congregation Beth Shalom, Naperville, IL and the remnants of the Jewish community in Jekabpils, Latvia.