Demonstrations

The collection contains papers of Alan M. Kohn, a former emergency preparedness operations officer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and a former president of Temple Beth Sholom, the Conservative Synagogue of Brevard County, Florida. It documents Mr. Kohn's participation in the Rally for Soviet Jewry outside of the John F. Kennedy Space Center of NASA on July 15, 1975. The occasion for the rally was the launch of the Apollo spacecraft manned with three astronauts for a rendezvous with the Soviet Soyuz manned spacecraft on the Apollo-Soyuz Space Mission. The purpose of the rally was to raise public awareness of the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union and to demand their freedom. The collection includes part of an unpublished, novelized memoir written by Alan M. Kohn in 1995, that focused on the rally. The collection also contains a letter of introduction to the memoir.

The collection is comprised of photographs of various provenances related to the lives of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) in the period immediately following the Second World War, from 1945 to 1952. The photographs pertain to DP camps and communities in the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily those established by the American and British military, and administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and, later, the International Refugee Organization. Diverse aspects of daily life among the DPs are depicted, such as school, work, recreation, and vocational training, including many activities sponsored by Jewish voluntary organizations, especially World ORT and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Also depicted are cultural activities such as theater, children’s performances, Jewish holiday celebrations and parades, and commemorative events honoring those who died in the Holocaust. The photographs capture leaders of the Jewish DP zonal and camp committees, DP police, and Zionist living collectives (kibbutzim), as well as notable military, political, and cultural personalities of the period, such as Lucius D. Clay, Fiorello LaGuardia, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, and H. Leivick. The photographs also reflect political and historical developments, including the major congresses of the DP leaderships in Germany, Austria, and Italy; protest demonstrations concerning British policies regulating immigration to Palestine; and events held upon the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

This collection documents the activities of a human rights grassroots organization on behalf of Jews in the Soviet Union. The collection features annual reports, calendars, general correspondence, announcement pamphlets, meeting fliers, banners used at rallies, miscellaneous speakers and conferences information, membership documents, and materials about engineering, legal, medical, youth, and women’s coalitions.

The papers of Rabbi Leonard S. Cahan focus on the imprisonment of the American Soviet Jewry Movement activist for demonstrating on behalf of Soviet Jews in front of the Soviet embassy in Washington D.C. on May 1^st, 1985. Materials include memorandums, correspondence, clippings and brochures.

This collection contains the papers of Ruth Abusch-Magder, mostly documenting her Jewish feminist and activist work as a high school and college student from 1984-1992.