AJHS is excited to announce the availability of the records of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry (GNYCSJ) (I-362), a leading organization of the American Soviet Jewry movement, one of the most effective national grassroots activist campaigns in American history.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, primarily, hundreds of thousands of American Jews advocated on behalf of Jews living the Soviet Union who were barred from emigrating, and who experienced a host of retributive punishments for initiating applications to leave the country, including discrimination, anti-Semitism, imprisonment, and other state-sanctioned violence.
AJHS stewards the Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement (AASJM), which documents the striking scope and diversity of a pivotal human rights activist movement. The Greater New York conference records, accessible as part of the AASJM, enhance the range of primary sources now available for research on this period.
GNYCSJ, established in 1971 by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York, played a vital role as the coordinating body of Soviet Jewry activities for more than 85 constituent Jewish organizations and community groups, across denominations, through the New York metropolitan area. This collection evidences the breadth and complexity of this coalition and the scope of awareness-raising activities that GNYCSJ created, across all ages and backgrounds and for both the general public and legislators, about the human rights abuses in the Soviet Union.
These initiatives included Solidarity Sundays, mass demonstrations in New York City with hundreds of thousands of attendees which catalyzed similar demonstrations nationwide, including the milestone Freedom Sunday national march in Washington, D.C. on December 6, 1987, with over 250,000 attendees and standing as one of the largest Jewish rallies ever held in the United States.
GNYCSJ was also deeply involved in amassing, evaluating, and distributing information on individual cases of refuseniks and prisoners of conscience persecuted by the Soviet authorities. One of the primary channels for acquiring this information was from reports compiled by Americans who traveled to the Soviet Union as tourists, either individually or as part of an organized tour, with the intent to visit Soviet Jews. GNYCSJ, along with other organization, such as Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry, Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry, GNYCSJ’s Coalition for Soviet Jewry, and Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry, briefed thousands of American travelers on how to prepare for likely surveillance, including their luggage being searched and their hotel rooms being bugged, and even possible detention by Soviet authorities. The trip reports prepared by these American “travelers” comprise another fascinating primary source, as they demonstrate of how ordinary citizens knowingly assumed great risks to travel to the Soviet Union and demonstrate solidarity with refuseniks.
In addition to the trip reports, this collection includes correspondence; meeting minutes, agendas, and programs; press clippings and packets; profiles of refuseniks, prisoners of conscience, and their relatives; leaflets and fliers; photographs; audiocassettes, videocassettes, and film reels; and artifacts such as buttons, scarves, t-shirts, and plastic handcuffs for protest demonstrations. Languages present in the collection are English, Hebrew, and Russian.
View this collection’s finding aid to learn more about GNYCSJ’s extraordinary history and impact.
AJHS gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission in processing and making available these historic materials.
