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An AJHS Podcast Hosted by

SEASON 3: OPEN UP THE GATES

As totalitarianism descended across Eastern Europe, Soviet Jews struggled to leave the USSR. Cold War tensions continued to escalate, and by the 1970s, a grassroots movement among Jewish Americans to secure the release of their Soviet counterparts began to grow. This movement, which soon also found support outside Jewish communities, helped to create the political identity of the American Jewish community as we know it today.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

The Wreckage is a new narrative podcast from the American Jewish Historical Society chronicling the unique stories of Jewish Americans, from the years immediately following World War II through the end of the Cold War. In the aftermath of history’s most destructive war, American Jews mobilized through aid work, military service, and activism to help solve the largest refugee crisis in history. While fears of a resurgence of fascism were at the forefront, the very real threats of the spread of totalitarian Communism continued to build.

The archives at the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) contain millions of documents and photographs and hundreds of hours of audiovisual materials that are a trove of untold stories about one of the most tumultuous times in world history. Through historical audio, commentary from historians and other experts, and first-hand testimony from those who lived through this time, listeners will learn the extraordinary stories of the Jewish Americans who rallied in the aftermath of World War II to help survivors start new lives, stood up against Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee during the second American Red Scare, and worked to free Soviet Jews trapped in peril behind the Iron Curtain.

New episodes are released bi-weekly.

OUR HOST

The Wreckage is hosted by acclaimed singer and actress Rebecca Naomi Jones. Jones received a Drama Desk nomination for her portrayal of Laurey in Daniel Fish’s Tony Award winning revival of Oklahoma. Additional Broadway includes Significant Other, Hedwig and The Angry Inch, American Idiot, Passing Strange. Off-Broadway: I Can Get It For You Wholesale, Big Love (Drama League nomination), Murder Ballad (Lilly award, Lucille Lortel nomination), As You Like It, Describe the Night, Marie and Rosetta, Fire In Dreamland, The Fortress of Solitude, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Wig Out! Television: Genius: Aretha (series regular); Power Book III: Raising Kanan (recurring); Your Friends & Neighbors (recurring); Black Cake (recurring), High Maintenance (recurring), Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll (recurring), The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh, And Just Like That, Strangers, Inside Amy Schumer, Limitless, Difficult People, Law & Order: SVU. Films: Someone Great, The Outside Story, French Fries, Most Likely To Murder, The Big Sick, Ratter, Ordinary World, Passing Strange, Broadway Idiot. Solo concerts: Lincoln Center American Songbook, Apollo Cafe. Rebecca holds a BFA in Drama from the University of North Carolina: School of the Arts.

SPONSORS

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.
 
Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

SEASON 3: OPEN UP THE GATES

Episode 301

(Coming September 3, 2025)

The Delegation

In June of 1956, a delegation of rabbis from the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America traveled to Moscow. Their mission: to verify reports of dangerous conditions and persecution of Soviet Jews. Among the five men was Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a U.S. Army chaplain during and after World War II.

Episode 302

(Coming September 17, 2025)

The Refuseniks

As hostilities behind the Iron Curtain worsened, a large number of Soviet Jews began to apply for exit visas, most commonly to Israel. Most of these applications came from Jews living in territories in the Western part of the Soviet Union, including regions annexed during World War II. The vast majority of these applications were denied, giving rise to the plight of the Refuseniks.

Episode 303

(Coming October 1, 2025)

The Students

One of the driving forces behind the American Soviet Jewry Freedom movement were college students. In 1964, the young activist Jacob Birnbaum arrived in New York City, and soon became inspired by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to start his own student group dedicated to the plight of Soviet Jews.

Episode 304

(Coming October 15, 2025)

The Hijackers

College professors and other educators were among those HUAC targeted, but the postwar search for Communists in the U.S. education system began much earlier. The so-called “Red-ucators” were among the first deemed subversives, and Harvard University, City College of New York, and many other schools found themselves at the center of HUAC’s ire.

Episode 305

(Coming November 12, 2025)

The Travelers

In addition to advocacy at home, including through efforts like the Twinning Program, a number of activists working on behalf of Soviet Jewry traveled to the USSR, arranging meetings with Jews living behind the Iron Curtain in an effort to provide support and gain access to information to bring back to the United States. The journey was dangerous, and entailed a great deal of risk as the KGB enacted tighter and tighter restrictions on foreign visitors, and looked at each traveler with intense suspicion.

Episode 306

(Coming November 26, 2025)

The Caseworkers

Throughout the movement to free Soviet Jews, American Jewish aid organizations deployed caseworkers around the world to help resettle Jewish emigres. Beginning in the 1960s, NGOs like HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) helped hundreds of thousands of Jews find new homes in the United States, Israel, Canada, and other nations, just as they had done after World War II.

Episode 308

(Coming December 10, 2025)

The New Americans

Over the course of four decades, over 500,000 Soviet Jews emigrated to the United States. Soviet Jewish families settled throughout the country, from small towns to big cities, with many joining synagogues, enrolling their children in Jewish day schools and summer camps, and celebrating milestones like bar and bat mitzvahs. For these families, life in the United States came with its own set of challenges.

Episode 309

(Coming December 17, 2025)

The Dissolution

During this live-to-tape episode recorded with an in-house audience, historians will discuss how the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union impacted Jewish communities in eastern Europe, the United States, and beyond. On December 25, 1991, the hammer and sickle flying over the Kremlin came down for the last time, and the USSR was now the newly independent state of Russia.