Rebecca Naomi Jones: 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.
Enjoying our series? Don’t forget to leave us a rating on your preferred podcast platform.
Archival Audio – President Reagan Speaks at the Berlin Wall:
Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city. Part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev…Mr. Gorbachev, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In an impassioned 26-minute speech, he implored Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to reunite a continent, and to open the gates.
The late 1980s saw the largest influx of Soviet Jews to the United States in Cold War history. These 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. Life in the United States was an adjustment; learning English proved challenging but was necessary to be successful in finding employment, and easy access to consumer goods was a culture shock. Several had to contend with an unsympathetic, even hostile view of immigrants. But for many of these families, life in the United States was a balance of assimilating into their new homes, and holding onto their traditions.
From the American Jewish Historical Society, this is The Wreckage: Open Up the Gates. I’m your host, Rebecca Naomi Jones. This week, we meet The New Americans. Our story begins behind the closed doors of the Oval Office.
Archival Audio – Nixon in the White House:
This antisemitism is stronger than we think, you know. It’s unfortunate, but this has happened to the Jews, it’s happened in Spain, it’s happened in Germany, it’s happening – and now it’s gonna happen in America if these people don’t start behaving.
It may be they have a death wish, you know, that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Joining us is Dr. Andrew Sperling, Historian and Director of Academic Initiatives at the American Jewish Historical Society.
Andrew Sperling: Richard Nixon, of course, has a notorious reputation for obvious reasons, but he was also a compulsive antisemite. There are several instances in the Nixon tapes where the president and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who was Jewish, expressed frustration with the Jews and showed a glaring lack of concern for Soviet Jewish issues.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tried to skirt the issue of Soviet Jewry, lest it threaten efforts to ease Cold War tensions. They grew increasingly exasperated at American Jewish efforts to promote the cause of Soviet Jewish liberation.
Nixon’s Oval Office tapes reveal the White House’s frustration.
Archival Audio – Henry Kissinger in the White House: Who are we to complain about Soviet Jews. It’s none of our business. If they complain, if they made a public protest to us for the treatment of Negroes, we’d be– you know, it’s none our business how they treat their…
Andrew Sperling: Kissinger is actually on record… He actually says, “If they put the Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it’s not an American concern.” And Nixon replies, “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”…
So there is a frosty view of the situation that emanates from the top of the American political network. And this is what Jewish politicians and advocates are up against, though they may not know all the details at the time.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After the Nixon presidency, the question of human rights, moral responsibility, and the looming prospect of Soviet Jewish migration to the United States coincided with another humanitarian disaster: the influx of Vietnamese refugees after the Vietnam War.
Andrew Sperling: After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the US admitted 125 Vietnamese refugees in the first wave. These were people evacuated because they had ties to the US military. Then there were also the so-called “boat people” who fled Vietnam in overcrowded boats because they were so desperate to leave. This was a full-fledged humanitarian crisis. People were fleeing in very treacherous conditions and many died at sea.
Archival Audio – News Report on Vietnamese Refugees:
Another saga in the South China Sea. A Vietnam refugee boat has been spotted. The USS Blue Ridge was about 50 miles away.
We’ve reversed course and I have closed the position. As you can see, the refugee boat is just off the port bow now. We’ll launch our utility boat with a boarding party, go aboard, and see what the situation is as far as food, clothing, medical needs and seaworthiness of the boat.
The boarding party investigated and found 54 people crammed into a boat less than 40 feet in length. The boat was deemed unseaworthy by Commander Williams, Blue Ridge Operations Officer and Boarding Party Commander. The bilge pump had stopped operating and they were bailing water. The engine wouldn’t run, and the compass hadn’t worked in days. The people were rescued and the boat was scuttled. They had been at sea for ten days searching for freedom.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: To address the crisis, Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980. This created formal criteria for admitting refugees based on humanitarian need. It would have a profound effect not only on Southeast Asians, but also on Soviet Jews, who were also trying to gain entry to the United States.
Andrew Sperling: The Refugee Act created a formal system for admitting refugees based on humanitarian need. And this law is informed and shaped by the experiences of both Southeast Asians and Soviet Jews. This is a major step in American refugee policy because previously, refugees might have been accepted to score political points against communist regimes or refugees were accepted on an ad hoc basis, but now, under this law and because of Vietnamese people seeking refuge, there is a permanent and structured system.
So, under this American law, the legal definition of refugee required the applicant in question to have a well-founded fear of persecution. We know from the various experiences and testimonies of both refuseniks and the activists who met with them that they had reasonable fears of persecution and they were being persecuted. But there were situations where Soviet Jews would get to Rome, for instance, and be denied refugee status because the INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, did not recognize them as refugees.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: American Jewish organizations rallied to help. HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, even sent case managers to Europe to guide Soviet Jewish emigres through the US immigration process, to ensure that they would qualify as refugees.
Andrew Sperling: So that’s a situation where it becomes vital to have American Jewish allies present during the actual process of immigration, and HIAS workers were crucial in assisting these people through the bureaucratic aspects of coming to the US.
And it was important to gain that status because being classified as a refugee entitled you to certain medical benefits and government funding for basic necessities.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After extensive efforts by activist groups and sympathetic politicians, the U.S. created more space for Soviet Jewish refugees to land on American shores. Jewish American advocates now faced additional challenges in helping these newcomers adapt to an exciting, but unfamiliar society.
Archival Audio – Oral History of Irv Zuckerman:
For 9 wonderful years, I worked for NYANA, the New York Association for New Americans, as a volunteer helping the refuseniks from the FSU to find work in the US…. these were brilliant people…. These people had one or more Ph.D.s and I couldn’t see them wasting their lives and their talents…
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Americans fighting to free Soviet Jews imagined, correctly, that most would end up in Israel. But the growing number of emigrés choosing the United States forced Jewish groups to pivot. Political activists had demanded “Let my people go!” Now social workers and resettlement agencies would have to fulfill the promise of, “I am my brother’s keeper.”
Andrew Sperling: So what happens beginning with the moment of arrival for Jews coming to New York, for instance: they land at Kennedy Airport, they’re greeted by a representative from HIAS or perhaps the New York Association for New Americans, and they will be able to stay at a hotel until they can access new apartments…. and all of these agencies together with local Jewish Federations [[ ]] These groups raised money to fund housing assistance, English language and job training programs, and basic furnishings for new arrivals. Jewish community centers would also create social and recreational activities for the new residents. And it was up to many different synagogues and Jewish camps and day schools to develop programs on their own to welcome émigré families and make them feel welcome.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Supporting the agencies was an army of volunteers.
In April 1990, Soviet-born journalist and author Julia Ioffe arrived in the United States with her family. She was just seven years old.
Audio – Julia Ioffe Interviewed by Julie Salamon on At Lunch: The families that welcomed us in Columbia, Maryland, who were members of the Temple Isaiah synagogue were incredible. And they really helped us get settled, helped,I mean, helped my father find a job, helped my mom find courses that would help her get recertified, take the medical school board exam. And the Jewish community really really pitched in to help. They were amazing.
Andrew Sperling: Individuals poured their efforts in to take care of the refugees and ensure that they wouldn’t just end up on the street. There were so-called anchor families, relatives of recently arrived émigrés that would contribute their own money or services to the resettlement agencies. There were also volunteers that, quote unquote, “adopted” families: helped them enroll their children in school, took them out grocery shopping, and introduced them to what life was like in America.
So these were entire community boots-on-the-ground efforts to directly engage with the new Americans so that they could feel comfortable and learn to live independently in a new land. And for many American Jews, the resettlement effort itself became a concrete way to participate in the struggle for Soviet Jewry. They knew that there was still work left to do, even after they helped free these families.
Archival Audio – Irv Zuckerman Oral History:
It was wonderful. It was like I was meeting all my cousins. The strange thing about it was, that they didn’t understand because they had been raised to escape from Judaism, they didn’t understand why I was there, and they constantly asked me, “why are you doing this?” And I would try to explain, this is Jews helping Jews.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Nyana volunteer Irv Zuckerman was not the only one to notice that the family reunion also created moments of culture clash. The grandparents may have been siblings in Czarist Russia, but the grandchildren had become Americans, or Soviets, through and through.
Andrew Sperling: Many American Jews expected Soviet Jewish newcomers to quickly join their synagogues, send their children to Hebrew schools, and become active in Jewish community life. But because many Soviet Jews had grown up in a society where Judaism was suppressed, they often identified more as ethnic Jews rather than religious Jews. Synagogue life might have felt unfamiliar. Some might have distrusted organized religion after decades of Soviet propaganda portraying it as backwards. So this created some misunderstandings. American Jews might view the newcomers as ungrateful or disengaged, whereas the immigrants felt pressured into forms of Jewish life that didn’t quite resonate with their experiences.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The Russian-Israeli scholar Larissa Remmenick described it as a case of “mutual failed expectations.”
Andrew Sperling: It’s indicative of competing expectations about how the Soviet Jews should adapt to the US…. Some American Jews had trouble grasping how someone could be Jewish without embracing its religious qualities. At the same time, some Soviet Jews felt that American Jews patronized them, assuming that they would assimilate quickly or treating them like they’re charity cases. And there is something also paternalistic about instructing people on how to be Jewish.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: The misunderstandings might have been inevitable. American Jews had taken up the fight to free Soviet Jewry, motivated by their deepest religious, ethnic, and cultural sensibilities. However, the Soviet Jews who chose the Land of Opportunity prioritized making good on America’s promises.
Andrew Sperling: Most Soviet Jews arrived with strong professional backgrounds but struggled to find jobs in their fields, especially in medicine, engineering, the sciences.
There were situations where a doctor or an academic might have to drive a taxicab or find work in a factory while also trying to update their credentials and pass certain exams.
So these are clear tensions. But over time, these two groups would learn from each other, and American Jews come to admire the resilience of Soviet Jews. And also over time, younger Soviet Jewish émigrés did become active in Jewish cultural and educational and academic life.
Archival Audio – Freedom Rally Announcement on Local News: “The world’s attention is focused on Washington DC because of this historic summit meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and our president. And we’re going to be joining tens of thousands, and perhaps a hundred thousand people. And we’re coming here to put the issue of Soviet Jewry and human rights on the agenda.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: On December 6, 1987, a quarter-million people converged on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The Freedom Rally for Soviet Jews was a hastily organized show of force to greet Soviet premier Mikahil Gorbachev as he arrived for a summit with President Reagan. It was also the second largest demonstration in American Jewish history, topped only by the Solidarity Sunday rally in New York the year prior.
The rally culminated decades of activism. A campaign that started with a rabbinic mission to Moscow in the 1950s, small student protests in the 1960s, and skilled lobbying in the 1970s, now featured on the dais the Vice President of the United States, along with the Democratic Speaker of the House and Republican Senate Minority Leader.
Nobel Peace Prize Winner and author of Soviet Jewry movement’s seminal book, The Jews of Silence, Elie Wiesel, spoke.
Anatoly Natan Sharansky, the most famous Soviet Jewish prisoner of conscience, was present. He had been freed thanks to the movement’s success at enlisting US government support.
Archival Audio – Natan Sharansky Speaks at Freedom Rally: At the very beginning of our struggle, we heard that it is impossible to open the gates of the Soviet Union, and we didn’t listen to these voices and we struggled, and you demonstrated and you struggled. And that’s why quarter million Jews were released. And that’s why I and other prisoners of Zion today are free, and today are here.
(Crowd applauds.)
Rebecca Naomi Jones: In the crowd, Soviet Jewish emigres, new Americans, marched alongside those who had fought in support of their right to live in freedom for decades.
Andrew Sperling: It’s not as if American Jews were strangers to public protest and activism. There are so many instances throughout American Jewish history where people will take to the streets, people will gather at massive cultural sites like the National Mall. But this was, by far, one of the largest displays, and it was really indicative of a certain confidence that these American Jewish activists had amassed over generations. Now they’re speaking out very loudly and with such massive visibility. It reflects a new and permanent phase of Jewish American activism.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Inside the USSR, in the United States, in Israel, and around the world, Jews and their allies fought to open the gates of the Soviet Union.
Between the 1970s and the years shortly after the end of the Cold War, this international human rights campaign helped over 1.5 million Soviet Jews make their exodus and build new lives abroad. Of these, over 500,000 came here, to the United States.
On Christmas Day 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from office after a turbulent tenure that included an attempted Communist Party coup to oust him just months earlier. The Soviet flag was lowered one final time over the Kremlin.
Across the United States, television and radio broadcasts were interrupted with a breaking news bulletin from President George H.W. Bush.
Archival Audio – President George H.W. Bush Announces Fall of the USSR: During these last few months, you and I have witnessed one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century, the historic and revolutionary transformation of a totalitarian dictatorship, the Soviet Union, and the liberation of its peoples as we celebrate Christmas.
This day of peace and hope. I thought we should take just a few minutes to reflect on what these events mean for us as Americans. For over 40 years, the United States led the West in the struggle against communism and the threat it posed to our most precious values. This struggle shaped the lives of all Americans.
It forced all nations to live under the specter of nuclear destruction. That confrontation is now over. The nuclear threat while far from gone is receding. Eastern Europe is free. The Soviet Union itself is no more. This is a victory for democracy and freedom. It’s a victory for the moral force of our values.
Every American can take pride in this victory from the millions of men and women who’ve served our country in uniform to millions of Americans who supported their country, and a strong defense under nine presidents. New independent nations have emerged out of the wreckage of the Soviet Empire.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Walk through Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach today. You can hear Russian on the streets, feel it in the stores, taste it in the food. It’s known as Little Odessa. And while it may be the most famous Soviet Jewish émigré community in the US, it is not the only one. Rego Park in Queens is not far away, nor is Philadelphia’s Northeast. There are Russian-speaking Jewish communities in places that know nothing of a Moscow winter, like Miami’s Sunny Isles and West Hollywood, California.
Outside of the ethnic enclaves, emigrés from the former Soviet Union can be found wherever Jews live in the United States. Today, they and their American-born children number close to 750,000: 1 out of every 10 Jews in the United States.
Once, back when Cold War tensions reigned, Americans looked on Soviet Jews as symbols of a distant oppression. Here and now, these emigres from the Former Soviet Union, and US-born children, are part of the fabric of American Jewry’s increasingly diverse and vibrant community.
Stay subscribed to The Wreckage for upcoming bonus episodes, never-before-heard interviews, and more stories from the archives. And join AJHS in February 2026 for The World in Front of Me, a new podcast on the life and work of famed photographer Bill Aron – in his own words – hosted by award-winning journalist and Bill’s friend, Ruth Andrew Ellenson.
But for now, this is where I leave you. One final time, from the American Jewish Historical Society, I’m Rebecca Naomi Jones. This episode was written and produced by Shaul Kelner, Andrew Sperling, and Gemma R. Birnbaum. Recording, sound design, and mixing were done at Sound Lounge. Transcription is provided by Adept Word Management. Archival material is courtesy of the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society and its Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library & Museum, and the US National Archives.
Special thanks to Rafael Medoff, Anat Zalmanson-Kusnetzov, Amy Fedeski, Shaul Kelner, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, and Mark Hetfield for being part of our third season.
For episode transcripts, additional resources, and links to the collections featured in this episode, visit ajhs.org/podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform which helps others discover our series.
