Gittelson, Miriam Bogorad

Miriam Bogorad Gittelson (1916 – 2006) lived in Passaic, New Jersey as a child and moved to New York City as a teenager. A political activist from childhood, she joined Young Pioneers (a children's Communist Party organization); as a young adult she was employed by leftwing and progressive organizations. After stints in a garment shop and at a Woolworth five-and-dime store in the early 1930s, she worked as the administrative secretary for the American Youth Congress from 1935-1938. Next, she had worked as Activities Director for the Young Communist League. In 1941 she married Lester Gittelson, an American veteran of the Spanish Civil War, who had served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In the summer of 1943 Gittelson served as activities director and social activities director at Camp Kinderland (which she had attended as a child). From 1943-1947 she worked as administrative assistant and then director of cultural activities for the Greater New York City CIO. From 1951-1963, she worked as an executive secretary/personal assistant for the president of the Ideal Toy Company, where her responsibilities included helping to promote a short-lived mass-produced African American play doll, and working with nonprofit and charitable organizations. From the company president's executive secretary she rose to become its imports director. After her retirement from Ideal she worked as an imports consultant, and continued her involvement with progressive organizations, among them, Camp Kinderland, on whose board she served. Gittelson also pursued a serious interest in music, particularly folk music-she played piano and accordion and belonged to a Yiddish choral society. She also edited, with singer-songwriter Earl Robinson and others, a songbook, Songs for America -- American ballads, folk-songs, marching songs, songs of other lands, which was published in 1939 by the Workers Library Publishers (a publishing house of the Communist Party of the United States).