New England Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry

The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry began in April 1964, when a meeting was held with college students from Yeshiva University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Columbia University and Queens College to discuss the plight of Soviet Jews. The meeting was the starting point for a grassroots movement led by Jacob Birnbaum, a British man whose family escaped Nazi Germany, to put pressure on the United States government to condemn the Soviet government's treatment of Soviet Jewry. Numerous college students were engaged in the movement, including those in the New England area. Limited information is available on the New England movement's history, but it began sometime in the mid-1960s and was active in the community throughout the early and mid-1970s.