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 Soviet Jews find new homes in the United States, Israel, Canada, and other nations, just as they had done after World War II. By the late 1980s, tensions emerged far beyond Cold War politics, as American Jewish organizations and the Israeli government came to proverbial blows over where Refuseniks who obtained exit visas would go. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones, featuring Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the Rabbi Edward Sandrow Chair in Soviet & East European Jewry at the Hebrew University; and Mark Hetfield, former caseworker and current President of HIAS.

Image: Meeting of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Winter 1993, from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS Collections), I-363.

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.