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. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Dr. Shaul Kelner, author of A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews.

Image: In October of 1985, American travelers Cheryl Pollman and Mark Werbner meet with the Pevzner family in Odessa, from the National Conference on Soviet Jewry Records, I-181.

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.

The American movement for Soviet Jewry was composed of a number of organizations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and ranging from grassroots organizations to larger, internationally established nonprofits. Established Jewish organizations dedicated significant staff time and effort to the cause, and worked to coordinate with both regional and national grassroots organizations that quickly became instrumental in the fight for freedom. While tensions over methods and priorities would arise, coalition-building between the various organizations was critical to saving hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jewish lives. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Dr. Shaul Kelner, professor of Jewish Studies and sociology at Vanderbilt University and author of A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews.

Image: from the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry Collection (I-362), Box 118

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.

One of the driving forces behind the American Soviet Jewry freedom movement were college students. In 1964, the 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. Birnbaum, who had himself fled persecution as a child when the Nazis rose to power in his native Germany, convened a group of concerned students from Columbia University, Queens College, Yeshiva University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary to help organize a rally in support of the refuseniks. He named the group the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, which became instrumental in igniting a nationwide movement. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Dr. Amy Fedeski.

Image: Union of Councils for Soviet Jews Bumper Stickers, Buttons, Prisoner of Conscience Medals, P-906.

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.

In the summer of 1970, Soviet Jewish dissidents Eduard Kuznetsov and Mark Dymshits organized a group of 16 refuseniks to take over a small, 12-seater airplane and escape from the USSR. Dubbed "Operation Wedding," the group booked their tickets on the small civilian aircraft under the guise of attending a wedding. Their plan: to board the flight, forcibly remove the pilots during a stop, and continue on to Israel. But on the morning of June 15, as they arrived to board their flight, KGB agents intercepted the group. The accused were charged with high treason, and the trial drew international attention - and shined a light on the human rights violations the Soviet government was committing, igniting the Soviet Jewry movement as we know it. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov.

Image: Prisoner of the Soviet Secret Police Eduard Kuznetsov poster produced by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, from the Records of Action for Soviet Jewry at the American Jewish Historical Society, I-487.

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.

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. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Gemma R. Birnbaum, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Image: From the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews collection at AJHS, P-906.

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.

In June 1956, a delegation of American Orthodox rabbis traveled to the Soviet Union, marking the first significant contact between U.S. Jews and the Soviet Jewish community in nearly four decades. The rabbis' mission was to bring hope to Soviet Jewry and learn first-hand of their oppression. Among the five travelers was Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a former U.S. Army chaplain who had ministered to the survivors in Buchenwald. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Dr. Rafael Medoff, founding Director of the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and author of The Rabbi of Buchenwald: The Life and Times of Herschel Schacter. Episode Image: Pamphlet published by the Journal American containing trip reports from the delegation of American Orthodox Rabbis in 1956. From the Subject Files Collection in the Archive of the American Soviet Jewry Movement at AJHS, I-424. 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.

During this bonus episode, taped live at the Angelika Film Center in downtown Manhattan in a send-up to the Hollywood Ten, writer and critic Julie Salamon returns to The Wreckage to host New York Times editor/reporter and historian Clay Risen and AJHS executive director Gemma R. Birnbaum. Risen's new book, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, provided an excellent framework for the discussion.

Our deep appreciation to Rebecca Naomi Jones, who has once again brought life to the archives this season, and with her immense talent and empathetic storytelling, took our listeners on a riveting journey through one of the most tumultuous times in US history.

Additional thanks to Matthew Dallek, Thomas Doherty, Martin J. Siegel, Larry Tye, Jelani Cobb, Clay Risen, and Julie Salamon for being part of our season.

Episode Image: Brochure from the records of the Committee to Free Morton Sobell at AJHS, I-356.

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.

HUAC's continued targeting of activists spread to Jewish Americans and others at the forefront of the anti-Vietnam War movement. In 1967 - a year that would become one of the deadliest for U.S. military casualties as more than 11,000 American soldiers perished - counterculture activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were among those subpoenaed. In response, Hoffman and Rubin were openly defiant, and their highly visible antics, which included arriving dressed in outrageous costumes and waving toy guns, helped to further erode the public's trust in the committee. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Gemma R. Birnbaum, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Episode Image: Yippie activists Abbie Hoffman (left) and Jerry Rubin arrive at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearing October 1, 1968 investigating the clashes at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Photograph by Joseph Silverman. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

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.

By 1957, Joseph McCarthy was dead and HUAC's power and influence was on the decline, with former President Harry Truman calling it "the most un-American thing in the country today." Increasingly, organizations and individuals alike began to speak out against the committee, but rather than back down, committee members escalated their targeting of activist groups and individuals, with particular emphasis on Civil Rights leaders. As the Red Scare continued unabated, prominent Jewish and Black activists found themselves subjected to a new level of interrogation and scrutiny. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Dr. Jelani Cobb, Dean of Columbia Journalism School and scholar of the Cold War.

Image: Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin at the Montgomery March, 1965. From the American Jewish Congress records at the American Jewish Historical Society, I-77.

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.

In the spring of 1954, the blustering anticommunist crusader, Senator Joseph McCarthy, set his sights on a new target: the United States Army, alleging Communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps lab at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey - the same lab where Julius Rosenberg had once worked. In turn, the Army accused McCarthy of using his position to pressure them into giving preferential treatment to his former aide, G. David Schine. The hearings, which were televised live on ABC and the DuMont network, and watched by an estimated 80 million people, unveiled to the nation the true cost of McCarthy's crusade. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Larry Tye, author of Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Image: Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn, Library of Congress.

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.