My dear Western friends,

You must know how we feel about the support you gave us, but let me tell you again anyway. Your support was invaluable. In the most hard and challenging circumstances, we knew that we were not alone, we knew we had devoted friends we could rely upon.

You took our struggle to heart. You raised your voices, you found partners and accomplices, you opened the doors to the media and to the highest echelons of power in your countries. You spoke eloquently and convincingly, and you knew how to inspire and how to push people to action. You did what was virtually impossible: you turned the entire Western world upside down to help us. Without you we could not have succeeded!

Now, as we expand this website, please contribute materials and links related to how people in Western countries advocated for Soviet Jews.  A full account of this advocacy movement in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, and other European countries is far beyond the scope of this website. The most that we can do is to provide references for the interested reader. These references give an idea of the broad scope of the Western advocacy campaign.

The following are some available materials related to this campaign in the West.

Directly related to my case:

• Letter by American lawyers to the Soviet Procurator General on behalf of Yuli Edelstein and me.
• An unpublished article by Rabbi David Goldstein, “How the Son of the Kingfish Became an Advocate for Soviet Jewry”.
• A press release by the European organization “Intergroup for Soviet Jewry”.

Other suggested resources:

• National Conference on Soviet Jewry 
• Union of Councils for Soviet Jews
• Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, Jacob Birnbaum
• Lynn Singer
• Soviet Jewry Freedom Sunday March
• Senator Kennedy
• The UK-based 35s groups

 Another important resource: American Jewish Historical Society

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