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Recording of the Closing Ceremony for Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry, 1997
Recording of the Closing Ceremony for Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry, 1997
Call Number
OH1697-V
Date
1997
Description
This recording is of a celebration marking the conclusion of the Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry (BASJ), which was created in 1987 to provide advocacy and resettlement support for Jews who were facing increasing anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. The ceremony honors the founder, Bill Cohen, as well as the other critical participants in BASJ - the administrators, members of the board, and the volunteers. Moderator and BASJ pioneer, Roxanne Bailin, describes the accomplishments of the project, while Bill Cohen elaborates on its history and mission. He remarks that BASJ was one of the most successful resettlement efforts in the United States. Other speakers and honorees include the mayor of Boulder, the Allied Jewish Federation and local rabbis, as well as members of the New American community (resettled Soviet Jewish immigrants). After the recognition ceremony, two choruses sing and present skits about the process of emigrating and then integrating into the new community. The event concludes with a description of a successor group founded by the Russian Jewish community, the New American Organization.
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2
Oral History with Murray Richtel, OH1659
Oral History with Murray Richtel, OH1659
Call Number
OH1659
Date
2010
Description
In this interview Judge Murray Richtel recalls leading a group of lawyers and judges on a trip to the USSR in 1986. He remembers the subtext of that trip being for him to contact Soviet Jews and learn first hand about the dimensions of the refusenik situation. He describes some of the people he met, both Jews and Soviet officials, and his own growing feeling that something had to be done to help the refuseniks and how this resulted in the founding, with several others, of Boulder Action for Soviet Jewry (BASJ). Parallel with this founding of BASJ was the community action specifically to help Naum Meiman, a distinguished mathematician and refusenik, to leave the Soviet Union. Judge Richtel also talks about the specific interactions of BASJ and the Boulder/Dushanbe Sister City Project.
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