Yaakov (Jacob) Birnbaum

Yaakov (Jacob) Birnbaum (10 December 1926 – ) is the founder of Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) and many other human rights organizations. Many consider him to be the father of the movement to liberate the Soviet Jewry. He is also a son of Solomon Birnbaum and a grandson of Nathan Birnbaum.

Incidentally, Mr. Birnbaum's day of birth coinsides with Human Rights Day which was established on his 22nd birthday.

Biography

Early life

Yaakov Birnbaum was born in Hamburg, Germany. Shortly after Nazis came to power in 1933 his father was attacked in the street. During the same period, six year old Yaakov was surrounded by neighboring German boys who swarmed into the garden and stuffed his mouth full of dirt. The family managed to reach England but Hitler's voice screaming "the accursed Jews" still dominated their lives. In 1938 and 1939 Yaakov went to school with refugee children who were brought out from Central Europe at the last moment in "kinder transporten" organized by Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schonfeld. He later studied modern European history at University of London.

During World War II the Birnbaums were well aware of the plight of European Jews under Nazi occupation and agonized over their inability to help out, especially relatives.

After the war

As the war ended in 1945 Yaakov Birnbaum moved to France where from 1946 to 1951 he helped survivors of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet labor camps - Jews from Poland, USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. He later worked to help North African Jews fleeing the civil war in Algiers.

Fight for Soviet Jewry

With his experience of Nazism and Soviet communism, Mr. Birnbaum felt that an all-out effort should be made by U. S. Jewry to combat the Kremlin's oppression of Soviet Jews. He decided to create a national student movement to act as a spearhead to mobilize the grassroots to transform Washington into the protector and rescuer of Soviet Jewry. In 1964 he moved to New York City and on 27 April of that year he convened a New York metropolitan student meeting at Columbia University. The meeting was an emotional one. The theme was that the Holocaust should be taken as a warning and the civil rights movement as a model for grassroots action. Within four days some 1,000 students rallied in front of the Soviet U.N. Mission. He called the new group "Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry" (a play on the Marxist term "class struggle") and his first office operated out of his bedroom. In its recent timeline of 350 years of American Jewish history, the Center for Jewish History marked 1 May, 1964 as the beginning of the public movement for Soviet Jewry.

References

* [http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=9383 Yakov Birnbaum's Freedom Ride]
* [http://www.ijn.com/archive/2004%20arch/060404.htm#story9 Jacob Birnbaum: the prophet is not forgotten]
* [http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/soviet_jews_exodus/English/JewishHistory_s/JewishHistoryBirnbaum_1.shtml JACOB BIRNBAUM and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry Part 1]
* [http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/soviet_jews_exodus/English/JewishHistory_s/JewishHistoryBirnbaum_2.shtml JACOB BIRNBAUM and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry Part 2]
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316498602 Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist: An American Story]