Let My People Go - Softcover

Lipski, Sam; Rutland, Suzanne D

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1925000850 ISBN 13: 9781925000856

Publisher: Hybrid Publishers, 2015

Synopsis

During the Cold War, Soviet Jews were suspected of being traitors. The Communist leadership closed Jewish organisations and declared Zionism an ideological enemy. As a result of the state-sponsored persecution, anti-Semitism grew: many Soviet Jews suffered hardships, ranging from not being allowed to enlist in universities to being sent to the gulag. For the three critical decades, between 1959 and 1989, Australian Jews and their community leaders were deeply involved in the international campaign to enable Soviet Jews to leave the Soviet Union. Australian politicians (including Bob Hawke, Garfield Barwick, Malcolm Fraser and William Wentworth), joined human rights activists and opinion leaders in the campaign. Australia played a role above and beyond what might be expected from a middle-ranking nation with limited international influence. But the lead actor was Isi Leibler. His involvement and leadership with the refuseniks and Soviet Jews, merit this full account from an Australian Jewish perspective - and the campaign eventually led to the emigration of over a million Jews to Israel.

About this title

About the Author

Sam Lipski, following an extensive journalistic career in Australia and internationally, has been The Pratt Foundation's CEO since 1998. Among his varied media roles he was Foreign Editor, The Bulletin; Foundation Producer for the ABC's This Day Tonight and Executive Producer Four Corners; Washington Correspondent for The Australian and the Jerusalem Post; Australian correspondent for the Washington Post; and a columnist for The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the Sydney Daily Telegraph. He also served as the Foreign Affairs and Media commentator on the Channel Nine Network's Sunday and Today programs. Sam was the Australian Jewish News editor-chief 1987-98, and in 1989 he was the Jerusalem Report's founding publisher.

Suzanne D. Rutland MA (Hons) PhD, Dip Ed, OAM, is Professor of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical & Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney and the main lecturer in the program of Jewish Civilization, Thought and Cultures. She founded, and continues to participate in, the Hebrew and Jewish Studies teacher education program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on Australian Jewish history, edits the Sydney edition of the AJHS Journal, and writes on issues relating to the Shoah and Israel. In January 2008 she received the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to Higher Jewish Education and interfaith dialogue.

Review

(This book) is a welcome addition to the works that focus on a specific aspect of the movement. The book's subtitle, which refers to an "untold story", indicates the aim of its authors. Indeed, the average Western reader is probably unaware of the significant contribution of Australia and its Jews to the movement. It is an impressive story.

Lipski and Rutland's book provides an accounting of Australian activity on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the context of national politics. At the same time, it focuses on the dynamic leading figure in the Australian Soviet Jewry movement, Isi Leibler.

The narrative lacks the emotional coloring and drama of some of the more personal accounts mentioned above, but provides a solid academic study of the Australian involvement.

The book's penultimate sentence regarding Australia's contribution to the Soviet Jewry cause could also have been a fitting title: "They made a difference." They certainly did. --Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 2016

This wide-ranging, well written, heartfelt, and absorbing book stems from the collaborative efforts of historian Suzanne Rutland and journalist Sam Lipski.

The book touches on big players such as righteous gentile Bob Hawke who challenged in a timely way the Russian leadership on behalf of refusniks who had been jailed for their struggle. Australian Jewry as portrayed in the book participated in the international struggle for over thirty years (1959-1989) to mobilize the international protest movement to help free the about three million Russian Jews, allowing about one million of them to eventually emigrate to Israel.

The book draws on an array of primary and secondary sources. Rutland researched in Jerusalem, Sydney and Canberra, and she mined the vast Leibler collection: a private Soviet Jewry archive.

Recommended for all libraries. --David B. Levy, Touro College, NY, AJL REVIEWS FEB/MARCH 2016

Let My People Go is not only an untold story about Australia and the Soviet Jews in the four decades between 1959 and 1989. It is not often that Australia plays an important role in the events of the Northern Hemisphere, outside of military conflict. Yet Australia helped to obtain the release of around one million Jews from the Soviet Union...

...Australia became the first nation to raise the issue of Soviet Jewry in the United Nations. As the authors of Let My People Go point out, Australia took the lead in framing Soviet anti-Semitism "as a human rights issue"... The driver of this campaign was Isi Leibler who was born in Antwerp in 1934, studied at Melbourne High School and the University of Melbourne and founded Jet Set Travel in 1965.

In 1999 Sam Lipski met Mikhail Gorbachev during his visit to Australia. Sam took the occasion to thank the former leader of the Soviet Union for allowing Jews to leave. Though an interpreter, Gorbachev replied as follows: Thank you, I never wanted them to leave. They were our most educated people. We had invested so much in them. We needed them. I wanted them to stay. We lost so much when they left us. But I had no choice. The world wouldn't let us keep them.

One of the reasons why the world would not let the Soviet Union continue to prevent its Jewish citizens from leaving turned on the role of a small number of Australian Jews, Christians and agnostics alike. At last, the story is documented in Let My People Go. --Gerard Henderson, The Sydney Institute

Edition details

• Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1925000850
• ISBN 13: 9781925000856
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296