At the end of World War II nearly three million Jews were trapped inside the Soviet Union. They were unwanted by the repressive Stalinist state, but forbidden to leave. Those who tried were followed by the KGB, harassed or forced into menial labor or imprisonment. In December 1987, on the eve of a historic summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, a quarter-million people gathered in Washington, D.C., for a rally aimed at freeing the Soviet Jews. Author Gal Beckerman explores this moment and movement in his new book, "When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone," a multi-generational narrative of the heroic individuals who stood up to a superpower and won.
Guest:
Gal Beckerman, author of When They Come for Us, We’ll be Gone: The Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); reporter at The Forward and longtime editor and staff writer at the Columbia Journalism Review