This a poster from January 1968 advertising a rally at Heichal Hatarbut in Tel Aviv in support of Russian Jewry. The title of the event is “Let My People Go” – a biblical reference to Moses’ message to Pharaoh when the Children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt. The rally was a show of solidarity with the Jews in the USSR who were not allowed to leave their country. In attendance were Golda Meir, then a member of Knesset, and the government ministers Menachem Begin and Dr. Yosef Burg.
Following the Six Day War of 1967, a large number of Soviet Jews applied for exit visas to leave the Soviet Union. While some were allowed to leave, many were refused permission to emigrate, either immediately or after their cases would languish for years in bureaucratic procedures. In many cases, the reason given for this refusal was that the people had, at some point in their careers, been given access to information vital to Soviet national security and therefore could not now be allowed to leave. Jews who were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union became known as “Refusniks.” In response to their application to emigrate, the KGB (the main Soviet security agency) became aware of these Refuseniks and often followed their actions, censured their post and their phone calls, and caused their dismissal from their workplaces. As can be seen in this poster, throughout this period through until nearly the end of the 1980s, Jewish communities around the world worked tirelessly to help the Jews of the USSR by visiting them and offering personal help as well as by pressurising local politicians to work harder to ease their plight.
Even though she spent most of her youth in the United States, Golda Meir was born in Kiev (formally in the USSR) and lived there until she was eight years old. In June 1948, just after the establishment of the State of Israel, she was appointed Israel’s first ambassador to the USSR. She served in this post for less than a year, as she was elected to the Knesset in the 1949 elections.
Menachem Begin, also present at this rally, had been the leader of the Irgun (Etzel), a Zionist paramilitary organisation that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. After the establishment of the State of Israel, Begin founded the Herut political party that later on became the Likud party. After many years in opposition, Menachem Begin became Israel’s sixth prime minister in 1977. Dr. Yosef Burg was born in Germany in 1902, and in the 1930s he worked underground to help Jews escape Nazi Germany. He immigrated to Palestine in 1939 and was elected to the First Knesset in 1949. Burg helped to found the National Religious Party and served as a minster for over 30 years.
