Highway Sculpture Demands Freedom for Soviet Jews

An enormous sculpture, demanding freedom for Soviet Jews, recently appeared off Highway 80 in the Emeryville mudflats outside of San Francisco, The anonymous sculpture, entitled “Let My People Go” in four-foot-high letters, is viewed daily by thousands of Bay Area commuters,

According to Morey Schapira, president of the Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry, the sculpture represents a growing concern for the 2.5 million Soviet Jews “now being held as pawns by an increasingly anti-Semitic Soviet regime.”

The Korean airline massacre, said Schapira, “gives us a pretty good indication as to how much the Soviets value the lives of foreigners. Realizing this, it’s not difficult to image how harshly they’re capable of treating their own helpless citizens, especially if they happen to be Jews.”

According to the Bay Area Council, a member of the Union of Council for Soviet Jews have not experienced this level of oppression since the “Black Years” of Stalin’s reign, “in which there was a calculated campaign to eradicate Jewish life in the Soviet Union.”

Talisman said the effort began in 1968 when an assistant to the then Rep, Charles Vanik (D.Ohio) and the Congressman, who is of Czech descent, visited the State Jewish Museum in Prague, From then until 1979, they sought permission to be able to see the parts of the collection that were no on display, In 1979, Talisman and two Jewish professors were able to view what he called an “incredible sight” of thousands of pieces stored in the museum buildings, including one floor filled with Torah scroll covers.

Talisman had high praise for the “loving care” that Czech government and the more than 140 employes of the Jewish Museum have given to the artifacts.

Peggy Loar, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Travelling Exhibition Service which is organizing the exhibit, said that 109 individuals and organizations contributed more than $1 million to bring the exhibit to the U.S. The major gift was from Philip Morris, Inc.

SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS

The exhibit will run in Washington through December 31. It will then go on display at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, January 21 March 18, 1984; the Jewish Museum in New York, April 15-August 26; the San Diego Museum of Art, September 22-November 18; the Detroit Institute of Arts, March 12-May 5, 1985; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Conn,. June 3-July 29. 1985.

Concurrent with the exhibition, children’s drawings from the Terezin concentration camp which are also from the Prague museum, will be shown at the B’nai B’rith’s Klutznick Museum in Washington These drawings will also be shown at the Jewish Museum in New York. Selections from the drawings will be shown at the exhibitions in the other cities.

SHARING ‘IN THIS PRECIOUS LEGACY’

Talisman said that this is not just a Jewish exhibition but an event allowing “all Americans to share in this precious legacy,” He said special efforts will be made to bring children to the exhibitions, In addition to the “Precious Legacy,” a book is being published by Summit Books on the exhibition and study guides and a special childrens book are also being prepared.

Cohen said the exhibition covers 1,000 years of Jewish life in Moravia, Bohemia and Slovakia, The exhibition will include Torah curtains that date from 1602 and items from the middle ages, although most of the items are from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The exhibition is also a “story of a museumturned upside down in a world gone mad, “Cohen said, “of an institution traditionally devoted to the preservation of human culture that overnight came of document the totality of human destruction.”

Cohen said the Jewish Museum in Prague was founded in 1906 by Hugo Lieben, In 20 years, he collected more than 1,000 ceremonial and folk art objects and Hebrew manuscripts and books which before World War II were housed in two buildings in Prague’s old Jewish quarter.

In 1942, the Nazis created a central Jewish museum and began systematically collecting liturgical books and manuscripts, popular novels, paintings and folk crafts, furniture pianos, violins, kitchen utensils, clothing and synagogue implements from 145 Jewish communities in Czechoslovakia.

Cohen said the dates when the shipments arrived in Prague from each Jewish community coincided with the date Jews from that town were deported to death camps.

By 1945, the items assembled by the Nazis filled eight historic buildings in the Jewish quarter and 50 warehouses throughout Prague, The Nazis also had eight Jewish curators cataloguing the items who, Cohen said, felt that at least they were preserving Jewish culture for history.

One who survived, Hannah Violkaba, now 92, helped reassemble the material after the war. The Czech Jewish community did not have the funds after the war to maintain its art treasures and donated the eight buildings and the thousands of objects to the government which has maintained them ever since.

Representatives of the Czech Jewish community are expected to be at the opening of the exhibit in Washington. Talisman said he hopes one of the results of the exhibit will be to encourage many Americans to visit the historic old Jewish quarter of Prague.