Louis Rosenblum

Lou Rosenblum attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush NY{{Cite news|title=West Side Friend of the Soviet Jews|last=Goldman|first=Caren|date=2 November 1975|work=Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine|pages=21–22}} and began his higher education at Brooklyn College in 1941. After enlisting he served in the U.S. Army Infantry from 1943 to 1946 in the Pacific Theater, fought in the Battle of Okinawa, was awarded the bronze star and, at the conclusion of hostilities, served in the army of occupation in Japan. In 1948 he graduated from Brooklyn College with a B.S. in Chemistry and continued to Ohio State University where, in 1952, he earned a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry.{{Cite news|url=http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/APA/ClevelandJewishNewsFree/default.aspx#panel=home|title=A Dual Concern:Outer Space and Inner Peace|last=Green|first=Bernice|date=22 January 1965|work=The Cleveland Jewish News|access-date=11 February 2019}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/sj/lr-bio-rosenblum.htm|title=Cleveland and the Freeing of Soviet Jewry:Louis Rosenblum-A Biographic Sketch|date=2007}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/sj/images/archives-rosenblumpapers-ms4926.pdf|title=The Western Reserve Historical Society Manuscript Collections: Louis Rosenblum Papers MS4926 Overview|last1=Avner|first1=Jane A.|last2=Grabowski|first2=John G.|date=1 June 2004|access-date=10 February 2019}} A lifelong folk dancer and teacher, he appeared in the 1947 film “To Hear Your Banjo Play” as the dance partner of Margot Mayo, with a young Pete Seeger on banjo.

File:Louis Rosenblum 1978.jpg, Schuchuli, Arizona, 16 December 1978]]

From 1952 to 1981, Rosenblum worked for the NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, as research scientist and technical manager in fields of high energy fuels for jet aircraft, high temperature materials, liquid metal corrosion, environmental monitoring systems, and solar photovoltaic and electrochemical energy systems. During the 1960s he served as Chief of the Liquid Metals Branch. During that time he led a "Fair Housing Drive" to fight discrimination against African American employees who were unable to buy or rent property in proximity to their work at NASA.{{Cite news|url=https://public.maximus.newsbank.com/images/L00000013/cache/pdf/bitonal_tiff_g4/pl_12B384AECE93B27C_1554842589443.pdf|title=Lewis Sets Fair Housing Drive|date=17 July 1964|work=Cleveland Plain Dealer|access-date=9 April 2019|page=7}}{{Cite journal|last=McQuaid|first=Kim|date=Fall–Winter 2006|title=The Space Age at the Grass Roots: NASA in Cleveland 1958-1990|url=https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/issue/view/235|journal=American Studies|volume=47|issue=3/4|pages=113–136}} In 1969 Rosenblum was appointed Chief of the Direct Energy Conversion Division responsible for research and development activities in thermionics, photovoltaics and electrochemistry. At NASA he co-invented a portable electronic beam welder.{{Cite journal|date=June 2019|title=More than a Memory: Dr. Louis "Lou" Rosenblum|url=https://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/news/AF/index.html|journal=Glenn Aerospace Frontiers|volume=21|issue=6|pages=10}} In 1977 he was appointed Chief of the Solar and Electrochemistry Division responsible for 1) research and development of space related photovoltaics and energy storage and 2) U.S. and international demonstration projects for terrestrial application of photovoltaic and electrochemical storage systems. Under Rosenblum the first nickel-zinc battery suitable for a commercial electric cars was developed in 1978.{{Cite journal|date=July 1978|title=Plugging in the Electric Car|journal=Popular Mechanics|volume=July 1978|pages=14}}{{Cite news|title=NASA Battery May Power Cars of Future|last=Sabath|first=Donald|date=15 March 1978|work=The Cleveland Plain Dealer}} The photovoltaic demonstration work was deployed in remote villages in the US and across the globe.{{Cite news|url=https://public.maximus.newsbank.com/images/L00000008/cache/pdf/bitonal_tiff_g4/pl_1351CC6E0034CBF7_1554846846740.pdf|title=Solar Technology Awaits Price Drop|last=Diem|first=William|date=10 October 1977|work=Cleveland Plain Dealer|access-date=9 April 2019|page=9C}}{{Cite news|url=https://public.maximus.newsbank.com/images/L00000001/cache/pdf/bitonal_tiff_g4/pl_1307DFC0F33D6403_1554845066776.pdf|title=Solar Energy Gets Trial in Remote Tunisian Village|last=Lawless|first=James|date=10 August 1980|work=Cleveland Plain Dealer|access-date=9 April 2019|page=35A}}{{Cite journal|last1=Rosenblum|first1=Louis|last2=Bifano|first2=William|last3=Hein|first3=Gerald|last4=Ratajczak|first4=Anthony|year=1979|title=Photovoltaic power systems for rural areas of developing countries|journal=Solar Cells|volume=1|pages=65–79|doi=10.1016/0379-6787(79)90008-5|citeseerx=10.1.1.472.2103|s2cid=95100497 }} He was appointed to the Federal Senior Executive Service in 1979 and retired from NASA in 1981. From 1982-1988, Rosenblum worked as a private consultant in photovoltaic and renewable energy systems for several U.S. and international clients, including the University of Michigan, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the United Nations Development Program.

In 1963, Rosenblum and fellow members of Beth Israel-The West Temple, a Cleveland synagogue, founded the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism (CCSA)— the first public organization dedicated to helping Soviet Jews.{{Cite book|title=When they come for us, we'll be gone : the epic struggle to save Soviet Jewry|last=Beckerman|first=Gal|publisher=Mariner|year=2012|isbn=9780547577470|pages=59|oclc=753301374}} Its success was recognized nationally and became a model for other local groups.{{Cite book|title=The American movement to aid Soviet Jews|last=Orbach|first=William|date=1979|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=978-0870232671|pages=20|oclc=4495649}} In 1970, Rosenblum’s multi-year effort led to the CCSA joining with five other grass-root councils to create a national activist and advocacy organization, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ).{{Cite book|title=When they come for us, we'll be gone : the epic struggle to save Soviet Jewry|last=Beckerman|first=Gal|date=2012|publisher=Mariner|isbn=9780547577470|pages=219|oclc=753301374}} Rosenblum served as the first president of the UCSJ from 1970-1973.{{Cite book|title=A second exodus : the American movement to free Soviet Jews|last1=Friedman|first1=Murray|last2=Chernin|first2=Albert|date=1999|publisher=Brandeis University Press|isbn=978-0874519129|oclc=40521266}} By 1978, the UCSJ had grown to 22 member councils across North America,{{Cite book|title=The American movement to aid Soviet Jews|last=Orbach|first=William|date=1979|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=978-0870232671|oclc=4495649}} and by 1985, 32, making it the largest independent Soviet Jewry organization in the world.

Rosenblum originated a number of grass roots projects and techniques that were widely used by organizations working for freedom of emigration.

Soon after the founding of the CCSA, Rosenblum became aware of the need for resources and educational materials for Soviet Jewry advocates in North America. In 1965 he published his first Hear the Cry of the Oppressed: Handbook for Community Action on Soviet Anti-Semitism.{{Cite book|title=Handbook for Community Action on Soviet Anti-Semitism|last=Rosenblum|first=Louis|publisher=Bureau of Jewish Education|year=1965|location=Cleveland, OH}} The Handbook was republished in two later editions – 1966 and 1970, and contained suggestions for action programs; material for talks and sermons; dramatic readings, songs and plays; teacher guides and teaching units for use in school; and reports, articles, and other factual background on Soviet Jewry.

Rosenblum created postage stamp-sized protest seals that became a symbol of the Soviet Jewry movement with a design by Cleveland artist Mort Epstein (see external link below) set on a deep red background. Between 1967 and 1978 the CCSA sold 20,750,000 stamps to individuals and Soviet Jewry organizations across North America. By placing the stamps on regular correspondence the project sought to increase public awareness of the treatment of Soviet Jews. (see external link below)

In 1968, Rosenblum produced and globally distributed “Before Our Eyes,” a 13 1/2 minute film documenting the historic and current problems of Jews in the Soviet Union (see external link below).  The title came from a remark by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the movie that “Before our eyes a people and a culture are being made to vanish.”

Based on microfilm smuggled out of the Soviet Union in 1974, Rosenblum edited and published the 54-page samizdat document, "The White Book of Exodus, No. 2," an account by Moscow Jewish activists of the arrests and military conscription of young Jewish activists in order to prevent demonstrations during the visit of President Nixon for a Moscow summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev.{{Cite book|title=The last exodus|last=Schroeter|first=Leonard|date=1974|publisher=Universe Books|isbn=978-0876632048|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/lastexodus0000schr/page/417 417]|oclc=994791|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/lastexodus0000schr/page/417}}

With the formation of the UCSJ in 1970 “Rosenblum began looking for…’people to people’ opportunities, ways that American Jews could communicate with Soviet Jews, humanizing the cause.” Rosenblum became “one of the primary architects of the American [Soviet Jewry Movement] campaign’s shift to “people-to-people” tactics to directly connect individual Jews in the United States and the USSR with one another.”{{Cite journal|last=Kelner|first=Shaul|date=6 February 2018|title=The American Soviet Jewry Movement's "Uneventful" 1968: Cold War Liberalism, Human Interest, and the Politics of the Long Haul|journal=American Jewish History|volume=102|issue=1|pages=5–35|doi=10.1353/ajh.2018.0002|s2cid=158072283}}

Armed with the names and addresses of Jews living in the USSR who had signed petitions, Rosenblum designed and distributed holiday greeting cards for American Jews to send to their Soviet Jewish counterparts, a program which spread across North America.{{Cite news|title=Temple Heard the Cry|last=Baranick|first=Alana|date=19 September 1998|work=The Cleveland Plain Dealer|pages=1F, 3F}} Shortly thereafter, Rosenblum further broke the barrier of direct communication between the two communities when he began a campaign to place phone calls, via the US and Soviet international operators, to Jewish activists in the USSR. These phone conversations became a major source of information about the Jewish emigration movement in the former Soviet Union (phone transcripts available from the Western Reserve Historical Society). In 1971 Rosenblum published a “how-to manual on sending parcels to Soviet Jewish prisoners of conscience” and a pamphlet describing conditions for Jewish prisoners in the Potma labor camp in Mordovia, further bridging the divide.{{Cite book|title=Potma: Repression of Jews in the Soviet Union|last=Rosenblum|first=Louis|publisher=Cleveland Council on Soviet Antisemitism|year=1971|location=Cleveland, OH}}

During telephone conversations in 1971 with Soviet Jewish activists, Rosenblum became aware that Soviet Jews intent on learning Hebrew were holding classes in private homes with underground teachers who were facing arrest due to lacking teaching certificates. Subsequently, Rosenblum established Project Sefer (see external link below) to meet the needs of the Hebrew learning groups throughout the Soviet Union and included the mailing of Hebrew textbooks and the production of special recorded language tapes and materials for the self-study of Hebrew. In 1973 after Soviet authorities announced that teaching without certification was illegal, Rosenblum developed a program, working with Cleveland Jewish educators, to test and certify Hebrew teachers in the Soviet Union.{{Cite news|url=http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/APA/ClevelandJewishNewsFree/SharedView.Article.aspx?href=CJN%2F1973%2F06%2F29&id=Ar00500&sk=214355F7&viewMode=image|title=Soviet Jews Eager to Learn Hebrew|date=29 June 1973|work=The Cleveland Jewish News|access-date=31 March 2019}}

During the Brezhnev era, Rosenblum and other Soviet Jewry activist leaders provided detailed briefings to tourists visiting the former Soviet Union to enable them to visit Soviet Jewish activists for the purpose of establishing meaningful people-to-people contacts, delivering Hebrew educational materials and serving as communication links with activists in the West.

“The effectiveness of people-to-people contact was clear…and did more for the movement than any policy paper or rally. Understanding this was Rosenblum’s genius.”{{Cite book|title=When they come for us, we'll be gone : the epic struggle to save Soviet Jewry|last=Beckerman|first=Gal|date=2012|publisher=Mariner|isbn=9780547577470|pages=221|oclc=753301374}}

File:Moscow Activists with LR May 1974.jpgThe idea of connecting trade relations with Soviet Jewish freedom of emigration was conceived by Rosenblum in 1969 and later studied by a Jewish policy group in 1971.{{Cite book|title=Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA|last=Cahn|first=Anne|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|year=1998|pages=39}}{{Cite book|url=https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/35384/research.pdf?sequence=2|title=Securing Peace: Henry M. Jackson and U.S.-Soviet Relations (Masters Thesis)|last=Atkinson|first=Henry|publisher=University of Missouri|year=2012|location=Columbia, MO|pages=92}} That year Rosenblum “mapped out strategy for a freedom-of-emigration bill” in Congress working with attorney Nathan Lewin and Harvey Lieber of American University that resulted in a proposed amendment to the Export Administration Act of 1969.{{Cite book|title=The American movement to aid Soviet Jews|last=Orbach|first=William|date=1979|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press|isbn=978-0870232671|pages=130|oclc=4495649}} This work to develop a freedom of emigration bill became the precursor of the Jackson–Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974. During the development of the Jackson–Vanik amendment, Rosenblum met frequently with Mark E. Talisman, Administrative Assistant to his congressman, Charles Vanik, and Richard Perle, senior aide to Senator Jackson.{{Cite book|title=When they come for us, we'll be gone : the epic struggle to save Soviet Jewry|last=Beckerman|first=Gal|date=2012|publisher=Mariner|isbn=9780547577470|pages=285|oclc=753301374}} He also met with Leonard Garment, Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon, as an adviser on human rights in the Soviet Union and to press for adoption of the Jackson–Vanik strategy.{{Cite news|url=https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/archives/jackson-vanik-opens-doors-to-soviet-jews-emigration/article_7cbee064-e9fb-5bd7-a3e2-67f7faa0d027.html|title=Jackson-Vanik opens doors to Soviet Jews' emigration|last=Schur Brown|first=Ellen|date=10 January 2008|work=Cleveland Jewish News}} During the lead-up to the congressional vote on Jackson–Vanik, when American Jewish leaders and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry were wavering in their support of the legislation, Rosenblum remained in close touch with Moscow Jewish activists to encourage them to make their support of the amendment known. The resulting appeal from one hundred Soviet Jewish activists was one of the factors that led to the amendment's passage.{{Cite book|title=When they come for us, we'll be gone : the epic struggle to save Soviet Jewry|last=Beckerman|first=Gal|date=2012|publisher=Mariner|isbn=9780547577470|pages=295|oclc=753301374}}

The Louis Rosenblum papers, containing extensive documentation of his work in the Soviet human rights movement, are available in the Western Reserve Historical Society archives.

• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr9FP93o8Ro Film: “To Hear Your Banjo Play”]
• [https://squaredancehistory.org/items/show/655 Margot Mayo] American Square Dance Group
• [http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/sj/lr-projects-movie.htm Film Description: “Before Our Eyes,”]
• [http://clevelandjewishhistory.net/sj/lr-projects-seals.htm Soviet Jewry protest seals]
• [http://clevelandartsprize.org/awardees/mort_epstein.html Description of Artist: Mort Epstein]
• [http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/sj/lr-projects-sefer.htm Project Sefer (sending books to Hebrew teachers in the Former Soviet Union)]
• [http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OCLWHi2634.xml;chunk.id=c02_1CC;brand=default The Louis Rosenblum Archives at the Western Reserve Historical Society]
• [http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OCLWHi0329.xml;query=;brand=default Guide to The Louis Rosenblum papers]

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Category:People from Flatbush, Brooklyn

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Category:Ohio State University Graduate School alumni

Category:20th-century American chemists

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Category:Soviet Jewry movement activists