by
Philip Spiegel
Foreword by
Natan Sharansky
Triumph Over Tyranny is the most
complete account to date of the remarkable stories of courageous
people to change the policies of a totalitarian regime. It is a
panorama of the history of the international Soviet Jewry movement
and the fight for human rights in the former Soviet Union.
This is the first book in English to reveal some of the clandestine
activities of the Chabad movement to keep Judaism alive in the Soviet
Union during the regimes of Stalin and Khrushchev. It discloses
the dramatic story of the Israeli government's secret missions to
contact and aid Soviet Jews in their quest to emigrate from an oppressive
regime and live as Jews in Israel. Quoting from newly translated
KGB documents, the book shows how leaders in the Kremlin rationalized
their brutal and repressive actions.
Motivated by their realization that European Jews had been abandoned
to suffer the horrors of the Holocaust, the activists in the U.S.S.R.
and abroad were determined to give meaning to the slogan "Never
Again!" They waged successful campaigns to save their brethren,
the Jews of the Soviet Union who courageously refused to be victims.
Philip Spiegel and his wife,
Carolyn Kommel Spiegel, traveled to the Soviet Union in 1985 and
1987 as participants in the Moscow Marathon. They also visited
and befriended refuseniks in Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. From
1985 to 1995 the Spiegels served on the Board of Directors of
the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews. During this time the author
was chairman of the Social Action Committee of Congregation Kol
Emeth in Palo Alto.
In 2000, Philip wrote and published Remembering Ottynia,
a 64-page book about his parents' hometown in Ukraine. The book
was accepted by Yad Vashem as a Yizkor (memorial) book.
Since 2002, he has researched the history of the international
Soviet Jewry movement and interviewed over 200 activists, political
leaders, former refuseniks and prisoners of conscience. In 2006,
Philip developed and taught "The Journey of Soviet Jewry,"
a five-session course for Lehrhaus Judaiaca, the Adult School
for Jewish Studies in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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