July 26, 2017

Remember Stalin? He's back.

Precisely 25 years ago, when we were distributing 250,000 food packages around Moscow, the "Memorial" office was one of many distribution sites. When an elderly recipient saw the U.S. flag on one side of the box, and the Joint Distribution Committee menorah on another, he told my colleague that Stalin's regime had sent him to the Gulag, falsely accused as a spy for the CIA and the Joint. Now, he was receiving a modest but vital gift from the U.S. Government and the Joint. And now, this.