Hyman Lumer
Dr. Hyman Lumer (1909-76) was a trade union leader active in the Cleveland teacher’s union and United Electrical Workers. He was active in the drive to build the trade union movement and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s. And like 100s of other Jewish progressives, he was imprisoned for his political views by the McCarthyite “witch hunts”. In his later years, he served on the editorial board of Jewish Affairs Magazine. He was active in the Committee for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which called for the creation of an independent Palestinian State alongside the Israeli State.
Abraham Bernard Magil
A.B. Magil (1905 – 2003) was active in the anti-Fascist movement of the 1930s and 40s. Magil was one of the first American journalists to Israel and Palestine and reported on the birth of the State of Israel and the following conflict. Famous for writing Israel in Crisis (1950) and The Peril of Fascism (1939). He was also active in the trade union movement with the Auto Workers Union, the predecessor of United Auto Workers.
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were progressive Jewish activists who stood up for labor and anti-fascist causes such as the anti-Franco movement in Spain and supported the US entry into WWII against Nazi Germany. Tragically, after the war, they were caught in a witch hunt which led to their wrongful sentencing and execution. Historians, legal scholars, and authors have all claimed that the Rosenbergs’ arrest, indictment, trial, and death sentence were all carried out improperly by falsifications, mishandling of our judicial process, and dubious testimonies as “evidence.” There is an ongoing movement to exonerate the Rosenbergs.