ABSTRACT
In the years 1969 to 1985, 266,000 Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union, of whom 164,000 went to Israel. The activists of the Zionist movement in the Soviet Union credited it to their heroic, self-sacrificing struggle. People in Israel responsible for activity on behalf of Soviet Jewry prided themselves that only their prudent and many-sided policy over a long period could have brought this about. The Six Day War had a tremendous impact on Soviet Jewry in its swift transition from deep fear for the fate of Israel to boundless joy over the brilliant victory. Numerous were those who pressed Israel and world Jewry to mobilize in the fight for Soviet Jewry, and the pressures and appeals were reinforced with the arrival in Israel of the first Zionist activists from the Soviet Union in the years 1969 to 1971. The stormy debates on the question of accepting restitution payments from Germany involved the subject of Soviet Jewry.
