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The Wreckage — History
The Wreckage

The Wreckage is a narrative podcast from the American Jewish Historical Society chronicling the unique stories of Jewish Americans during the Cold War. Follow aid workers across the globe in the aftermath of World War II, listen in on Red Scare-era testimonies before Congress, and hear first-hand accounts of traveling to the Soviet Union at the height of Iron Curtain tensions. The full series is now available!

The Wreckage is hosted by acclaimed singer and actress Rebecca Naomi Jones. Jones received a Drama Desk nomination for her portrayal of Laurey in Daniel Fish’s Tony Award winning revival of Oklahoma. Additional Broadway includes Significant Other, Hedwig and The Angry Inch, American Idiot, Passing Strange. Off-Broadway: I Can Get It For You Wholesale, Big Love (Drama League nomination), Murder Ballad (Lilly award, Lucille Lortel nomination), As You Like It, Describe the Night, Marie and Rosetta, Fire In Dreamland, The Fortress of Solitude, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Wig Out! Television: Genius: Aretha (series regular); Power Book III: Raising Kanan (recurring); Your Friends & Neighbors (recurring); Black Cake (recurring), High Maintenance (recurring), Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll (recurring), The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh, And Just Like That, Strangers, Inside Amy Schumer, Limitless, Difficult People, Law & Order: SVU. Films: Someone Great, The Outside Story, French Fries, Most Likely To Murder, The Big Sick, Ratter, Ordinary World, Passing Strange, Broadway Idiot. Solo concerts: Lincoln Center American Songbook, Apollo Cafe. Rebecca holds a BFA in Drama from the University of North Carolina: School of the Arts.

Copyright: © 2024

Latest Episodes:

The Termination: Bonus Episode Apr 29, 2025

Show notes

During this bonus episode, taped live at the Angelika Film Center in downtown Manhattan in a send-up to the Hollywood Ten, writer and critic Julie Salamon returns to The Wreckage to host New York Times editor/reporter and historian Clay Risen and AJHS executive director Gemma R. Birnbaum. Risen's new book, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, provided an excellent framework for the discussion.

Our deep appreciation to Rebecca Naomi Jones, who has once again brought life to the archives this season, and with her immense talent and empathetic storytelling, took our listeners on a riveting journey through one of the most tumultuous times in US history.

Additional thanks to Matthew Dallek, Thomas Doherty, Martin J. Siegel, Larry Tye, Jelani Cobb, Clay Risen, and Julie Salamon for being part of our season.

Episode Image: Brochure from the records of the Committee to Free Morton Sobell at AJHS, I-356.

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.

Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Yippies Apr 15, 2025

Show notes

HUAC's continued targeting of activists spread to Jewish Americans and others at the forefront of the anti-Vietnam War movement. In 1967 - a year that would become one of the deadliest for U.S. military casualties as more than 11,000 American soldiers perished - counterculture activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were among those subpoenaed. In response, Hoffman and Rubin were openly defiant, and their highly visible antics, which included arriving dressed in outrageous costumes and waving toy guns, helped to further erode the public's trust in the committee. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Gemma R. Birnbaum, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Episode Image: Yippie activists Abbie Hoffman (left) and Jerry Rubin arrive at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearing October 1, 1968 investigating the clashes at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Photograph by Joseph Silverman. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.

Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Activists Apr 01, 2025

Show notes

By 1957, Joseph McCarthy was dead and HUAC's power and influence was on the decline, with former President Harry Truman calling it "the most un-American thing in the country today." Increasingly, organizations and individuals alike began to speak out against the committee, but rather than back down, committee members escalated their targeting of activist groups and individuals, with particular emphasis on Civil Rights leaders. As the Red Scare continued unabated, prominent Jewish and Black activists found themselves subjected to a new level of interrogation and scrutiny. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Dr. Jelani Cobb, Dean of Columbia Journalism School and scholar of the Cold War.

Image: Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin at the Montgomery March, 1965. From the American Jewish Congress records at the American Jewish Historical Society, I-77.

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.

Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Army Mar 18, 2025

Show notes

In the spring of 1954, the blustering anticommunist crusader, Senator Joseph McCarthy, set his sights on a new target: the United States Army, alleging Communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps lab at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey - the same lab where Julius Rosenberg had once worked. In turn, the Army accused McCarthy of using his position to pressure them into giving preferential treatment to his former aide, G. David Schine. The hearings, which were televised live on ABC and the DuMont network, and watched by an estimated 80 million people, unveiled to the nation the true cost of McCarthy's crusade. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Larry Tye, author of Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Image: Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn, Library of Congress.

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Defendants Mar 04, 2025

Show notes

On April 5, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death under the Espionage Act of 1917. The couple was accused of spying for the Soviet Union and providing classified information about nuclear weapons, radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines. The trial, which was presided over by Judge Irving Robert Kaufman, captured international attention. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Martin J. Siegel, author of Judgment and Mercy: The Turbulent Life and Times of the Judge Who Condemned the Rosenbergs.

Image: Cover of brochure produced by the National Committee to Secure Justice for Morton Sobell. From the Committee to Free Morton Sobell Collection at AJHS, I-356.

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Professors Feb 18, 2025

Show notes

College professors and other educators were among those targeted by anti-communists, but the search for Communist Party members in the U.S. education system began much earlier. The so-called "Red-ucators" were among the first deemed subversives, and Harvard University, City College of New York, and many other schools were rocked by hundreds of subpoenas, calling them to testify in front of special committees that were formed to weed out communists in education. Morris Schappes, an English professor in the CUNY system and member of the American Communist Party, was one of these educators, and became a prominent symbol of the quest to purge school systems of subversives. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Gemma R. Birnbaum, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Image: May Day Labor Parade, New York College Teachers Union 1930's - 1940's. From the Morris U. Schappes Papers at AJHS, P-57.

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Hollywood Ten Feb 04, 2025

Show notes

In November 1947, ten Hollywood writers and directors were cited for contempt of court for their refusal to testify before HUAC. Criminal charges were issued against the group that would become known as "the Hollywood Ten," and the first systematic Hollywood blacklist had begun. Of the ten, six were Jewish - John Howard Lawson, Herbert Biberman, Alvah Bessie, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, and Lester Cole - as were many of the studio executives who voted to blacklist them. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Thomas Doherty, author of Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist.

Image: Anticommunist group protests the release of "Exodus" in 1960, written by Hollywood Ten "unfriendly" Dalton Trumbo. From the Abraham Shoenfeld Papers at AJHS, P-884.

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Unionists Jan 21, 2025

Show notes

The film, television, and theater industries were represented by some of the largest unions in the United States, and in the late 1940s, with the full cooperation of Screen Actors Guild President Ronald Reagan, organizations like the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Values sought to root out what they deemed the communist threat in entertainment. Unions from other industries were also targeted, and a narrative that communist infiltration was the true root cause of contemporary labor conflicts was embraced by a number of American politicians. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Thomas Doherty, author of Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist.

Image: Strikers on the picket line at Warner Bros., in the early morning hours before violence broke out, October 5, 1945. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Committee Jan 07, 2025

Show notes

In 1938, as fascism continued to spread across Europe and Asia, the Dies Committee was formed to investigate "subversive activities" within the United States. The committee, headed by Texas Democrat Martin Dies, was tasked with targeting Nazi sympathizers, but soon shifted its primary focus to rooting out those they believed to have communist ties, and paved the way for a second American red scare. Narrated by Rebecca Naomi Jones and featuring Matthew Dallek, author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.

Episode Image: American Nazi Party marches in support of HUAC. From the Abraham Shoenfeld Papers at AJHS, P-884

The Wreckage is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation. Additional funding is provided through the American Jewish Education Program, generously supported by Sid and Ruth Lapidus.

The Postscript: Bonus Episode Aug 28, 2024

Show notes

World War II and the Holocaust were turning points for American Jews, shaping Jewish American identity, memory, and culture for generations. In this bonus episode, taped live with a studio audience at Sound Lounge in New York City, acclaimed writer Julie Salamon hosts a panel discussion that delves into the anxieties, cultural shifts, and reactions to global events in the postwar years. This episode features historian and author of GI Jews Deborah Dash Moore, historian and author ofBlack Power, Jewish Politics Marc Dollinger, and AJHS executive director and writer of The Wreckage Gemma R. Birnbaum.

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