Role Models… Always Practicing What They Preached July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ruth, Testimonials , comments closedJan Gronski, wife Ping Ping, and children Natasha and Jessica Shanghai, China
Dear Friends,
I met Ruth for the first time somewhere in Poland. Most likely it was in our own house, as my mother liked to entertain a lot and almost every evening there were some friends or acquaintance who would show up for supper. I remember that Ruth emigrated to Poland under very difficult circumstances. She was following her husband, who needed to come and settle there. Needless to say, emigration is a difficult thing. Many of you (or your parents) experienced it. Coming to a strange country with no knowledge of the language requires indeed a lot of courage. After a little while Ruth settled in and found a job — as I remember it (my memory might be faulty) — within the American section of Polish Radio.
My mother, herself an employee of Polish Radio, met Ruth there. By the time I met Ruth she already had a fair understanding and mastery of spoken Polish. This is not a minor accomplishment. Anyone who has tried to wander through the maze of nasal vowels and sibilant consonants will attest to that. Little wonder that she so gracefully, albeit not without some painful moments, settled in Poland. My memories of that time, me being still a child, are rather hazy and so I do not exactly recall the circumstances under which she and her mother left Poland and emigrated to Denmark. All I know is that after reaching Denmark, her mother passed away, suffering from Alzheimer’s, the disease that eventually afflicted Ruth.
Most of my memories of Ruth come from the period when my mother rediscovered Ruth in New York. Ruth was always interested in politics. I remember that many a time she impressed me with her deep understanding of the political situation in the United States. We did not always agree, but she always helped me understand this place a little better. Ruth was a good friend and she was a person with a profound understanding and empathy for others. Her friendship and her interest in me, my wife, and my children were deeply touching. She always had a good word for us as well as a word of advice for me regarding my relationship with my mother. To me her relationship with Ira was a shining example of how people should support each other: loving, respectful, and always supportive of each other. When the news came that Ruth was in the hospital I was shocked, but an even bigger shock came when, just as I was thinking of calling Ira, I received an e-mail from Ira’s daughter Ruth about Ira’s passing. I had known Ira almost as long as my mother did. I thought that he was the most remarkable human being. His vitality, good humor, and mental clarity were an example for me that you can be a complete human being at 96. I was looking to talk to him more about my experiences in China and was curious about what he was writing about. I thought that he took Ruth’s passing so well and it seemed like he had decided to double his exercise and write. He seemed immortal.
Ira and Ruth seemed to be so eternal. Although I will miss Ruth and Ira dearly, I am also happy for them that their departure was swift and peaceful. All of us have to go one day. We will miss you, Ira, your sense of humor, your incisiveness, and, not least, your lasting interest in the life of common people. We will miss you, Ruth, your keen mind, your commitment to your friends, your kind heart, and your wonderful personality.
Remembering Ira Gollobin July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Testimonials , comments closedPeter A. Schey, Los Angeles, CA
President & Executive Director, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
[The following was distributed widely via Peter’s email list.]
Ira Gollobin, a renowned civil rights and immigration lawyer, who practiced law in New York City for over 70 years, acting as attorney in many high-profile immigration and extradition cases from the 1950s to the 1980s, passed away peacefully this morning in New York, following several days of hospitalization for a staph infection. He was 96 years old.
Ira served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law for 25 years. He was a long-time active member of the National Lawyers Guild. He will be deeply missed by those who were honored to meet and learn from him along his 96-year life journey.
Ira wrote numerous periodical articles on immigration policy, dialectics, East Asia, and Marxist theory. He is the author of Dialectical Materialism: Its Laws, Categories, and Practice (1986), and Winds of Change: An Immigration Lawyer’s Perspective of Fifty Years (1987).
Ira’s epic book on dialectical materialism is a comprehensive review of Marxist philosophy, integrated into subjects ranging from workers to politics to human consciousness. For those interested in the relationship between history, philosophy, politics, consciousness, and the struggle for freedom, this is a book you want to read. If you use a highlighter, forget it. You’ll want to highlight the whole book.
Ira served as general counsel to the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born throughout the McCarthy period. During the Cold War witch-hunt to identify and deport immigrant “communist sympathizers,” Ira and the American Committee coordinated the legal defense of immigrant workers, labor leaders, authors, and others for their real or perceived communist beliefs or associations.
In 1980 Ira put together a team of lawyers including Ira Kurzban, Rick Swartz, and me to work on the Haitian Refugee Center v. Smith case. Under his guidance, and with the help of many others, we won a major class-wide injunction that blocked an “expedited deportation program” initiated by the INS headquarters to quickly deport over 5,000 Haitian refugees deemed a “threat” to South Florida. After a class-wide permanent injunction that we won was upheld in the Court of Appeals (Haitian Refugee Center v. Smith, 676 F.2d 1023 [1982]), the first Haitian adjustment act (which Ira and Rick helped draft and get enacted) granted all class members permanent resident status. Ira was the architect of this victory. In the last chapter of his dialectics book, a chapter on wisdom, Ira wrote:
Class society places its imprint on wisdom. The musings of the sage. . . and the guile of the rulers. . . have been acclaimed as wellsprings of wisdom, while the masses’ hard-earned experience and insights, gained in labor and class struggle amid a multitude of afflictions, have been denigrated by oppressors as responses, sometimes docile, sometimes violent, of beings little above the level of brutes. On the contrary, as regards the oppressed, those with the most practical experience are the wisest and most capable. All wisdom comes from the masses. . . . The wisdom of tens of millions of creators creates something incomparably higher than the greatest prediction of genius. (Quotations and citations omitted.)
Ira was a unique intellectual adventurer and a lawyer whose passion for justice was easily matched by his clients’ love and affection for him. We will miss him, and his guidance, very deeply. We will always treasure what he brought to each of us and to humanity’s struggle for emancipation.
Ruth and Ira Made a Unique Contribution to Our Lives July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Ruth, Testimonials , comments closedEdith and Roberto Belmar Pantelis
Santiago, Chile
[Roberto Belmar was the Head of Public Health for Santiago under Allende and later on for all of Chile. Although he received asylum in the U.S. through Ira’s efforts, he returned to Chile in 1985.]
Edith and Roberto Belmar, with our six daughters, four sons-in-law and 14 grandchildren — three generations of the Belmar Pantelis family — join you in remembrance of two very special people, Ira and Ruth Gollobin. We are very sad to know that our friends have passed away. They have made a unique contribution to our lives and to our country, Chile.
Ruth and Ira were our supporters, from the legal to the emotional dimension, to make possible our return to Chile. This was in 1985 during the worst repressive times, because we truly believed then as we do now that it was our obligation to be with our beloved Chilean people, confronting with them the risks of the process to restore democracy in Chile five years later.
Ruth and Ira not only helped us in the return process, but they also went to Chile, thereby securing our safety with their presence in those dark days of the violation of human rights and persecution of those struggling for the restoration of democracy, and in the creation of a new democracy for Chile. When they came to our country to be with us in those days, it was a unique and brave decision.
Although we cannot be there, our souls will be there, accompanying you in your sorrow. We, the twenty-six Belmar Pantelis, will always honor Ira and Ruth’s contributions to make this a better, just, and peaceful world.
Vignettes of Ira, Characteristic of Ruth July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Ruth, Testimonials , comments closedFreda Birnbaum, New York, NY
Vignettes of Ira
Ira was a man of many quotations. He would sprinkle them through a conversation to light up a subject or clarify a point in a rather impressive way. I relished the way he dipped into his memory bank and came up with an apropos quote.
Sometimes Ira would take off on a subject about which he was passionate and go on and on and on, little tuned in to the capacity of his listener to grasp what he was expatiating upon or promulgating. It was all so clear to him, and I could be left behind befuddled in the intellectual dust clouds he had bestirred.
Ira and I talked every day in the last couple of months of Ruth’s life. When I asked Ira one evening how he was doing with sleeping, he said that if he had any trouble falling asleep he recited the Gettysburg Address to himself. Before he reached the end of it, he’d be asleep.
A Characteristic of Ruth
People talk at funerals about “a woman of valor.” I think of Ruth as “a woman of fervor.” She was fervent about what she didn’t like as well as what she did like. Often her warm excitement about a musician or a political commentary was contagious so I’d find myself wanting to hear the artist play or to read the brilliant analysis of the admired thinker. Her eagerness to share her experience was intense.
Ira, a dear, dear man July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Testimonials , comments closedMary Mazur
New York, NY
Ruchl’s mother and my mother were sisters. Before Ruchl’s illness I didn’t know Ira very well. We would see each other a few times a year at family gatherings or going out for dinner. During Ruchl’s illness I got to know a man of integrity who was a private person, shy and modest, considerate to a fault, and tireless in his devotion to Ruchl.
While still at home, as Ruchl declined, Ira’s days were filled with sickroom chores, shopping, cooking, and major decisions; only then did he finally (after much prodding) seek help. He found Wendy Clarke, Ruchl’s patient, loving caregiver.
During Ruchl’s hospitalization, Ira’s daughter Ruth spun into action, anticipating Ruchl’s needs, reorganizing the apartment, buying whatever was needed for Ruchl’s care and comfort, and taking care of her father, who often forgot to take care of himself. Ruchl’s homecoming was not to be.
In the hospital Ira would sit for hours and hours each day — he didn’t want Ruchl to be alone. He sat holding her hand under the covers as friends and family came and went. Ira was constant. Based on information from the doctors, he was forced to make agonizing decisions. He spoke to those close to Ruchl and asked their opinions. “I want to do the right thing,” he said.
In preparation for her memorial he knew exactly how he wanted to honor and cherish her memory. I now knew a man for whom I have deep affection — a dear, dear man.
An Indefatigable Man July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Testimonials , comments closedRuth Misheloff, New York, NY
I met Ira in the early ‘80s, I think. His book, Dialectical Materialism, which he’d been working on for over a quarter-century at that point, was still in manuscript, but the end was in sight and he needed a copy editor to help prepare it for publication. He was a very good writer, fluent, strong, precise, supple, yet even the best manuscript needs an outside eye to vet clarity and continuity, catch inconsistencies and typos, query possible citation errors, and mark up headings for the designer. I took on the job happily, figuring not only to make some money but to learn a lot in the process. So I started on what became at least a two-year gig, reading line by line, making marginal notes or attaching post-its, and providing additional sheets of queries. When he returned the first batch of manuscript so I could check the changes, I discovered that while responding to my queries, he’d had fresh thoughts, incarnated as new sentences, new paragraphs, and whole new pages.
And that’s what happened with every batch of manuscript I returned to him. It came back to me not only with fixes for the things I’d marked but with elaborations, augmentations, amplifications. I’d comment or query about the new material, of course rereading the old in the process — and then the revised sheets would come back to me amplified yet again!
Ira’s partner in producing these endless new versions was his heroic daughter Ruth, who typed every blessed page, over and over. (Remember typing? On a typewriter? And carbons? White-out? Manual cutting and pasting? It’s sobering to recall what it took to produce a good and careful book in those days, even with a Selectric! If Ira had had access to a computer, the book might have turned out twice as long, if indeed he would have ever been able to stop….)
Even while realizing how painful it probably was for Ira to separate from a project in which he’d invested so much, eventually I couldn’t help chaffing him that he needed a 12-step program to kick his book addiction, and once I may have even conjured up the image of myself and his daughter Ruth as Chaplins on a Modern Times assembly line! He responded goodnaturedly, of course, but was undaunted, and the iterations continued. I began to wonder (silently) if he would experience the authorial version of post-partum depression when he finally turned the manuscript over to the printer.
Ira was an amazing, indefatigable, stalwart, intense, bright-spirited, and dedicated man, and a multi-tasker before the term was invented. One example that has stuck in my mind: when he used to go out running — yes, he did that, too, possibly till he was in his late 80s — he carried index cards with passages of poetry to memorize. Once he “had” the lines, they were his forever. No senior moments for him, at least to my knowledge. He used every second of his time in this world. I can hardly imagine him gone.
A True Friend July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Testimonials , comments closedGuy Sansaricq
Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn,
National Director of the Haitian Apostolate
Brooklyn, NY
Dear Ira,
I do not contact you easily yet I assure you that you are one of the people that I hold in highest esteem and affection. Your total dedication to the cause of Haitians has always deeply inspired me. You are a man with a big heart.
I feel very close to you as you mourn the departure of your good wife Ruth. It’s one of those moments in life that we dread but cannot prevent.
I do not dare offer you any special reflection or advice, as I know you are a wise man who certainly has his own appreciation of life’s moments.
I simply want you to know that in your large circle of admirers there is also one in Brooklyn who values you as a true friend and feels very close to you these days.
Ira Meant a Lot to Dino and Me July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Testimonials , comments closedClaire Hirsch, Los Angeles, CA
Dear Ruth [Gollobin-Basta],
You asked me about the background of my husband Dino’s and Ira’s friendship and I told you it would take too long to tell you when I was in New York. I want to tell you again how much it meant to me to stay in his apartment; to be surrounded by the marvelous library that was the background to all the thinking, writing, and teaching that he did!
Dino was an “armchair Marxist” and went to jail for having committed a capitalist crime in the export business which he had learned from his father in Italy. When he came home after having served eleven months of a “year and a day” sentence, he was confronted with deportation proceedings. It was then that he met your Dad because of a referral from a bail bondsman.
It was a lucky circumstance that he found Ira to defend him. They became friends soon (more like teacher and student in the beginning). They met every month or so in a restaurant in Greenwich Village and would talk. I soon joined them and at first was in awe at the level of their discussions!
Ira suggested to Dino that his condition in this country was not about to change, so he might as well get involved in trying to change things. He soon became active in his union and remained an activist until the day he died. Your mother Esther and I became close friends through our activity in the U.S.-China People’s Friendship Association.
After we moved to California we continued to stay in touch, at first with visits to New York and then their final visit to L.A. when we drove them to Mexico to seek a cure for your mom’s cancer. We were happy to welcome him to Aspen, Colorado, where we spent several of the most wonderful hiking vacations together, first with him alone and then joined by his [second] wife Ruth.
We talked by phone often and he managed to set into perspective whatever was going on in the world at the moment until a few months ago. I shall miss him sorely but am happy to have benefited from his friendship and knowledge for so many years!
A Wonderful Person July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Testimonials , comments closedJoel Truman
New York, NY
Ira was a wonderful person and dear friend to me and my wife Sara. We miss him greatly but take consolation in knowing that he was healthy until the very end. We will always cherish his strong commitment to making the world a better place for the disadvantaged.
Impossible to believe my 35-year-long conversation with Ruth is over! July 19, 2008
Posted by admin in : Ira, Ruth, Testimonials , comments closedJudith Mahoney Pasternak, New York, NY
Ruth
Impossible to believe my 35-year-long conversation with Ruth is over! I was part of her extended family — my mother, Bea Kelvin, is her step-cousin and, though not related by blood, was close to her from Ruth’s childhood on. Ruth was out of the country in my youth, but from the time she returned in the early ’70s, we talked often and about almost everything, although always returning, in the end, to politics. Her fierce, wide-ranging curiosity made those discussions different from conversations with anyone else.
Ira
A great advocate who spent sixty-plus years defending the rights of immigrants and radicals, Ira was also a warm and gentle man, a serious thinker, and a good friend and relative. My family is glad for the years we knew him.
We’ll miss both of them.