Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Roemer, Marjorie

Titel

THE GOOSE GIRL, THE RABBI AND THE NEW YORK TEACHERS: A FAMILY MEMOIR

Ist Teil von

• Canadian Woman Studies, 2012, Vol.30 (1), p.145

Ort / Verlag

Downsview: Inanna Publications and Education Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

ProQuest_Literature Online_英美文学在线

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The section of the book that seems to me most valuable from the perspective of historical study is the section that deals with Heller's parents as left-wing Jewish schoolteachers during the McCarthy period. She details what it was like to live in the expectation of a letter that might call her parents up to testify and "name names" in this extraordinary period when the New York State Feinberg Loyalty Law was established for the "elimination of subversive persons from the public school system." Upheld by the Supreme Court in March 1952, over the dissenting arguments of William O. Douglas and Hugo Black, the law was part of the apparatus assembled to dismiss teachers on grounds of "insubordination" and "conduct unbecoming a teacher" if they refused to answer any of the investigator's questions. Heller's sharing of some information from these files (made available to the public only recently) is spellbinding. One item in the indictment concerns a person also named Heller who lived some five blocks away from the author's father. This Stephen Heller is (erroneously) judged to be a relative and, therefore, his signing petitions involving Communist Party members is used as evidence against [Isaiah]. The entire conduct of this investigation is illuminating and terrifying, a chastening example of witch hunts and hysteria. Again, Heller broadens the scope with citations from a host of other scholars of the period, but it is her own dramatic recital of the personal that reverberates for the reader.