Before all this happened, but after the first denial, I had tried (in December 2017) to find anyone who could put pressure on the CIA to release the information requested if they had any. How innocent of me to have such simple thoughts. I even communicated with my grandson Joshua Strauss since he had gone to school with Jared Kushner and maybe still had some connection to him. Negative.

In one of the communications from Ms. Kozlova of “Memorial” she gave us archive addresses of three organizations we should write to. By February 2018 Boris had produced the three letters in Russian for Dorothy’s signature. After requesting a few changes and additions, we had them notarized and mailed them registered with return receipt requested.

At Dorothy’s son Rabbi Jonathan Knapp’s sukkah in 2017 I had met a Dr. Lederer who mentioned during a casual conversation that he had a lot of connections. I wrote to him in December 2017 asking whether he knew of anyone who could help with the CIA or elsewhere. He suggested that I contact a Peter Lande, a former career diplomat born in Germany, at USHMM. Lande replied that he had no connection or influence with the CIA.

Dr. Lederer then suggested I contact Sallyann Sack, who is well connected with the leading researchers in Jewish genealogy. Sallyann responded promptly suggesting I contact a Russian friend of hers—Boris. What a small world.

Sallyann suggested my contacting USHMM and I replied to her that I had had an investigation in the works with them since November 2017. Upon my inquiry with USHMM they replied that they needed more time.

Boris suggested looking for a scholar studying the subject of emigration from the USSR in the 1940s or just Jewish history from that period, and Dr. Lederer suggested contacting Harvard’s history department, Hebrew University or Yeshiva University. I wrote to my grandson Gil Perl who received his PhD from Harvard and retained contacts there to ask his opinion. He replied that he would inquire.

I heard from Professor Ellie Schainker of Emory University in Atlanta, a contact that Gil had approached, and she suggested three possibilities for me to follow up on: Professor David Fishman of JTS, Professor Zvi Gitelman of U Mich. and Professor Elissa Bemporad of Queens College, married to Professor Fishman.

I wrote first to Prof. Fishman, but he must have misunderstood my question, thinking that I was interested only in Alexander’s arrest file, not his total file. But he also suggested that I contact an organization by the name of Sefer which is a Jewish-studies organization based in Moscow but with members/contacts in Belarus. I did write to Sefer.

I also wrote to Prof. Gitelman, who replied promptly, suggesting I contact “Memorial” as the one organization with the biggest database. Since I had done that already twice previously this was a non-starter, but his reply showed great interest in my research and was the beginning of several email exchanges with his further suggestions. Amongst others he suggested I contact Prof. Ben Nathans at U. of P. who was supposed to be involved with “Memorial.”

I have a handwritten note on one of my emails referring to Orlando Figes book “Stalin’s Victims” and the Peter Reddaway and Stephen F. Cohen book “The Whisperers: Private Lives in Stalin’s Russia.” I wrote to Orlando Figes, who replied that he was on academic leave for the whole of the 2017-18 academic year and would not reply to emails.

I also wrote to Prof. Nathans, who called me and suggested I contact Tatiana Kasatkina at “Memorial.” It seems everyone recommends “Memorial” but nobody tells me how to get information from them. Nevertheless, I wrote to Tatiana.

One of the prior suggestions received from Rabbi Stillerman was for me to contact a Rabbi Deutsch who had written several books. One of them, “Larger Than Life,” was supposed to contain information he had received from “Memorial,” which he had been in contact with. Another book mentioned by Rabbi Stillerman was “Heroes,” which he claimed contained references to Alexander. I bought both books but found no references to Alexander nor anything else of interest.

By Norbert Strauss

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