Bella Savitsky Abzug [2] ( born Bella Savitzky Abzug , also known as “Battling Bella” ; 1920 - 1998 ) is an American lawyer, statesman and public figure.
| Bella Abzug | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Date of Birth | July 24, 1920 |
| Place of Birth | |
| Date of death | March 31, 1998 (aged 77) |
| Place of death | |
| Citizenship |  USA |
| Occupation | , , |
| Awards and prizes | National Women's Hall of Fame ( 1994 ) [d] ( 1980 ) |
Biography
Born July 24, 1920 in New York in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants: her mother is Esther (nee Tanklefsky) , was a housewife; father - Emanuel Savitsky, controlled the meat market.
When his father died, Bella was 13 years old. Although the orthodox synagogue does not allow women to perform kadish , since this ceremony exists for the sons of the deceased, however, there were no sons in the family and she went to the synagogue every morning for a year to pray, challenging the traditions of orthodox Judaism in her community.
Abzug graduated from Walton High School in New York , where she was a class warden , and entered Hunter College, City University of New York, and attended Jewish theological seminary at the same time. Later, in 1944, she received a law degree from Columbia University .
Bella Abzug was admitted to the New York Bar Association in 1945 and began practicing in New York at Pressman, Witt & Cammer , especially in matters of labor law, when very few women practiced in this area. At an early stage, she took up civil rights in the South . She appealed the case of , a black man convicted in 1945 for raping a white woman in Laurel, Mississippi, and sentenced to death by white jurors who discussed the verdict for only two and a half minutes. Abzug lost the appeal and the man was executed.
A few years later, she was elected to the US House of Representatives and was one of the first participants in the . [3] Due to his political position, Abzug became the top in the list of political opponents of President Nixon . She also became one of the first members of the U.S. Congress to support gay rights by presenting with the representative of the New York Democratic Party Ed Koc , the future Mayor of New York, the first federal gay rights bill known as the Equality Act of 1974 . She presided over historical hearings on state secrets, was the chairman of the subcommittee on state information and personal rights.
In February 1975, Bella Abzug was part of a bipartisan delegation sent by President Ford to Saigon to assess on-site the situation in South Vietnam at the end of the American war. She became the only member of the delegation who opposed the continuation of military and humanitarian aid to South Vietnam, but her opinion quickly gained support in Congress. Abzug herself later directly stated to President Nguyen Van Thieu that the United States would not provide a single dollar in his support, which contributed to the collapse of South Vietnam. Abzug ended her career in Congress with an unsuccessful attempt to nominate from the Democratic Party to the US Senate in 1976, when she lost to Daniel Moynihan . Bella Abzug never again held elected office, having also failed in her attempt to become mayor of New York in 1977.
She founded and led several women's human rights organizations, participated in feminist propaganda events, for example, acted as a marshal at Women's Equality Day New York March in New York on August 26, 1980. In the last decade of her life, together with her colleague Mim Kelber, she became the co-founder of Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) .
After several years of fighting breast cancer , she developed heart disease, and on March 31, 1998, she died from complications after open heart surgery. Bella Abzug was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens County, New York. [four]
She was inducted into the Women's Hall of Fame Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls and is the recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards. A year before her death, she received high civilian recognition and an honorary UN award - the Blue Beret Peacekeepers Award . In 1979, a set of Supersisters collection cards was issued, one of which was attended by Abzug.
From 1944 until the end of her life she was married to Martin Abzug ( Martin Abzug , 1916-1986) [5] ; they had two children - Eve and Liz.
Notes
- ↑ German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 1055013903 // General Normative Control (GND) - 2012—2016.
- ↑ Americana: English-Russian Linguistic and Regional Dictionary (Americana: English-Russian encyclopedic dictionary) / Ed. and commonly. hands. G.V. Chernova . - Smolensk: Polygram, 1996 .-- 1206 p. - ISBN 5-87264-040-4 .
- ↑ Faber, Doris. Bella Abzug . Lothrup, Lee and Shepard, 1976. pp. 61–69. Juvenile book.
- ↑ Bella Abzug
- ↑ Maurice Martin Abzug