We talk to Katie Halper about the re-release of Commie Camp, her 2013 documentary about a Jewish socialist children’s camp in upstate New York that multiple generations of her family went to: her, her mother, her mother’s mother… In its early decades it was basically part of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party.
Aside from the doc, we chat about our own Soviet/post-Soviet summer camp experiences, get sentimental about the working class socialist Jews that used to inhabit New York, and discuss Bernie Sanders as one of the last political remnants of that old world.
An updated version of Commie Camp is being screened on October 4th at the Firehouse Cinema in Manhattan — in honor of the 100 year anniversary of the camp. Get your tickets before they sell out.
—The Russians
Want to know more? Read’s Yasha’s “The old Jewish world: from leftists to neocons to...Bernie Sanders” and listen to our other episodes.
Commie Camp