by Julie Harrison, Board of Directors
I thought I would start this new column by profiling a family that was involved with our chapter from its earliest incarnation. I had the honor of speaking with Jane C. Ginsburg this week about her experience attending Village as a New York delegate to Graz, Austria, in 1966. Her mother, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was the founder of our New York chapter in 1963 or 1964, having learned about CISV in Sweden when she was there in 1961-1962.Jane attended Village with delegates from Italy, Yugoslavia (currently Croatia), Austria, and others. That year, the chapter paired two delegates with two other kids from another organization in New Jersey called Sister Cities. The Village took place in a boarding school in Graz.
Jane has fond memories of the Yugoslavia delegates, who attended Village despite the Iron Curtain (former dictator of Yugoslavia, Tito, was a big supporter). They brought a portable 45rpm record player to camp, gleefully introducing all the kids to The Beatles for the first time. Could that be how the tradition of “lullabies” was started?
At that time, CISV only offered Village; there weren’t other programs for older kids and there wasn’t a Junior Branch. Families didn’t stay involved like they do today since there was only one camp, but the kids had occasional reunions.
Jane’s mother volunteered for CISV throughout the 1960s, spearheading delegations to Village from about 1964 on, until she became famously involved in changing the legal fate of women in the United States and subsequently received the great honor of becoming a Supreme Court Justice.
Jane has gone on to become a very successful literary and artistic property (copyright) attorney and professor at Columbia Law School in New York. She graduated from the University of Chicago and Harvard, has numerous degrees and awards, and has authored dozens of publications.
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This text was written for CISV NY’s Winter 2019 Newsletter, which you can read in full here.