United States
What was the residence of Milly Witkop from 1933 to 1937?
Milly Witkop Milly Witkop ( -Rocker ) ( March 3 , 1877November 23 , 1955 ) was a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarcho-syndicalist , feminist writer and activist . She was the common-law wife of the prominent anarcho-syndicalist leader Rudolf Rocker . The couples son , Fermin Rocker , was an artist . Early life and period in London . Witkop was born Vitkopski in the Ukrainian shtetl of Zlatopol to a Jewish Ukrainian-Russian family as the oldest of four sisters . The youngest of the four , Rose , also became a well-known anarchist . In 1894 , Witkop left the Ukraine for London . In the decades following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II , many Jews left Russia as a result of anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the Empire . Most went to the United Kingdom or the United States . In London , she worked in a tailoring sweatshop and saved enough money to finance her parents and sisters passage to England . The hard conditions she worked under led her to question her faith . Her involvement in a bakers strike led her to become involved with the group around the Jewish anarchist newspaper Arbayter Fraynd . She became influenced by the works of the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin . In 1895 , she first met Rudolf Rocker in the course of her political work . In May 1898 , Rocker invited her to accompany him to New York City , where he hoped to find employment . The two were , however , not admitted to the country , because they refused to get married legally and were returned to the United Kingdom with the same ship on which they had reached the United States . The matter received some newspaper coverage in the United States at the time , attacking the couples love without marriage . From October 1898 , Rocker and Witkop co-edited the Arbeyter Fraynd . In March 1900 , the two also started publishing the newspaper Germinal , which was more focused on cultural topics . In 1907 , the couples son , Fermin , was born . Rocker and Witkop were opposed to World War I after it broke out in 1914 , unlike many other anarchists such as Kropotkin , who supported the Allied cause . To ease the poverty and deprivation caused by the joblessness that accompanied the war , Witkop and her husband opened a soup kitchen . In December 1914 , however , Rocker like many Germans and Austrians in the UK , was interned as an enemy alien . Witkop continued her anti-war activities until she was also arrested in 1916 . She remained imprisoned until the autumn of 1918 . She then left the United Kingdom to join her husband and son in the Netherlands . Germany . At first , the couple welcomed the February and October Revolutions in Russia , but after the Bolshevik coup they started criticizing the statism and totalitarianism of what would become the Soviet Union . In November 1918 , they moved to Berlin ; Rocker had been invited by Free Association of German Trade Unions ( FVdG ) chairman Fritz Kater to join him in building up what would become the Free Workers Union of Germany ( FAUD ) , an anarcho-syndicalist trade union . Both Rocker and Witkop became members of the FAUD . After its founding in early 1919 , a discussion about the role of girls and women in the union started . The male-dominated organization had at first ignored gender issues , but soon women started founding their own unions , which were organized parallel to the regular unions , but still formed part of the FAUD . Witkop was one of the leading founders of the Womens Union in Berlin in 1920 . On October 15 , 1921 , the womens unions held a national congress in Düsseldorf and the Syndicalist Womens Union ( SFB ) was founded on a national level . Shortly thereafter , Witkop drafted Was will der Syndikalistische Frauenbund ? ( What Does the Syndicalist Womens Union Want? ) as a platform for the SFB . From 1921 , the Der Frauenbund was published as a supplement to the FAUD organ Der Syndikalist , Witkop was one of its primary writers . Witkop reasoned that proletarian women were exploited not only by capitalism like male workers , but also by their male counterparts . She contended therefore that women must actively fight for their rights , much like workers must fight capitalism for theirs . She also insisted on the necessity of women taking part in class struggle . Housewives could use boycotts to support this struggle . From this , she concluded the necessity of an autonomous womens organization in the FAUD . Witkop also held that domestic work should be deemed equally valuable to wage labor . In a 1921 article in Der Frauenbund , Witkop argued that the most important issue facing the SFB was the sexual issue . She called for access to birth control and advocated a childbearing strike . A debate on the issue within the German syndicalist movement ensued . Meetings on the issue were well-attended meetings and new SFB chapters were formed . United States . She was not only active in the syndicalist and feminist movement , but also worked to fight racism and anti-Semitism . She was often frustrated by what she considered an unwillingness to fight anti-Semitism in the labor movement . The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the late 1920s greatly troubled Witkop . After the Reichstag fire in February 1933 , Witkop and Rocker fled Germany for the United States via Switzerland , France , and the UK . In the US , the couple continued to give lectures and write about anarchist topics . During the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 , they started an awareness campaign to educate Americans about the events in Spain . In Fall 1937 , the two moved to the Mohegan Commune near Lake Mohegan in Crompond . After World War II broke out , Witkop , like her husband and other anarchists such as Max Nettlau and Diego Abad de Santillán , supported the Allies because she felt Nazism could not be defeated with pacifist means . After World War II , Witkop had some sympathy for the Zionist movement , but was skeptical as to whether a nation state could solve the Jewish question . She favored the idea of bi-nationality developed by Martin Buber and Ahad Haam . The Mohegan commune , especially Witkop , was active in sending material support to German anarchists . They sent several hundred packages to Germany . Witkop died on November 23 , 1955 . She had been suffering from difficulties of breathing for months .