page_title: Isaiah Oggins
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Isaiah Oggins / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: American Thread Company, Mill No. 1, Willimantic, Connecticut
context_page_description: Isaiah Oggins was an American-born communist and spy for the Soviet secret police. After working in Europe and the Far East, Oggins was arrested, served eight years in the GULAG detention system, and was summarily executed on the orders of Joseph Stalin.
context_section_description: The third of four children, Oggins was born 1898 in the mill town of Willimantic, Connecticut, the son of Simon Melamdovich (who changed his name to "Oggins" in America) and his wife Rena, both Jewish immigrants from the Abolnik shtetl near Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. Oggins's parents arrived in New York in 1888. They had three other children.
  Oggins entered Columbia University in February 1917 under current Jewish quota policies.  Classmates included publishers Bennet Cerf, Donald Klopfer, and Richard Simon; historian Matthew Josephson; novelist Louis Bromfield, critic Kenneth Burke, and author William Slater Brown.  Professors included John Erskine, George Odell, Robert Livingston Schuyler, and Charles A. Beard.  After receiving his B.A. in History, he began a doctorate in History while working at history reader there, then night school in the New York Public School system.
caption: The American Thread Company's Jillson Mills in Willimantic, Connecticut, where Oggins was born and grew up
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