Biography
Allan Solomonow was a Jewish pacifist and antiwar activist prosecuted after tearing his signature from a draft registration card during a 1967 protest. He received a one-year federal sentence and surrendered to federal marshals in New York on October 16, 1968. Solomonow served eight months at Allenwood Federal Prison.
In a first-person account for the Jewish Peace Fellowship, Solomonow recalled tearing his signature from an extra copy of his draft-registration card at a Connecticut peace demonstration in summer 1967. After receiving a one-year federal sentence, he entered Allenwood in October 1968. He later directed the American Friends Service Committee’s Middle East Peace Program in San Francisco. AFSC reported that he died at home in January 2020.
Sources: Solomonow’s account, Shalom, March 2010, page 9; AFSC, Quaker Action, Spring 2020, page 4.
In his first-person March 2010 account, Solomonow writes that he entered Allenwood Federal Prison in October 1968 after receiving a one-year sentence the preceding spring. With a teaching credential, he taught basic literacy in the prison educational program. After release he became the Jewish Peace Fellowship’s first national program director in fall 1969. The University of Pennsylvania’s 2017 archival notice independently describes eight months of federal imprisonment; it is not used to shift his admission into 1969 or infer an exact release day.
The University of Pennsylvania archival notice independently describes eight months of imprisonment. It is not used to shift the separately supported October 1968 surrender date or infer a discharge day.
University of Pennsylvania Jewish Studies Program news, 2017, PDF page 22.
