Rafael Medoff highlights overlooked stories of American Jewish activism
To the Editor:
As an example of contemporary Jewish activism, Amotz Asa-El cites the “countless rallies, vigils, sit-ins, and picket lines” organized by Jews in the United States and elsewhere, to protest the persecution of Soviet Jewry. It is worth noting that some former activists in the Soviet Jewry movement have said they derived their inspiration in part from the Holocaust-era activists known as the Bergson Group.
On the eve of the Holocaust, they helped smuggle many thousands of Jews from Europe to British Mandatory Palestine. Then, in the United States (where their leader, Hillel Kook, used the pseudonym “Peter Bergson”), they employed protest tactics which were unusual for that era, such as lobbying both Republican and Democratic members of Congress; organizing a march by over 400 rabbis to the White House; and placing more than 200 full-page ads in major daily newspapers. While the established Jewish organizations hesitated to challenge President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s refusal to aid Europe’s Jews, the Bergson Group refused to take his “no” for an answer.
Bergson’s efforts succeeded on several fronts. They helped publicize the mass murder of the Jews, and the feasibility of rescue, at a time when both topics were being ignored by most political leaders and the American news media. They also galvanized the congressional and public pressure that helped bring about FDR’s belated establishment of the War Refugee Board. During the final months of the war, the Board played a central role in the rescue of at least 200,000 Jews, including the heroic work of Raoul Wallenberg in Nazi-occupied Budapest. After the war, the Bergsonites helped mobilize American public opinion in support of Jewish statehood, and organized volunteers, funds, and weapons for the fight for Jewish independence.
There were also some unexpected consequences of note. For example, the Bergson Group used its pro-Zionist play “A Flag is Born” to bring about the desegregation of theaters in Baltimore in 1947. Later that year, the crew of a Bergson-sponsored refugee ship, who were imprisoned by the British at Acre, assisted in the famous mass jail break by Jewish fighters.
A lesser-known example of successful activism within the American Jewish community was the handiwork of a trio of rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1943. Through articles, letters, and meetings with Jewish leaders, the students—Noah Golinkin, Jerry Lipnick, and Buddy Sachs—persuaded the Synagogue Council of America to undertake a nationwide educational campaign about the plight of the Jews in Europe. Numerous synagogues adopted the Council’s proposals to recite special prayers, limit “occasions of amusement,” observe partial fast days and moments of silence, write letters to political officials and Christian religious leaders, hold memorial rallies, and wear black armbands. Some of these efforts received significant news media coverage and increased public awareness of the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry.