If you are not familiar with the name Peter Bergson and the role his valiant activism played in alerting America as to what was happening to the Jews of Europe during World War II, there’s good reason for that.
Bergson, the 28-year-old nephew of the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Rabbi Kook, wasn’t part of the Jewish hierarchy in America, and his role has not been part of the approved narrative of the era. Much it was shunted aside and is officially forgotten.
The standard version of the story of the times is told in the picture of a prominent rabbi deeply engrossed in conversation with members of Congress. The result of conversations like that one and others like it was a mutual agreement that there was no gain in telling the world what was happening to the Jewish people in the concentration camps of Europe. Establishment Jewry feared the spark of anti-Semitism in our society, so they opted to be still in the face of a tragedy they never truly understood. But for the recent work of scholars like David Wyman and the institute that bears his name, this standard version would continue to be accepted as the only activism that took place in America in those days.
Against the wishes of the State Department (it was also the position of the British Government not to tell the truth about the ongoing destruction of European Jewry), and others in and out of official Washington all of whom had organizational priorities that discouraged the dissemination of the dire news from Europe about the Jewish community, it was only Bergson and his associates who worked to bring the story of the Holocaust to the people of America. They did it in newspaper ads, demonstrations, and marches on Washington. It was their efforts that bore results while the established Jewish organizations acquiesced to State Department wishes and were by and large passive in their response. Even worse though was that these establishment groups were aggressively opposed to Peter Bergson and his activities. This is a story that needs to be told, and we are fortunate that there is now a move to add its telling to the public record.
It’s no small thing that Elie Wiesel recently urged the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to make an important change in its main exhibit. The Museum’s first chairman issued a public statement which urged the inclusion of the activities of Peter Bergson and his adherents into the record of the history of that time.
Wiesel is urging the Museum to add to its main exhibit some acknowledgment of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, better known as the Bergson Group, which worked to bring about U.S. intervention to rescue Jews from Hitler. How the Bergson activists lobbied Congress, sponsored hundreds of newspaper ads, and organized a march by 400 rabbis in Washington, D.C. in 1943 is a story that has to be told. It was these protests that finally helped convince President Franklin Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board, a government agency that played a central role in saving a remnant of more than 200,000 Jews. Wiesel, in taking this action, acknowledges the vital role played by the Bergson Group in these critical events and no doubt feels that they merit a mention in the museum that presents the history of the Holocaust to the American public.

Many Holocaust historians and Jewish leaders recently signed a petition, organized by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, endorsing Prof. Wiesel’s call. We are pleased to note that the signatories include senior leaders of the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox branches of Judaism. It’s not often that our religious leaders can set aside their other differences and make common cause. But this is a good cause, and we are glad to add our voice to theirs in urging the U.S. Holocaust Museum to set the historical record straight.
–nrg

The Bergson group included a number of people in Connecticut.
Among the marchers were Rabbis Joseph Aronson of New Britain, Ephraim Pelcovitz of Bridgeport, and I. Solomon Rosenberg of Hartford. Supporters of the Bergson group and the march in Washington who have Connecticut connections included the famous artist Arthur Szyk, of New Canaan (whom the Bergsonites affectionately called “our one-man art department”); State Supreme Court Justice Allyn Brown; Yale professors Richard Donovan, Franklin Edgerton, and Maurice Davie; and congresspeople from both sides of the aisle–Republican Clare Booth Luce as well as Democrats John McWilliams, Le Roy Downs, and Senator Francis Maloney.

NOTE: As we went to press, we learned that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has publicly pledged to change its Permanent Exhibit to acknowledge the rescue work of the Bergson Group. The Museum said it would make changes “by early spring of 2008” in order to acknowledge “the positive contributions that the Bergson Group made in raising American awareness of the Holocaust and in advocating Jewish rescue.”

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