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THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS -- AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945 |
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[b]8. THE EMERGENCY COMMITTEE[/b]
Eleven days after the Bermuda Conference, William Langer of North Dakota warned the Senate that "2,000,000 Jews in Europe have been killed off already and another 5,000,000 Jews are awaiting the same fate unless they are saved immediately. Every day, every hour, every minute that passes, thousands of them are being exterminated." He called on his colleagues to press for action or ultimately face "the moral responsibility of being passive bystanders." Langer's appeal was part of a minor debate that was, despite its brevity, the fullest airing the issue of Jewish extermination received in Congress during World War II. [1]
The discussion had been sparked by a large advertisement in the New York Times assailing the Bermuda Conference as "a mockery and a cruel jest" perpetrated on the "wretched, doomed victims of Hitler's tyranny." The advertisement, sponsored by the Bergsonite Committee for a Jewish Army, named no one. But Scott Lucas took the criticism personally and made it an issue on the Senate floor. Half a dozen senators rose in his support. Harry Truman, a member of the CIA's national committee, angrily quit the organization. [2]
But Langer, an independent-minded Republican, blasted the Bermuda Conference and Lucas's role in it. Reacting to Lucas's promise to inform the Senate very soon about the achievements at Bermuda, Langer caustically remarked, "I am looking forward to this address with the greatest impatience." It never took place. [3]
Besides venting its anger, the Committee for a Jewish Army responded to the Bermuda Conference by convening another conference. Its announced aim was to do what the earlier conference should have done-bring experts together to seek all possible ways to save European Jews. [4]
The Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe was held in New York City in July 1943. Before it took place, however, other Jewish organizations tried to undermine it. A World Jewish Congress staff member who got hold of secret minutes of the Bergson group's planning sessions asked Stephen Wise "whether anything can be done to prevent this proposed Conference from stealing the thunder of the Joint Emergency Committee." Wise attempted to persuade Episcopal Bishop Henry St. George Tucker, who had agreed to play a prominent pan in the conference, to withdraw. [5]
Tucker did not. But the influence of Jewish leaders kept the Committee for a Jewish Army from obtaining the help of Myron Taylor or Sumner Welles. When Taylor was asked to participate, he turned to Welles for counsel. Welles replied that he had refused a similar invitation because "not only the more conservative Jewish organizations and leaders but also such leaders as Rabbi Wise ... are strongly opposed to the holding of this conference [and] have done everything they could to prevent it." Clarence Pickett of the American Friends Service Committee stayed away on the advice of a friend associated with the Joint Distribution Committee. [6]
Jewish Communists, as well, opposed the Emergency Conference. The Daily Worker and Freiheit (a Yiddish daily) attacked it because, along with people of the proper sort, the conference had the backing of such unacceptable persons as Herbert Hoover and newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst. Echoing Soviet demands, these papers insisted on an all-out Allied invasion of western Europe. This, they argued, would hasten Hitler's defeat, and that was the only way to rescue the European Jews. [7]
In any event, the Committee for a Jewish Army assembled an imposing list of conference participants. But efforts to obtain the endorse ment of top American leaders achieved only mixed results. Dr. Max Lerner, journalist, author, and educator, telegraphed the President and Secretary of State Hull, asking each to send a message of hope to the conference. The appeal to Roosevelt was shunted to the State Depart ment, There Adolf Berle, R Borden Reams, and James Dunn first fashioned a noncommittal response for Hull to sign. It made the usual claim that the State Department was already doing all that was possible, (Reams privately described it as "not exactly a reply," but use of an opportunity "to restate the Department's position on refugee matters.") They then composed a companion message, which Roosevelt signed, that did little more than express "full concurrence" in Hull's letter, In contrast, dear statements of support reached the CJA from Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and the 1940 Republican presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie. [8]
Eleanor Roosevelt's initial response to a plea for cooperation was negative. In June, she sent a one-sentence reply to author Louis Bromfield's appeal to her to participate in the Emergency Conference's search for rescue plans. "I have your telegram," she wrote, "and can not see what can be done until we win the war." [9]
Michael Potter, a prominent lawyer and chairman of the conference's organizing committee, answered that he was certain that much could be done before the war ended, "The fact is that very little has been attempted and the United Nations seem to have given up before even trying." He asked her to reexamine the question. [10]
On the eve of the conference, the organizing committee recognized there was no chance that Eleanor Roosevelt would take part. Lerner then telegraphed to request a message of support for the gathering. Six days later, at the conference's midpoint, her reply arrived. She conveyed "every good wish," then stated her position:
The day after the Emergency Conference ended, Eleanor Roosevelt responded to Michael Potter's letter. She remained unconvinced that practical action was possible, but expressed a willingness to cooperate:
Despite its preliminary problems, the Emergency Conference succeeded beyond most expectations. Fifteen hundred people attended the sessions, held July 20-25 at the Hotel Commodore. An impressive group of participants, many of them non-Jews, met in panels that dealt with such topics as transportation, diplomatic negotiations, military affairs, publicity, and the role of the church. Through three hot days, the panelists worked out rescue plans. Evening sessions, open to the public, featured prominent speakers, including Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Dean Alfange of the American Labor party, writer Dorothy Parker, and (by radio) Herbert Hoover. [13]
Among others associated with the conference were Harold Ickes, Senators Guy Gillette, Edwin Johnson, William Langer, and Elbert Thomas, labor leaders William Green and Philip Murray, and journalists William Randolph Hearst and William Allen White. Plainly, people of greatly diverging views and backgrounds had come together to try to do something about the European Jewish tragedy. [14]
The Emergency Conference concluded that much could be achieved without hindering the military effort. The key step was formation of a U.S. governmental agency charged specifically with rescuing Jews. Beyond that, the conference called for several types of action. Pressure should be exerted on Axis countries to permit Jews to emigrate. Where emigration did not take place, Axis governments should be pushed to provide Jews with sufficient food and other basic necessities. If need be, the United Nations should furnish the supplies for distribution under Red. Cross or other neutral supervision. [15]
Regarding the problem of sanctuaries for Jews, the Emergency Conference recommended urging neutral countries to grant temporary asylum on the understanding that the United Nations would assist with food and arrange for removal of the refugees. In addition, all the United Nations should be pressed to take in Jews on a temporary basis. The conference concluded that the necessary transportation could be obtained without hindering the war effort. It pointed to rail and road traffic through Turkey and out to the Middle East. And it estimated that enough neutral ships were available to move 50,000 refugees at a time. Finally, the participants suggested a campaign to publicize the plight of the European Jews and build popular support for rescue action.
Before adjourning, the conference transformed itself into a new organization, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. The driving force in the new committee was the same Bergson group that had directed the Committee for a Jewish Army.
The planners of the Emergency Conference had arranged its sessions to draw maximum attention to the European Jewish situation. The result was extensive press and radio exposure. Newspapers across the nation published reports on the meetings. Coverage in the New York daily newspapers was especially thorough. The conference also generated several editorials. The most striking, written by Max Lerner, appeared in PM under the title "What About the Jews, FDR?" Lerner outlined some of the conference's recommendations, charged that "the State Dept. and Downing St. avert their eyes from the slaughter," and challenged Roosevelt: "You, Mr. President, must take the lead.... The methods are clear. Neither conscience nor policy can afford to leave them unused. And the time is now." [16]
The new Emergency Committee soon opened a two-pronged campaign: national publicity and lobbying in Washington. During August and September, the publicity drive revolved around several dramatic newspaper advertisements conveying information about the European Jewish tragedy and urging support for a government rescue agency. The first advertisement, illustrated with a picture of huddled refugees on the move, announced, "They Are Driven To Death Daily, But They Can Be Saved." Another proclaimed, "The Jewish people of Europe is still caught between the hammer of the enemy's brutality and the anvil of democracy's indifference." [i] Next came an open letter from Pierre van Paassen calling on Roosevelt and Churchill to initiate rescue action. Still another large advertisement featured Ben Hecht's "Ballad of the Doomed Jews of Europe." [17]
The campaign to build popular pressure for rescue received substantial help from William Randolph Hearst. In late August, Hearst ordered the thirty-four newspapers in his chain to publish the first of many major editorials supporting the Emergency Committee and appealing for nationwide backing for its proposals. The August editorial included a complete reprint of the Emergency Conference's recommendations. In September, the Hearst papers carried two more editorials advocating the Emergency Committee's rescue plans. [19]
Throughout its existence, Hearst backed the Emergency Committee, giving it more editorial support than any other publisher. [ii] His reasons are not clear. He was probably pleased to find a way to strike at the British, if only indirectly. He also seems to have been genuinely concerned about the terrible plight of Europe's Jews. In the editorials, he repeatedly pointed out an essential truth that very many of America's religious and secular leaders never grasped: "REMEMBER, Americans, THIS IS NOT A JEWISH PROBLEM. It is a HUMAN PROBLEM." [20]
The Emergency Committee's connections with Hearst and Hoover illustrated its policy of building the widest possible backing for rescue. The diverse support that had marked the Emergency Conference -- conservative and liberal, Jew and non-Jew -- carried over into the Emergency Committee. Certainly, numerous important liberals played key roles in the committee's campaigns, such people as Harold Ickes, Dean Alfange, Will Rogers, Jr., Max Lerner, and Fiorello La Guardia.
Along with the publicity drive, the Emergency Committee pressed forward with a lobbying effort in Washington. Responding to Eleanor Roosevelt's offer to "help in any way," Peter Bergson conferred with her in mid-August. The following day, Mrs. Roosevelt's syndicated "My Day" column dealt with the "hardships and persecution" of the Jews in Europe. But it fell short of calling for forceful action: "I do not know what we can do to save the Jews in Europe and to find them homes, but I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them." After the visit, Bergson sent Mrs. Roosevelt a copy of the "Findings and Recommendations of the Emergency Conference" along with a letter stressing again the need for a special government rescue agency. She passed these items to the President, but he was not very interested. He returned them with a note saying, "I do not think this needs any answer at this time. F.D.R." [22]
During her conversation with Bergson, Eleanor Roosevelt agreed to record a message of encouragement to the Jews of Europe for broadcast overseas by the Office of War Information. When Bergson contacted her about arrangements, she asked how long the speech should be. He suggested five to ten minutes and offered to provide whatever material she might wish to have in preparing it. Several days later, Eleanor Roosevelt drafted a comforting message, but it was very short (under two minutes). She explained the brevity in a note to her secretary: "Copy and send. Sorry too busy to write longer one." [23]
The broadcast was a valuable contribution, as the Emergency Committee gratefully acknowledged. It showed, though, that Eleanor Roosevelt had not modified her position on the rescue question. Her views continued to parallel those of the State Department. The message emphasized that "everything possible that can be done through our government" is being done, and stated that "we hope that ways may be found to save as many people as possible, but the best way to do that is to win the war as rapidly as possible and that the allied armies throughout the world are achieving." [iii] [24]
Emergency Committee efforts to reach the President met blank walls. The White House refused the first advance, advising that the President's schedule was so crowded that it would be "some time" before appointments were possible for any matters not "bearing directly on the war effort." Another attempt, during the Roosevelt-Churchill conference at Quebec in August, also failed. Max Lerner telegraphed presidential secretary Stephen Early in Quebec asking that Roosevelt receive Congressman Andrew Somers (Dem., N.Y.) and two others from the Emergency Committee. Early put them off, explaining that a meeting in Washington after the President's return would be much more productive. But, despite numerous follow-up requests, that meeting never took place. [26]
Approaches to the State Department were frustrating, but not entirely fruitless. In mid-August, Cordell Hull agreed to try to arrange travel priorities for six Emergency Committee representatives to go to Turkey, Spain, and Palestine to organize rescue efforts. But he turned the task over to Breckinridge Long, who insisted there was no need for these missions. The Intergovernmental Committee was now active, he asserted; furthermore, the American government was already doing everything possible. [27]
In the following months, despite Long, the Emergency Committee managed to send two people overseas. The first, Arieh Ben-Eliezer, was one of the Bergsonite inner circle. He left for Palestine in September. Although Ben-Eliezer dealt incidentally with rescue matters, the Berg. son group exploited this opportunity primarily to promote Irgun business. Ben-Eliezer found the underground army disorganized, poorly led, and virtually inactive. He applied himself to its revitalization until April 1944, when British authorities incarcerated him. [iv] [28]
Long delayed the departure of the other representative for months. He was Ira Hirschmann, a high executive at Bloomingdale's department store. Hirschmann, who had some experience in refugee matters, was prepared to go to Turkey. Although the American ambassador there telegraphed approval in early September, Hirschmann was not allowed to depart until late January. [30]
The Emergency Committee also approached Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Early in August, he told Bergson that he was deeply concerned to help stop the slaughter. But he declined to spearhead a drive to press the Roosevelt administration to act. Bergson wrote to Morgenthau three weeks later, distressed that Emergency Committee discussions with him, Hull, Long, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Attorney General Francis Biddle had won promises of support but no action. "Meanwhile," Bergson pointed out, "weeks pass and many more thousands of innocent Jews in Europe uselessly lose their lives." He appealed to Morgenthau to use his contacts within the government, especially to urge the establishment of a rescue agency. Morgenthau's reply was noncommittal. [31]
The Emergency Conference and the activity that grew out of it seemed to break the quiescence that had gripped the rescue cause since the Bermuda Conference. Pressures began to build again. Reinhold Niebuhr and several other intellectuals urged Roosevelt and Hull to ease the "unnecessarily rigorous restrictions [that] have practically stopped all immigration." The New Republic for August 30 included a fifteen-page section entitled "The Jews of Europe: How to Help Them." Its editors once more indicted the Western Allies:
The Church Peace Union called for pressure on Axis satellites to let the Jews go and demanded that room be made for them in the United Stares, Palestine, and elsewhere. The Christian Century also appealed for action and advocated the admission of more refugees to the United Stares and Palestine. [32]
In September, AFL and CIO leaders saw Hull. They urged that the United Nations take in all Jews who could get out and declare the rest legally prisoners of war. Shortly after that, the AFL annual convention resolved that the United Nations, and specifically the United States, should temporarily suspend immigration restrictions to provide havens for the Jews. This step was a major departure from the AFL's traditional restrictionist stance. In another unusual development, the National Re publican Club and the National Democratic Club issued a joint statement calling on Congress to admit 100,000 refugees on condition that they return to Europe soon after the war. [33]
The renewed impulse for rescue led to another move to test the waters in Congress. One year earlier, Emanuel Celler had responded to the mass deportations from France by submitting legislation to set the quotas aside for refugees fleeing Nazi terror. It got nowhere. Now, in September 1943, Samuel Dickstein introduced a bill to allow refugees who would not endanger the public safety to come to the United States temporarily; they would have to leave within six months after the war. W. Warren Barbour (Rep., N.J.) sponsored a parallel measure in the Senate. [34]
The Emergency Committee supported this legislation, as did the Federal Council of Churches and several leading Jewish organizations. But the Roosevelt administration did not. The Justice Department and the Immigration Service declined to take a position on it. And the State Department opposed the resolution, explaining that it would not help "the persecuted political and religious minorities" still in Nazi territory, for they could not reach an American consul to obtain visas. On the other hand, "the persons who have already arrived at a haven of refuge do not require American visas to insure their safety." Furthermore, any relaxation of controls might open the way for Nazi agents to enter the United States. Neither Dickstein's nor Barbour's proposal ever reached the floor of Congress. [35]
Even with administration support, this legislation would have encountered great difficulty. The intense anti-immigration feeling that Congress had demonstrated the year before when it smashed Roosevelt's Third War Powers Bill had not lessened. Evidence of this reverberated in the House of Representatives again in June 1943. The issue was legislation that would have slightly simplified the naturalization procedure for aliens already living in the United States who had children in the American armed forces. It had nothing to do with immigration. Yet the mere mention of aliens Set off a storm of anti-immigration rhetoric. This mild naturalization bill was overwhelmingly defeated. [36]
Although the Emergency Committee supported the Dickstein-Barbour resolution, it concentrated most of its resources during fall 1943 on an intensive struggle for a government rescue agency. The drive began with full-page advertisements in the New York Times and Washington Post announcing a "call to action" on three fronts. One was a plan to collect millions of signatures on a petition to the President and Congress. It appealed for a rescue agency and for intervention with Britain to open Palestine. Simultaneously, a request went Out to Chris tian churches to set aside Sunday, October 10, as a Day of Intercession, a time to pray for the European Jews and to urge government action to save them. The petition campaign was reasonably successful. The call for a Christian Day of Intercession had little impact. [37]
The third step was a dramatic innovation that the Emergency Committee carried out with cooperation from the Union of Orthodox Rabbis and the Union of Grand Rabbis. On October 6, three days before Yom Kippur, 400 Orthodox rabbis arrived in Washington to participate in a pilgrimage for rescue. [38]
Early in the afternoon, the rabbis, conspicuous with their beards and long black coats, praying aloud, marched in a dignified procession from Union Station to the Capitol. They were met there by Vice-President Henry A. Wallace and a score of congressmen. Some rabbis sobbed audibly as their petition was read in Hebrew and English, then handed to Wallace. It called for a rescue agency and for the nations to open their gates to the stricken Jews. "The Vice President," reported Time magazine, "squirmed through a diplomatically minimum answer." His cautious remarks centered on pressing forward to win the war. [39]
At the Lincoln Memorial, in mid-afternoon, the rabbis prayed for America's lighting men, for a speedy victory, and for the remaining European Jews. Afterward, they walked to the White House. There, while most prayed outside the gates, five of their number presented a copy of the petition to presidential secretary Marvin McInryre, who received it in the President's absence. The pilgrimage then proceeded to a synagogue, where the rabbis rested and ate before departing for their homes. [40]
The Emergency Committee had tried for weeks to arrange for the President to receive the rabbis' petition personally, but the appeals were unavailing. On the day of the pilgrimage, the White House informed the press that the President could not see the rabbis "because of the pressure of other business." In reality, Roosevelt had a light schedule that day, and most of the afternoon was open. Moreover, he was aware that a delegation of rabbis hoped to visit him at four o'clock (or at any time convenient to him). Shortly before the rabbis arrived, Roosevelt slipped away to Bolling Field to observe a ceremony incorporating forty Yugoslavs into the U.S. Army Air Force and dedicating four bombers that they would fly. He then left for a live-day weekend at Hyde Park. [41]
The President's failure to meet the rabbis caused a ripple of criticism. Some observers doubted that a convocation of several hundred Protestant or Catholic clergymen would have been shunted off to a presidential secretary. It is not entirely clear why Roosevelt avoided the rabbis. But two background developments are known. Shortly before the pilgrimage, the President decided that "all requests ,of this kind from the leaders in Jewry" were to be referred to the secretary of state "to handle for him." Rabbis or no rabbis, rescue was a State Department matter as far as Roosevelt was concerned. Another part of the picture was continued Jewish opposition to the Bergson group, Some Jewish leaders, in cooperation with Samuel Rosenman (who frequently advised the President on Jewish issues), sought to prevent the march, then to influence Roosevelt to ignore it. [v] [42]
Press coverage of the pilgrimage must have disappointed the Emergency Committee, It was noticeably less than that generated by the "We Will Never Die" pageant and, the Emergency Conference. The main Washington newspapers all reported the event, but only the Post carried it on the front page. In New York, newspaper coverage was thin. Of the major news magazines, only Time mentioned it at all. [44]
During October, the Emergency Committee's campaign began to pick up support in Congress. Senator Elbert D. Thomas (Dem., Utah), a former Mormon missionary to Japan and university professor, sent draft legislation for a rescue commission to Secretary Hull. He asked for an opinion on whether the same end could be accomplished by the simpler device of an executive order. The response, which came from Breckinridge Long, argued at length against the whole idea of a rescue agency. [vi] [45]
William Langer also applied pressure. Addressing the Senate on the day of the rabbis' pilgrimage, he called for a special rescue commission and charged that "by doing nothing we have acquiesced in what has taken place over there." He again emphasized the failure at Bermuda and reminded Scott Lucas that five months had passed since he had promised an early report on the .conference. "Where is this report?" asked Langer. "Has anything been done?" [47]
Something was done that October for Jews trapped in Europe-but not by the United States, Britain, or the Intergovernmental Committee. The 8,000 Jews in Denmark escaped to life and freedom because Danes were willing to risk their lives for them and the Swedish government was willing to incur Germany's wrath to give them sanctuary. [48]
The Emergency Committee was quick to underscore the lesson. In advertisements in the New York Times and other newspapers, it declared that Denmark and Sweden had "destroyed completely the legend that 'nothing can be done.'" If the gates of Palestine and other lands would open too, thousands more would save themselves. The Emergency Committee also sponsored a "Salute to Sweden and Denmark," a mass meeting that overflowed Carnegie Hall in New York. Speaking there, Leon Henderson, former head of the Office of Price Administration, accused the Allied governments, and especially Roosevelt and Churchill, of "moral cowardice" for failing to counter the extermination of the Jews. He charged that the problem had been "avoided, submerged, postponed, played down and resisted with all the forms of political force available to powerful governments." [49]
As Henderson spoke, the Moscow Conference of American, British, and Russian foreign ministers neared adjournment. A few days afterward, a reporter asked Roosevelt whether the conference had taken action to aid "Jewish victims of atrocities or persecution." The President replied:
In fact, the issue of the European Jews was not on the Moscow Conference's lengthy agenda, and it did not come up in the two weeks of discussions. Even the stern war-crimes warning that emerged from the conference failed to mention the Jews. Yet it named several other peoples and threatened dire punishment for atrocities against them. [vii] [50]
The Emergency Committee struck back with an advertisement by Ben Hecht, which it ran in several major newspapers under the title "My Uncle Abraham Reports."
Shortly after the Uncle Abraham advertisement appeared, the Bergsonites made their most crucial move. In the three months since the Emergency Conference, they had been pressing the need for a rescue agency on members of Congress. By November, they had won some powerful backing. On the ninth, resolutions were introduced in the Senate by Guy Gillette and eleven others and in the House by Will Rogers, Jr., and Joseph C. Baldwin. These identical measures urged the President to create "a commission of diplomatic, economic, and military experts" to act immediately to save the remaining Jews of Europe. At a press conference launching the Rescue Resolution, the Emergency Committee emphasized that the new commission should set up camps as quickly as possible in Spain, Portugal. North Africa, Switzerland. Sweden, and Turkey. That action would insure that all Jews who reached those countries would be allowed to enter. In time, they could be moved to Palestine or other United Nations territory. [53]
The next afternoon, Roosevelt told Undersecretary of State Edward R Stettinius, Jr., that he thought more could be done for Jewish refugees. [viii] The President suggested additional refugee camps and small offices staffed by Americans in Spain, Portugal, North Africa, Italy, and Turkey. This marked Roosevelt's first initiative to help the stricken Jews. [54]
Apparently, the Emergency Committee had forced the issue on the President. Samuel Rosenman, his chief speech writer, and Eleanor Roosevelt both noticed that the large advertisements were disturbing him. The President complained that the Uncle Abraham one in particular had hit below the belt. He was surely aware that the Rescue Resolution had significant backing in Congress. His suggestion to Stettinius was amazingly similar to the one made a day earlier by the Emergency Committee. Perhaps Roosevelt was moving at last to confront the extermination issue. Or perhaps he was maneuvering to cut the ground from under the Rescue Resolution. [55]
The day after he spoke with Stettinius, the President left for the conferences at Cairo and Tehran. In his absence, the State Department demolished his refugee plan by detouring it to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. The ICR pondered it for six weeks, agreed to a truncated version, and then did not act for another four months. The final outcome was the double fiasco of Heathcote-Smith and Valentin-Smith. [56]
The State Department had nullified Roosevelt's initial response to the new round of pressure for rescue. His next move on that front would come only when events forced it on him, in January 1944. Then, however, the State Department would be powerless to sidetrack it.
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[b]Notes:[/b]
[i] This advertisement commended the formation, a week before, of a government agency to save the art treasures of Europe from wartime destruction. But, it pointed out, the Jews needed an agency to save them too. [18]
[ii] The New York Post was also a very strong proponent of the Emergency Committee. [21]
[iii] After the war, Eleanor Roosevelt's deep concern about those who survived the Holocaust was translated into strong support for the establishment of the state of Israel. [25]
[iv] According to oral testimony, Ben-Eliezer probably carried a small amount of money to the Irgun.
FBI records show that in Match 1945 the bureau thoroughly investigated the Bergson group in an attempt to locate evidence of an Irgun connection. They found none, but thought there was a chance that a few hundred dollars had been sent to the Irgun.
While in Palestine, Ben-Eliezer played a key role in the selection of Menachem Begin as the Irgun's new commander. [29]
[v] Jewish congressmen tried to dissuade the rabbis from participating in the pilgrimage. But the effort went awry when Sol Bloom argued that it would be undignified for such an un-American-looking group to appear in Washington. This provoked the rabbis and reinforced their decision to take part. [43]
[vi] Long invoked the achievements of the Evian and Bermuda conferences, claimed again that the State Department had issued half a million visas to refugees, pointed to a special committee for refugee problems that operated within the Visa Division, and stressed the work of the Intergovernmental Committee. The conclusion: a new refugee agency "would interrupt the relationships already established with the Intergovernmental Committee and might affect adversely the contribution this Government can make towards a solution of the refugee problem." [46]
[vii] In mid-November, Hull made a twenty-five minute speech to Congress on the Moscow Conference. It included a feeble attempt to rectify the omission of the Jews from the war-crimes warning. In his brief reference to the warning, he noted that the "bestial and abominable" Nazi crimes had been perpetrated "against people of all races and religions, among whom Hitler has reserved for the Jews his most brutal wrath." [51]
[viii] Stettinius had replaced Welles as undersecretary in September 1943.
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