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THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS -- AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945 |
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[b]APPENDIX B
The Conflict Between the Regular Zionists and the Bergsonites[/b]
The American Jewish Conference's public denunciation of the Emergency Committee in late December 1943 was only one in a string of bitter attacks on the Bergsonites by the established Zionist forces. The activities of the Committee for a Jewish Army, efforts to show the "We Will Never Die" pageant throughout America, plans for the Emergency Conference, and the Rescue Resolution all encountered Zionist opposition.
One tactic involved frequent telephone calls, letters, and personal visits to persuade supporters of the Bergsonites to abandon the group. The American Zionist Emergency Council systematized the technique. Using the Bergson organizations' letterheads and newspaper advertisements, it collected the names of hundreds of their sponsors and conducted a thorough (and partially successful) campaign to induce them to withdraw their backing. [1]
During 1944, the attacks increased and sharpened, especially after mid-May, when Bergson launched the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation and the American League for a Free Palestine. These two organizations aimed at creating a Jewish state in Palestine. The Zionists recognized the new development as a competing movement and sought to disable it. (Animosities reached a point where Stephen Wise told John Pehle of the War Refugee Board that he seriously believed the Bergson group might take his life. WRB personnel thought it more likely that Bergson would be killed.) Zionists urged the State and Justice department's to arrange to have Bergson drafted into the armed forces or deported to Palestine (and almost certain incarceration, or worse). Others who pressed for the same objective included the British embassy, the American Jewish Committee, and Sol Bloom. The State Department did what it could. Bergson was almost drafted, despite previous rejection because of stomach ulcers. And proceedings to deport him were in process during much of 1944 and 1945. Firm intervention by friends in Congress blocked both moves. [2]
Over the years, Zionist leaders advanced numerous reasons that the Bergson organizations should be spurned. The Bergsonites, they frequently asserted, had no mandate or authorization from the Jewish public, they were unrepresentative, their actions were irresponsible and sensationalist, and they misused the large funds they solicited. (In fact, thorough investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation uncovered no financial irregularities.) Another argument held that the strident tone of their activities and newspaper advertising increased anti-Semitism. [3]
But these accusations, which were openly leveled, did not account for the high intensity of the Zionists' animosity toward the Bergsonites. Zionist records reveal that the number one concern was fear that the Bergsonites could build an effective rival Zionist organization. Zionist leaders were apprehensive not so much that such a movement could supplant theirs, but that it would draw away sorely needed funds and members and would disrupt progress toward realization of the Jewish state. [4]
Hostility toward the Bergsonites was all the more bitter because regular Zionists were painfully aware of their own weakness in the struggle to establish a Jewish state. They needed all the help they could find, not additional complications. That both movements had essentially the same goal multiplied the anguish. [5]
The Zionists were especially disturbed by the Bergsonites' unwillingness to adhere to the discipline of the established Zionist bodies, either on the world level (Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization) or on the national level (American Zionist Emergency Council and Zionist Organization of America). Because the Zionist movement lacked coercive power, it depended on the acceptance of organizational discipline. Without unity, the Zionists believed, little hope existed for attainment of a Jewish state. On several occasions, they and the Bergsonites tried to negotiate a formula for unified action. All attempts broke down over the issue of submitting to the control of the established Zionist movement. In the eyes of the regular Zionists, the Bergson group's. insistence on retaining its autonomy destroyed the all-important principle of unity. [6]
Thus the two movements, each able to marshal considerable skills and strengths, both pursuing common goals, could not collaborate either for rescue or for a Jewish state. Nor were the regular Zionists willing for the Bergson group to go its own way without interference. For with every Bergsonite success they saw a potential increase in the group's influence and thus its threat to their own movement. That, in their view, translated into a threat to the establishment of the Jewish state.
The conflict between the Zionists and the Bergsonites was one of numerous serious disputes that riddled organized American Jewry throughout the Holocaust. To read through the archives and publications of American Jewish organizations in the period is to journey through a landscape of continual fighting. Zionist organizations regularly clashed with such non-Zionist bodies as the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Labor Committee. Zionists feuded bitterly among themselves, even breaking their movement apart for six months after the Wise-Silver collision of December 1944. Orthodox non-Zionists quarreled with each other. Acrimony interfered with cooperation on rescue between the Joint Distribution Committee and Jewish organizations that claimed the JDC was holding back funds. Twice between 1941 and 1945, power struggles within the United Jewish Appeal nearly destroyed that combined fund-raising mechanism. Little wonder, then, that an early War Refugee Board memorandum referring to plans for cooperation with the various private organizations warned that "one of the problems is to get all the groups, particularly the Jewish groups, to work together and to stop fighting among themselves." [7]
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