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Remarks delivered at the Fifth National Conference of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies Sunday, June 17, 2007 - Fordham University School of Law Reflections on the Jewish Leadership’s Fight Seymour Reich Mayor Koch and Dr. Medoff have just described how the Bergson Group built a broad coalition to promote the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust. Bergson turned the rescue issue into a major public issue by cultivating relationships with individuals of prominence from all ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds. It was effective, and it was admirable. Now I want to direct your attention to the much less admirable side of the story: the campaign by some Jewish leaders to undermine the Bergson coalition, to destroy the relationships Bergson had so carefully built, to persuade his coalition partners to cut their ties with him. I want to address this issue here today because, having served as president of B’nai B’rith International, as president of the American Zionist Movement, and as chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, I am somewhat familiar with the inner workings of the American Jewish leadership. From this perspective, I would like to share with you some of my reflections on how my predecessors acted towards the Bergson Group six decades ago. We know from from the research of scholars such as David Wyman, that the Jewish leadership’s fight against the Bergson activists was wide-ranging and intense. The most active of Bergson’s opponents was the most prominent and influential Jewish leader of that era, Rabbi Dr. Stephen Wise. He was the longtime leader of four of the community’s most important organizations: the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress, the Zionist Organization of America, and the American Jewish Conference, which was a coalition of the various major Jewish groups. Wise was very disturbed by the Bergson Group’s success in attracting the support of prominent non-Jews. Much to his chagrin, the group’s newspaper ads often featured long lists of names of leading politicians, intellectuals, and entertainers. Here’s what Wise wrote about the Bergson Group in a letter to a colleague in 1944: “They are a disaster to the Zionist cause and the Jewish people. Yet see how many names they capture of persons who are well-meaning and friendly to the Jews! It is too sad for words.” [1] Wise put a great deal of his energy into trying to persuade VIPs to break their ties with Bergson. For example, when he learned that the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Henry St. George Tucker, had agreed to speak at Bergson’s Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe in 1943, Wise pressured the bishop to withdraw. To the bishop’s credit, he refused to cancel. [2] Likewise, after the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, agreed to serve as chairman of the Bergson Group’s Washington, D.C. division, Wise sent him a letter pleading with him to resign. Ickes, too, refused to drop out. [3] In these two cases, Wise failed, but in many other cases, he and his colleagues succeeded. For example, after Mrs. Louis Brandeis, widow of the Supreme Court Justice, signed a Bergson newspaper ad, leaders of Hadassah successfully pressured her to withdraw her support. And we know that a letter from Dr. Israel Goldstein, a leader of the Zionist Organization of America, resulted directly in the decision by Congressman Samuel Weiss to drop out of the Bergson Group. In another instance, at Wise’s direction, Zionist leaders in Chicago convinced fifteen members of the Bergson Group’s local board of directors to resign en masse in 1944. [4] Wise’s co-chair at the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann, likewise spent a good deal of time campaigning against Bergson. The files of Goldmann’s correspondence from 1944, which are located at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, are bulging with carbon copies of letters that Goldmann sent to foreign diplomats in Washington, urging them to stay away from the Bergson Group. One memo indicates that Goldmann sent such letters to every single embassy in Washington. As you can imagine, that is no small task. [5] The extent to which fighting Bergson became one of Wise’s top priorities is evident from the internal documents of the American Zionist Emergency Council, of which Wise was co-chair. In May 1944, the Council sent an urgent message to all of its chapters around the country, telling them that it was --and I quote-- “mobilizing all responsible groups in American Jewry to combat the activities” of the Bergson Group. He urged them to circulate anti-Bergson material in the Jewish community and to contact anyone who had signed Bergson newspaper ads and urge them to “withdraw their support.” [6] And consider this item, from the minutes of a June 1944 meeting of the American Zionist Emergency Council. Harold Manson, a senior staff member of the Council reported --and I quote-- “that the activities of the Press Department in the past few weeks have been concentrated on fighting the Bergson Group.” [7] One indication we have that it was indeed their main concentration, is the fact that the very same month, the Council announced that forty-six rabbis had signed a statement renouncing their earlier ties with Bergson. [8] It is no small matter, even today, to convince forty-six rabbis to sign a statement. Of course, in those days, there was no email or even fax machines--meaning that the process of mobilizing these forty-six rabbis took a great deal of time and effort. Another aspect of the Jewish establishment’s campaign against the Bergson Group was discussed earlier today, at the session concerning the march by hundreds of rabbis to the White House in 1943. As you heard, President Roosevelt refused to meet with Bergson and the other leaders of the march, because Rabbi Wise and FDR’s speechwriter Sam Rosenman --a leading member of the American Jewish Committee-- denounced the marchers and urged FDR to avoid them. Surely the most extreme step in the Jewish leaders’ campaign against Bergson was their attempt to incite the U.S. legal authorities against him. In the spring of 1944, Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress met with State Department officials and urged them to “either deport Bergson or draft him.” Goldmann told them that Rabbi Wise --and I quote-- "regarded Bergson as equally as great an enemy of the Jews as Hitler, for the reason that his activities could only lead to increased anti-Semitism." [9] Let me repeat that extraordinary statement, so there is no confusion about what Goldmann said. He said that Rabbi Wise --quote-- "regarded Bergson as equally as great an enemy of the Jews as Hitler, for the reason that his activities could only lead to increased anti-Semitism." Also that spring, the vice president of the American Jewish Committee, Morris Waldman, met with State Department officials, and emphasized that --quote-- "it was unfortunate that [Bergson] and his group should have been received so cordially by certain members of this Government, particularly members of Congress." Waldman raised the idea of deporting Bergson, and suggested the FBI should investigate him for “racketeering,” in order “to curtail his stay in the United States.” [10] Ironically, by the way, after Waldman denounced Bergson, he proceeded to denounce Nahum Goldmann and the World Jewish Congress almost as vehemently. Remember, in those days the American Jewish Committee was anti-Zionist and in Waldman’s eyes, Goldmann was almost as bad as Bergson. Now of course, the Roosevelt administration had its own reasons for opposing Bergson, and we don’t know exactly how much of what subsequently happened was because of the Jewish leaders’ lobbying, and how much of it would have happened anyway. But what we do know is that the FBI initiated extensive surveillance of the Bergson Group, hoping to find a basis to deport him. And the IRS launched its own investigation, to find grounds to strip the Bergson Group of its tax-exempt status. Neither the FBI or the IRS ever found a basis for action, but unfortuately a good part of the Bergson Group’s time and energy in 1944 was diverted away from the most important issues of the day and spent on defending itself against these kinds of attacks and investigations. [11] All of which would be bad enough in ordinary times. But consider the extraordinary events that were occurring at the very same time. I am speaking here of May 1944, when the American Zionist Emergency Council was mobilizing its chapters around the country to fight Bergson, when Nahum Goldmann was writing all those letters to foreign embassies, when the Press Department of the Zionist Council reported that it was concentrating on the war against Bergson, and when Goldmann was urging the State Department to draft or deport Bergson. May 1944. What was happening in German-occupied Hungary in May 1944? Let me read to you just a few lines from David Wyman’s classic work, The Abandonment of the Jews: “On May 15, mass deportations to Auschwitz commenced [from Hungary]... Fully detailed reports took a few weeks to get to the Allied world. But the basic informaton came out almost immediately ... On May 10, a New York Times story .... revealed that the Hungarian government ‘is now preparing for the annihilation of Hungarian Jews.’ On May 18, only three days after the mass deportations began, the Times reported that the first transports of Jews ahd left the Carpathian provinces for ‘murder camps in Poland.’ “ [12] That was on May 18. The very next day, May 19, is when Nahum Goldmann was trying to incite the State Department to draft or deport Bergson. Think about it. On Monday, Goldmann picks up the newspaper and reads that Hungarian Jews are being shipped to death camps. On Tuesday, he goes to the State Department and complains about Bergson. And he tells the State Department that Stephen Wise considers Bergson to be as dangerous as Hitler! Let me emphasize that I am examining these episodes out of sadness, not anger. I want --I think we all want-- to try to understand why they did such things, so we can learn from their terrible errors. One of the factors which motivated them was the fear that Bergson’s noisy protests, or Bergson’s criticism of the president in the middle of a war, would provoke antisemitism. Nahum Goldmann alluded to that fear when he spoke of Stephen Wise’s belief that Bergson’s actions might cause pogroms. Goldmann and Wise were not the only ones to raise that fear. Joseph Proskauer, president of the American Jewish Committee, once pressured Bergson to delay publication of a newspaper ad because, he claimed, the ad’s criticism of the international community might be seen as “anti-Christian” and would “result in porgroms.” And Congressman Sol Bloom urged the FBI to deport Bergson on the grounds that his activities might provoke pogroms. Now please understand: I am not belittling their fears. I am sure there were many American Jews who worried that Jewish protests might cause antisemitism. What bothers me is that Jewish leaders continue to articulate such fears long after it should have been clear that they were baseless. For Proskauer or Wise to worry about this in 1942, when Bergson’s first newspaper ads were appearing and his first rallies were taking place, was one thing. They didn’t yet know what the reaction would be, so they feared the worst. But for them to continue to raise this fear in 1943 and 1944, after dozens of rallies and hundreds of newspaper ads, was simply not reasonable. And a Jewish leader has a responsibility to act according to reason, not fear. A second factor was Rabbi Wise’s strong loyalty to President Roosevelt. Again, he was hardly alone in this sentiment. The vast majority of American Jews felt a strong affection for FDR and the New Deal. But the problem was that sometimes, it seemed that Wise let his feelings about Roosevelt cloud his judgement as a Jewish leader. He sometimes acted as if he felt his job was to shield the president from Jewish criticism or Jewish demands. And that, too, was wrong. A Jewish leader has a responsibility to make sure his personal political views do not get in the way of his obligations to his constituents. A third factor had to do with Zionist politics. Bergson and some of his colleagues had been disciples of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leader of Revisionist Zionism. They had also been connected to the Irgun, the Jewish underground in Palestine. For those American Jewish leaders who were supporters of Labor Zionism, Bergson and company were regarded as almost automatic enemies. This, too, is a tragedy--because it meant that Zionist political differences were allowed to get in the way of the bigger issue, the issue that really mattered--the mass killing of Jews in Europe. And there was a fourth reason for the campaign against Bergson. This may be the most important of the factors. Many Jewish leaders were clearly afraid that Bergson was usurping their positions as leaders of the Jewish community, in the eyes of the media, the administration, and the public. One of the Jewish organizations’ press releases concerning Bergson in 1944 actually accused Bergson of --and I quote-- “usurpatory aspirations.” [13] In the correspondence of the Jewish leaders in the 1940s, there is a running theme in the attacks on Bergson--that he has no right to claim he represents anyone, that he is secretly trying to undermine or take over the Jewish or Zionist organizations, and so forth. In one particularly blunt memo written in June 1943, a senior World Jewish Congress official, Maurice Perlzweig, specifically complained to Wise and Goldmann that the Bergson Group was --and I quote-- “stealing the thunder” of the established Jewish organizations. [14] The Jewish leaders watched in horror as Bergson met with senior government officials, attracted scores of politicians and celebrities to sign his ads, and received widespread media coverage for his activities. Of course, had Jewish leaders been focused single-mindedly on the Holocaust, as they should have been, then it would not have mattered how many people signed Bergson’s latest ad or which radio network interviewed him. Instead of writing to foreign embassies about Bergson, Jewish leaders should have been writing to these embassies about finding ways to rescue and shelter Jewish refugees. Instead of mobilizing chapters around the country to attack Bergson, they should have been mobilizing them to challenge the Roosevelt administration’s failure to take any serious steps to rescue the Jews. These leaders seem to have lost sight of their primary responsibilities. I don’t claim to be able to read their minds. I can’t say I know exactly what they thought or felt. But we have the documents, the memos, the correspondence. And I have seen too many people in similar situations for whom maintaining their positions of prestige became more than important than almost anything else. It’s true that power can corrupt--in the Jewish leadership, just like anywhere else. I know. I have seen it happen. It is painful to admit what my predecssors did. I say predecessors, because the American Zionist Emergency Council was the direct predecessor of the American Zionist Movement, of which I was president fifty years later. And the American Jewish Conference, over which Stephen Wise presided, was the predecessor of the Conference of President of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which I was president for two terms. I feel a connection to them, which makes me feel all the more ashamed of waht they did. As painful as it is, we must be honest about what happened. And so I have come here today, as a veteran of the Jewish establishment, to say unequivocally: They were wrong. They should not have done it. They should not have undermined the Bergson Group. They should not have informed on Bergson to the U.S. authorities. They should not have spent their time and energy attacking Bergson, when they should have been focusing completely on how to bring about the rescue of Europe’s Jews. There is no other way to say it than this: They were wrong. I pray that my words will be taken in the spirit they are intended, as an act of reconciliation. We cannot change what happened between leaders and dissidents sixty years ago, but we can, I hope, pave the way towards fostering more enlightened attitudes today. We can help the Jewish community learn the lessons of the past in order to foster greater tolerance today. Thank you. [1] Wise to Thurman, 20 November 1944, Stephen S. Wise Papers, American Jewish Historical Society [hereafter SSW-AJHS], New York City. [13] The American wing of the Histadrut used this phrase in its news release, “Palestine Labor Federation Assails Bergson Group,” 1 June 1944, SS0-T/118, CZA.
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