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A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Peter Bergson's Massive Effort to Save Europe's Jews

[Washington Post] Jacqueline Trescott - The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has agreed to recast part of its permanent exhibition to include the story of the Bergson Group, a World War II citizens' group that called attention to the horrors facing European Jews and urged the American government to help. The group was created in 1942 by Peter Bergson, a Lithuanian Jew who had immigrated to Palestine and then came to Washington to support the creation of a Jewish army that would fight alongside the Allied armies. The group, formally called the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, bought newspaper ads pointing to the failure to save the Jews, after a Nov. 25, 1942, Washington Post report that the Nazis had killed 250,000 Polish Jews and planned the extermination of half of the Jewish population in that country by the end of the year. There were also demonstrations, including a march of 400 rabbis in Washington. A dramatic pageant called "We Will Never Die" drew 40,000 people to Madison Square Garden. "Most of what Americans know about our country's response to the Holocaust is that the Jews in Europe were abandoned. There were some Americans who did speak out, and it is important that their work be highlighted," said Rafael Medoff, director of the Washington-based Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. The Bergson Group's "willingness to take a stand and the willingness to launch controversial publicity campaigns and lobby congressmen for a cause" underscores its relevance today, said Steven Luckert, curator of the museum's permanent exhibition.
2007-08-03 01:00:00
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