American Jewish Leaders Research Articles

Letters to the Editor

To the Editor: Stuart Erdheim Originally, William Rubinstein claimed (AJH letters, September 1997) the idea that the Allies should have bombed Auschwitz “first implausibly surfaced in the mid-1960s.” David Wyman responded (AJH letters, March 1998) with a long list of instances in which the bombing idea was, in fact, publicly discussed during the Holocaust itself as well as during the 1950s and early 1960s. Now, Rubinstein (AJH letters, March 1998) presents a new version—he claims it was Wyman himself who was “absolutely central” to stirring public discussion of the bombing idea, with his 1978 article in Commentary on the subject. Rubinstein even goes so far as to falsely claim that the bombing idea was “not mentioned” in the “classic early popular or academic works on the Holocaust . . . by [Raul] Hilberg . . . and many others”—when, in fact, Hilberg explicitly discusses the bombing issue on p. 771 of his The Destruction of the European Jews (First Quadrangle paperback edition, 1967). For further evidence of Rubinstein’s apparent unfamiliarity with much of the basic secondary literature concerning the bombing issue, consider the fact that from the “mid-1960s” (Rubinstein’s initial date of the origins of the debate), until Wyman’s article appeared in 1978 (Rubinstein’s new date for the start of the debate), there were numerous discussions of the bombing idea in books and journals. To cite just a few: Samuel Katz wrote about it in both Hebrew and in English, in the 1966 and 1968 editions, respectively, of his Days of Fire, even including a detailed map showing the number of miles from Allied air bases in Italy to Auschwitz. Arthur Morse discussed the idea of bombing Auschwitz in his 1967 book, While Six Million Died. Nora Levin mentioned it in her 1968 work, The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945. Henry Feingold referred to it in American Jewish Historical Quarterly in 1968 (LVIII:1), in his 1969 book, The Politics of Rescue, and in essays he wrote in 1969 for Judaism (18:3, Summer 1969) and for Randolph Braham’s volume, Hungarian Jewish Studies. Aryeh Morgenstern considered the issue in the June 1971 edition of the Israeli scholarly journal Yalkut Moreshet. In 1973, Saul Friedman discussed the bombing idea in his book, No Haven for the Oppressed, and Helen Fein raised the issue in Patterns of Prejudice (September–October 1973). Bela Vago spoke about it at the Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference in 1974 (and the proceedings [End Page 219] were published in 1977). Israel Television broadcast a documentary, “Why Wasn’t Auschwitz Bombed?,” on February 15, 1975. Herbert Druks discussed it in his 1977 book, The Failure to Rescue. The bombing issue was so widely known by that time that even then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance spoke about it when he visited Yad Vashem in February 1977. David Wyman’s 1978 article in Commentary was the first in-depth, scholarly analysis of the feasibility of bombing Auschwitz and the reasons the Roosevelt administration failed to do so. But to claim, as Rubinstein does, that Wyman invented the idea out of whole cloth and foisted it upon a gullible public or scholarly community is patently absurd. Stuart Erdheim [End Page 220] To the Editor: Rafael Medoff The document cited by William Rubinstein (AJH letters, March 1998), concerning American Jewish attitudes toward the idea of bombing Auschwitz, does not show what he thinks it does. The document in question is a summary—not a verbatim transcript—of a conversation between John Pehle of the U.S. government War Refugee Board and a handful of American Jewish leaders in August 1944. (The document was first cited in my 1987 book, The Deafening Silence, pp. 158–159.) According to the summary, one of the Jewish leaders raised the idea of sending U.S. airplanes to bomb Auschwitz, to which Pehle replied, first, that such a proposal was “unfeasible” and, second, that the idea of bombing the death camps “had been objected to by Jewish organizations because it would result in the extermination of large numbers of Jews there.” In describing such a bombing raid as “unfeasible,” Pehle was merely repeating what he had been told by...

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor William D. Rubinstein Dear Editor, The scattered references provided by Professor Wyman do not show what he thinks they do. Of course the bombing of Auschwitz was publicly discussed in Jewish newspapers and news bulletins in the summer of 1944. But it is striking how little impact they made at the time. In 1942 and 1943 there were numerous large-scale demonstrations by American Jewish groups, attended by thousands, demanding the rescue of European Jewry. (None of their proposals included bombing Auschwitz, of course). When the suggestion to bomb Auschwitz first surfaced in May–June 1944, no demonstrations of any kind were held in favour of the bombings, and I must reiterate my point that the reception to the bombing proposals, among Diaspora Jewish groups, was generally either surprisingly lukewarm or overtly hostile. Most emphatically, it must be stressed that such proposals were not viewed at the time as a panacea and remained almost entirely unknown (see below) for several decades. There were two main reasons for this surprisingly ambiguous attitude. First, there was real and genuine concern that any bombing raids would simply kill more Jews (a concern which was probably quite well-taken). Secondly the bombing proposals coincided with D-Day and the opening of the Second Front, upon which the fate of Europe depended, and whose success alone would rid the world of the Nazi scourge. It is not surprising that most American Jewish leaders pinned their hopes on the Allied invasion and did not forcefully pursue the proposals to bomb Auschwitz, even if they viewed these as a panacea (which they didn’t). An example of American attitudes at this time may be found in the following extract from a Report of a meeting between John W. Pehle, head of the War Refugee Board, and five prominent Jewish leaders on 16 August 1944. There is no reason to believe that either Pehle or the Jewish leaders were misrepresenting the prevalent view of the bombing question at this time. “REPORT OF MEETING WITH JOHN W. PEHLE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND MESSRS. LESSER AND FRIEMAN OF THE WAR REFUGEE BOARD August 16, 1944 STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL The committee consisted of Mr. Eugene Hevesi, of the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, of the Vaad Ha-Hazalah, [End Page 113] Dr. A. Leon Kubowitzki, of the World Jewish Congress, Mr. R. Sherman of the Jewish Labor Committee, and I.L. Kenen, secretary, Rescue Commission, American Jewish Conference. Mr. Kenen introduced the delegation as a committee representing all Jewish organizations, including those affiliated with the Conference and a number outside the Conference, such as the American Jewish Committee and the Vaad Ha-Hazalah. In addition, he continued, the World Jewish Congress was represented by Dr. Kubowitzki. The organizations had united to expedite rescue measures in view of the situation in Hungary. He said that it was the intention in the future to have representations to the Board made, if possible, by a committee representing all the organizations and thus eliminate duplication of activity. Mr. Pehle said that when he had first taken office, he had hoped that such a unified representation might be achieved but found it impossible at that time. . . . Dr. Kubowitzki raised the question of the destruction of Nazi extermination facilities. Mr. Pehle doubted that this could be done. He said that a proposal to bomb the facilities had been objected to by Jewish organizations because it would result in the extermination of large numbers of Jews there, and the alternative, he said, was to send an underground detachment. He asked whether we had taken this up with the Polish Government in Exile and he expressed doubt that the Poles could muster the strength for such engagements. (Original at YIVO, AJC Archives, Waldman Series, Box 18, Folder 1.)” Prof. Wyman’s handful of post-war, pre-1970s references to the bombing of Auschwitz must also be queried. First, however, since writing The Myth of Rescue I have become aware that these proposals were indeed mentioned at the time of the Eichmann Trial (1960–62), especially in the London Jewish Chronicle. One might, however, place this fact in a much wider context: since Prof. Wyman’s list...

Why Mrs. Brandeis Endorsed the Irgun: An Episode in Holocaust-Era American Jewish Politics

Why Mrs. Brandeis Endorsed the Irgun: An Episode in Holocaust-Era American Jewish Politics Rafael Medoff (bio) On a sunny April morning in 1944 the mailman brought a fascinating item to the New York headquarters of the American League for a Free Palestine (ALFP), a militant Jewish statehood group established by US supporters of Menachem Begin’s Irgun Tzvai Leumi underground. It was a membership card signed by Mrs. Alice Brandeis, widow of the famed jurist and Zionist leader, together with payment of her annual membership dues. To the ALFP, Mrs. Brandeis’ membership was a pleasant surprise; to the mainstream Zionist leaders with whom Mrs. Brandeis normally associated it was a horrifying shock. The ensuing campaign by the established Zionist leadership to bring about Mrs. Brandeis’ withdrawal from the ALFP turned out to be more than just another colorful exercise in intra-Zionist rivalry. It provides a vivid illustration of a broader trend underway in the American Jewish community during the 1940s: the embrace of militant Zionism by growing numbers of American Jews in response to the Holocaust and the British shutdown of Palestine immigration. The arrival of Mrs. Brandeis’ membership card was more a pleasant surprise than a shock to Harry Louis Selden, the author and publicist who served as volunteer president of the maverick ALFP. 1 After all, the previous year Mrs. Brandeis had joined the ALFP’s affiliate, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. 2 Both groups—and several others like them—were the brainchild of Peter Bergson (the alias used by Hillel Kook), a Revisionist Zionist emissary from Palestine who had been dispatched to the United States in 1940. Bergson and his handful of colleagues had a flair for public relations. Their use of full-page advertisements in the American press helped raise public consciousness about the plight of European Jewry and attracted the sympathy of a broad cross section of prominent Americans, including members of Congress and leading artists, writers and intellectuals. Bergson’s backers included the actors Marlon Brando, Eddie Cantor and Edward G. Robinson; Christian theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich; [End Page 29] national labor leaders such as AFL President William Green and CIO President Philip Murray; publisher William Randolph Hearst; Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes; and former president Herbert Hoover, to name just a few. Bergson and his colleagues established the ALFP in early 1944 to lobby for immediate Jewish statehood and to seek American public support for the recently-launched Irgun revolt against the British Mandatory regime in Palestine. Most mainstream American Jewish leaders greeted Bergson’s activity with disdain. They regarded him as a rival, worrying—with justification—that the Bergsonites’ militant message was resonating with grassroots American Jews. 3 In addition, Jewish leaders feared that Bergson’s public criticism of American refugee policy would sour Jewish relations with the Roosevelt Administration and perhaps even cause anti-Semitism.4 Leaders of the American Jewish Congress and the American Zionist Emergency Council (the coalition of mainstream US Zionist groups) frequently approached politicians, intellectuals and rabbis who had endorsed the Bergsonites and pressured them to sever their connection. They often succeeded. 5 The Bergson group’s first major challenge to the Roosevelt Administration was a full-page ad in the New York Times responding to the [End Page 30] failure of the 1943 Bermuda refugee conference to produce any concrete rescue plans. The ad’s headline blared: “To 5,000,000 Jews in the Nazi Death-Trap, Bermuda Was a ‘Cruel Mockery.’” The controversy sparked by the ad gained additional (and, from Bergson’s viewpoint, unwanted) momentum when it turned out that the 33 US senators whose names appeared in the ad had not been consulted about its text. They had signed on, a year or so earlier, as endorsers of Bergson’s campaign for the creation of a Jewish army to fight against the Nazis. Since the Bermuda ad was officially sponsored by the same Bergson group, the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews, the senators’ names duly appeared as part of the Committee’s list of supporters. Although only two of the 33 Senators publicly dissociated themselves from the Bermuda...

Jewish Continuity Through Whom? A Message to American Jewish Communal Leadership

Jewish Continuity Through Whom? A Message to American Jewish Communal Leadership

Hebrew in America: Perspectives and Prospects (review)

Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 186 Reviews ignore. Paradigmatic, perhaps, is its closing paragraph: ...the Jewish rejection of Christ brought about yet another exile, which has only recently been ended by the creation of the modern Israeli state. But...Israel is still in spiritual exile from her Lord and will be until its blindness is moved (2 Cor. 3:13-15).... Even so come, Lord Jesus! (p.494) Julia M. O'Brien Meredith College Raleigh. NC 27607 HEBREW IN AMERICA: PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS. Alan Mintz, ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. Cloth. In 1992 the exiled President of Haiti, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was invited to address a meeting of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York City. Aristide, known for his friendships with Israeli and American Jewish scholars, seemed a natural choice in a time of rising BlackJewish tensions in the city. He came well prepared for the meeting; in one sense he came too well prepared. For after short opening remarks in English he proceeded to deliver a speech in flawless Israeli Hebrew. The applause, though polite, was muted. Very few of his listeners understood his remarks. As the president of the Community Relations Council put it in his response, "Mr. President, you give us more credit than we deserve."' Two years before this somewhat embarrassing incident occurred, Alan Mintz organized a conference at the University of Maryland on "Hebrew in America: Perspectives and Prospects." The papers presented at that gathering are now published in this fine new collection. The volume is divided into three sections, essentially the past. present. and future of Hebrew learning in American Jewish life. Each section contains five essays (if one includes both Mintz's introduction and Stanley Chyet"s afterword). In many of the papers the authors lament the Hebrew illiteracy of many American Jewish leaders and express their concern for the future of Hebrew learning in America. To these authors the Aristide event would not have come as a surprise. As Deborah Lipstadt puts it in the volume's last essay: "To say that virtually none of the major leaders of the American Jewish community are fluent in Hebrew is to state the obvious."' Lipstadt and others offer bold prescriptions for alleviating this problem, though to this reviewer the probability of implementing these plans in the near future seems low. Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 187 Reviews Concern for the future of Hebrew learning in America also informs Alan Mintz's introduction, which deftly ties together the many concerns addressed in these fifteen essays. Mintz is deeply concerned with the lowly status of Hebrew in American Jewish life, and he wonders aloud whether Hebrew is "merely a segment of Jewish culture that got left behind, obsolete equipment in the configuration of communal and personal identity?" He closes his introduction expressing the hope that confronting the sorry state of Hebrew learning will lead to the language's revitalization in American Jewish life. Yes, our communal leaders may not know much Hebrew, but this merely reflects the lowly status of the language among the wider Jewish community. Leonard Fein's witticism (alluded to in Gilead Morahg's essay) that "Hebrew school is remembered as the place where Hebrew wasn't learnt" has become a commonplace, a truism. College teachers of Hebrew are often confronted with students who have learnt little in the supplementary Hebrew school system and who now bemoan their inability to read (to say nothing of speak) the language. The range and breadth of material covered by these essays is impressive. But the depth varies greatly, and the tone is uneven. Unfortunately, some of the pieces retain the conversational tone of many conference papers-these papers (or the conversational tone that dominates them) should have been weeded out. Part 1, "The Enterprise of Tarbut Ivrit," opens with Mintz's incisive essay on the journal HaToren and the part it played in the Tarbut Ivrit movement during and after the First World War. He notes that while there is a veritable industry around Yiddish nostalgia, "the awareness that there was once an intense Hebrew culture in America has almost entirely been lost to mind" (p. 30). Mintz's project in this essay...

The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust. By Rafael Medoff. New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1987, 233 pp. $18.95

Journal Article The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust. By Rafael Medoff. New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1987, 233 pp. $18.95 Get access Herbert Druks Herbert Druks Brooklyn CollegeBrooklyn, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 31, Issue 2, Spring 1989, Pages 319–321, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/31.2.319 Published: 01 March 1989

BOOK REVIEWS

Journal Article BOOK REVIEWS Get access Who Speaks for the Vanquished? American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust, Leon Weliczker Wells (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1987), 337 pp. Rachel Feldhay Brenner Rachel Feldhay Brenner University of Toronto Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, 1989, Pages 114–116, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/4.1.114 Published: 01 January 1989

To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890-1914. By Gary Dean Best. Contributions in American History, no. 98. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. 240 pp. $27.50

Journal Article To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890–1914. By Gary Dean Best. Contributions in American History, no. 98. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. 240 pp. $27.50 Get access Irwin Wall Irwin Wall University of California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 26, Issue 3, Autumn 1984, Pages 543–545, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/26.3.543 Published: 01 October 1984

FROM NOBLESSE OBLIGE TO PERSONAL REDEMPTION: THE CHANGING PROFILE AND AGENDA OF AMERICAN JEWISH LEADERS

Journal Article FROM NOBLESSE OBLIGE TO PERSONAL REDEMPTION: THE CHANGING PROFILE AND AGENDA OF AMERICAN JEWISH LEADERS Get access Deborah E. Lipstadt Deborah E. Lipstadt UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIALOS ANGELES Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, Volume 4, Issue 3, October 1984, Pages 295–309, https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/4.3.295 Published: 01 October 1984

To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890-1914

To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890-1914

To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Leaders Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890-1914

To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Leaders Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890-1914

American jewish leadership

American jewish leadership