Free Republic

Ken Burns’ The US and the Holocaust underplayed Peter Bergson’s role in the creation of the War Refuge Board, which is said to have saved 200,000 European Jews. Burns’ documentary, whether for ideological reasons or willful ignorance treated Bergson’s role as an afterthought. On the other hand, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Bergson’s nemesis received positive attention in Burns’ documentary. Yet, it was Stephen Wise who told the antisemitic State Department to hold off on distributing Gerhard Riegner’s report of the German Nazis systematic murder of Jews in Europe until he could verify it! It was pretty clear then, in 1943, that...

Yad Vashem denies Bergson group During the WWII, the official Zionist leadership abandoned European Jews, considering them human waste unfit to join their socialist dream. Zionists refused ransom money the Nazis demanded for Hungarian and Romanian Jews. At that time, a single Jewish group worked to save their compatriots. Headed by Hillel Kook (Rabbi Kook’s nephew), it became a prototype for Rabbi Kahane’s Jewish Defense League. The Bergson group pounded at the door closed by the American Jewish leaders, believers in the diplomacy so quiet that no one heard about it. Like the JDL, the Bergson group is an anathema...