Baruch Rabinowitz (Robbins), an American-born rabbi who lobbied on Capitol Hill for U.S. action to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, passed away in Jerusalem on December 8, after a long illness. He was 89.



One of the first full-time Jewish lobbyists in Washington, Robbins - then known as Rabinowitz-- was the chief D.C. representative of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, better known as the Bergson group. The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies ("www.WymanInstitute.org"), which holds a collection of memoirs and documents pertaining to Rabinowitz's work, has established a Baruch Rabinowitz Memorial Fund to encourage research into his and his colleagues' Holocaust rescue activities.



Known for his ability to obtain bipartisan support for his efforts, Rabinowitz played a major role in the Bergson group's crowning achievement, a November 1943 Congressional resolution urging the Roosevelt administration to establish a government agency to rescue Jews from Hitler. During the final fifteen months of the war, the Board helped rescue an estimated 200,000 Jews, including current U.S. Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA). Part of its work involved facilitating and financing the rescue activities of Raoul Wallenberg.



After the Holocaust, Rabinowitz remained with the Bergson group in Washington, lobbying for U.S. support for the creation of a Jewish State, and also quietly raising funds for Etzel, one of the Jewish militias battling the British in Mandatory Palestine.



Born in Brooklyn in 1914, Rabinowitz was a seventh-generation direct descendant of the founder of Hassidism, the Baal Shem Tov. He was expected to take the mantle of his father, Rabbi Samuel A. Rabinowitz, who was known as "Brooklyner Rebbe." But at age 17, he chose instead to board a ship and sail to the Holy Land, where he studied under its first chief rabbi, Abraham Isaac Kook, from whom he received rabbinical ordination. He later returned to the United States, became active in the nationalist Revisionist Zionist movement, served as a rabbi until 1940, and then became a full time Jewish activist. After the Six Day War in 1967, Rabinowitz - now known as Baruch Robbins - moved to Israel. In 1978, although 64 years old and legally blind, he left his home in Caesarea to settle in the fledgling community of Elon Moreh.