A number of Hollywood celebrities are stirring controversy with their vigorous opposition to American military action against Saddam Hussein. Among others, Woody Harrelson has declared that such U. S. action would be "racist and imperialist," while Harry Belafonte has characterized Secretary of State Colin Powell as a cowardly slave kowtowing to his master.
For some, Hollywood's interest in Iraq is reminiscent of celebrities' earlier involvement in causes such as the Vietnam War, the environment, and nuclear disarmament. What is not widely known, however, is that the first cause which a significant number of Hollywood figures embraced was the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust.
The man who introduced Hollywood to the rescue issue was the screenwriter and journalist Ben Hecht, whose credits included such blockbuster films as 'Scarface' and 'Wuthering Heights'. In 1941, Hecht joined up with Peter Bergson, a militant Zionist emissary from Palestine. (Bergson's real name was Hillel Kook; he used the pseudonym to shield his uncle, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, from controversy.) "I was an honest writer who was walking down the street one day when he bumped into history," Hecht later wrote. What he bumped into was Bergson's new "Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews."
Bergson hoped to convince the Allies to establish a Jewish military force to take part in the war against the Nazis. Although the magnitude of the Nazis' slaughter of the Jews was not yet known, enough information about Nazi atrocities had filtered out to rouse the support of many Americans for the notion of arming Jews to fight Hitler. When Hecht brought Bergson to Hollywood, he found considerable sympathy for the project. Movie producer David O. Selznick signed the telegram announcing the Jewish Army committee's local fundraising meeting, and actor Burgess columnist Hedda Hopper made the first pledge. Among Bergson's other early supporters were such well-known Hollywood names as Melvyn Douglas, Eddie Cantor, and Jimmy Durante.
In late 1942, after Allied leaders publicly confirmed that the Nazis were engaged in genocide, Bergson shifted gears. He set aside the Jewish Army committee and established the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. Hecht followed, as did ever-growing list ofHollywood luminaries.
Numerous celebrities volunteered their services for "We Will Never Die," a pageant authored by Hecht to publicize the Holocaust: it was produced by Billy Rose and directed by Moss Hart, featured a musical score by composer Kurt Weill, and starred actors Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, and Stella Adler. Its two opening performances at Madison Square Garden drew audiences of more than 40,000. When "We Will Never Die" was staged in Washington, D.C., attendees included First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and several hundred Members of Congress, as well as members of the Cabinet, Supreme Court justices, and prominent diplomats.
The Emergency Committee maintained that there many concrete steps the U.S. could take to help the Jews in Europe, such as pressuring neutral countries to take in refugees, urging Axis satellites to permit Jewish emigration, and warning Nazi-occupied populations of punishment for collaborating in atrocities. Bergson's approach was directly at odds with the Roosevelt administration's position that nothing could be done until the Allies defeated the Nazis.
One of the ways Bergson publicized the rescue issue was by placing full-page advertisements in the New York Times and other leading newspapers--an uncommon tactic in those days-- with headlines like "Action, Not Pity, Can Save Millions Now" and "This is Strictly a Race Against Death!" The names of celebrities on the Emergency Committee's ads helped draw attention to the cause. Then as now, the public and media paid attention when a movie star or entertainer spoke out on an issue of the day, even if he or she had no specific expertise on the subject.
Bergson described the Emergency Committee's 'division of arts' as "a beehive of activity." He believed part of the reason for its success was that, unlike the mainstream Jewish organizations, the Committee offered celebrities ways to use their specific talents on behalf of a noble cause. "What we asked them to do, nobody else ever asked them to do," Bergson recalled. "I mean nobody [previously] came to Ben Hecht and said to write an ad, write something."
With Hollywood's help, Bergson publicized the Holocaust--and then he channeled the publicity into Congressional action. By the autumn of 1943, his newspaper ads and rallies had aroused enough sympathy on Capitol Hill for his two closest allies, U.S. Senator Guy Gillette (D-Iowa) and Rep. Will Rogers, Jr. (D-CA), to introduce a resolution urging the creation of a government agency to rescue Jews from Hitler. The hearings on the resolution cast unflattering light on the Roosevelt administration's indifference to the Holocaust. Fortuitously, they coincided with a behind-the-scenes effort by Treasury Department officials to press FDR on the rescue issue.
Roosevelt, embarrassed by the publicity and anxious to head off a potential scandal on the eve of an election year, preempted Congress by establishing the rescue agency that the resolution was requesting--the War Refugee Board. Although understaffed and underfunded, the Board initiated a series of rescue actions in 1944-1945 that saved an estimated 200,000lives. Many in Hollywood could feel justly proud of their role in helping to bring about the only meaningful U.S. government response to the Holocaust.
Sixty years ago, some of the biggest names in Hollywood urged America to intervene when an evil dictator invaded neighboring countries and sought to slaughter millions of Jews. Today, another evil dictator menaces his neighbors and seeks the destruction of the Jews--yet now Hollywood celebrities are urging the United States to refrain from intervening. How times have changed.
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Dr. Medoff is Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY-Purchase, and co-author, with David S. Wyman, of the new book 'A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust', published by The New Press.
75262.2376@compuserve.com
For some, Hollywood's interest in Iraq is reminiscent of celebrities' earlier involvement in causes such as the Vietnam War, the environment, and nuclear disarmament. What is not widely known, however, is that the first cause which a significant number of Hollywood figures embraced was the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust.
The man who introduced Hollywood to the rescue issue was the screenwriter and journalist Ben Hecht, whose credits included such blockbuster films as 'Scarface' and 'Wuthering Heights'. In 1941, Hecht joined up with Peter Bergson, a militant Zionist emissary from Palestine. (Bergson's real name was Hillel Kook; he used the pseudonym to shield his uncle, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, from controversy.) "I was an honest writer who was walking down the street one day when he bumped into history," Hecht later wrote. What he bumped into was Bergson's new "Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews."
Bergson hoped to convince the Allies to establish a Jewish military force to take part in the war against the Nazis. Although the magnitude of the Nazis' slaughter of the Jews was not yet known, enough information about Nazi atrocities had filtered out to rouse the support of many Americans for the notion of arming Jews to fight Hitler. When Hecht brought Bergson to Hollywood, he found considerable sympathy for the project. Movie producer David O. Selznick signed the telegram announcing the Jewish Army committee's local fundraising meeting, and actor Burgess columnist Hedda Hopper made the first pledge. Among Bergson's other early supporters were such well-known Hollywood names as Melvyn Douglas, Eddie Cantor, and Jimmy Durante.
In late 1942, after Allied leaders publicly confirmed that the Nazis were engaged in genocide, Bergson shifted gears. He set aside the Jewish Army committee and established the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. Hecht followed, as did ever-growing list ofHollywood luminaries.
Numerous celebrities volunteered their services for "We Will Never Die," a pageant authored by Hecht to publicize the Holocaust: it was produced by Billy Rose and directed by Moss Hart, featured a musical score by composer Kurt Weill, and starred actors Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, and Stella Adler. Its two opening performances at Madison Square Garden drew audiences of more than 40,000. When "We Will Never Die" was staged in Washington, D.C., attendees included First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and several hundred Members of Congress, as well as members of the Cabinet, Supreme Court justices, and prominent diplomats.
The Emergency Committee maintained that there many concrete steps the U.S. could take to help the Jews in Europe, such as pressuring neutral countries to take in refugees, urging Axis satellites to permit Jewish emigration, and warning Nazi-occupied populations of punishment for collaborating in atrocities. Bergson's approach was directly at odds with the Roosevelt administration's position that nothing could be done until the Allies defeated the Nazis.
One of the ways Bergson publicized the rescue issue was by placing full-page advertisements in the New York Times and other leading newspapers--an uncommon tactic in those days-- with headlines like "Action, Not Pity, Can Save Millions Now" and "This is Strictly a Race Against Death!" The names of celebrities on the Emergency Committee's ads helped draw attention to the cause. Then as now, the public and media paid attention when a movie star or entertainer spoke out on an issue of the day, even if he or she had no specific expertise on the subject.
Bergson described the Emergency Committee's 'division of arts' as "a beehive of activity." He believed part of the reason for its success was that, unlike the mainstream Jewish organizations, the Committee offered celebrities ways to use their specific talents on behalf of a noble cause. "What we asked them to do, nobody else ever asked them to do," Bergson recalled. "I mean nobody [previously] came to Ben Hecht and said to write an ad, write something."
With Hollywood's help, Bergson publicized the Holocaust--and then he channeled the publicity into Congressional action. By the autumn of 1943, his newspaper ads and rallies had aroused enough sympathy on Capitol Hill for his two closest allies, U.S. Senator Guy Gillette (D-Iowa) and Rep. Will Rogers, Jr. (D-CA), to introduce a resolution urging the creation of a government agency to rescue Jews from Hitler. The hearings on the resolution cast unflattering light on the Roosevelt administration's indifference to the Holocaust. Fortuitously, they coincided with a behind-the-scenes effort by Treasury Department officials to press FDR on the rescue issue.
Roosevelt, embarrassed by the publicity and anxious to head off a potential scandal on the eve of an election year, preempted Congress by establishing the rescue agency that the resolution was requesting--the War Refugee Board. Although understaffed and underfunded, the Board initiated a series of rescue actions in 1944-1945 that saved an estimated 200,000lives. Many in Hollywood could feel justly proud of their role in helping to bring about the only meaningful U.S. government response to the Holocaust.
Sixty years ago, some of the biggest names in Hollywood urged America to intervene when an evil dictator invaded neighboring countries and sought to slaughter millions of Jews. Today, another evil dictator menaces his neighbors and seeks the destruction of the Jews--yet now Hollywood celebrities are urging the United States to refrain from intervening. How times have changed.
---------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Medoff is Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY-Purchase, and co-author, with David S. Wyman, of the new book 'A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust', published by The New Press.
75262.2376@compuserve.com