A new book about the late-in-coming U.S. role in saving European Jewry has aroused the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to right a wrong and give credit where it is due. "A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust," by David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, shows that it was Bergson and his colleagues who goaded and shamed the Roosevelt administration into finally establishing the War Refugee Board - which helped save more than 200,000 lives during the final 18 months of World War II. Curiously, the Museum did not give Bergson the credit - until its directors saw an advance copy of the book and realized their mistake. At a New York City event last week marking the book's publication, the Museum announced its intention to correct their exhibit on the War Refugees Board.
Bergson's tenacious campaign to pressure the FDR administration to rescue Jews during the Holocaust included full-page newspaper ads, protest rallies, and lobbying in Congress. Born Hillel Kook to his father Rabbi Dov Kook - first Chief Rabbi of Afula and brother of the famed Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook - Bergson was an underground Etzel fighter in the 1930's and 40's, was active in assisting "illegal" immigrants, and later became a member of the first Knesset. He died in August 2001 at the end of 86.
Bergson's tenacious campaign to pressure the FDR administration to rescue Jews during the Holocaust included full-page newspaper ads, protest rallies, and lobbying in Congress. Born Hillel Kook to his father Rabbi Dov Kook - first Chief Rabbi of Afula and brother of the famed Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook - Bergson was an underground Etzel fighter in the 1930's and 40's, was active in assisting "illegal" immigrants, and later became a member of the first Knesset. He died in August 2001 at the end of 86.