The Bergson Group was group of Jewish activitists whose actions included trying to convince the Roosevelt administration to save Jews from the Nazi genocide in Europe. The group was active in the United States between 1940 and 1948.

Founded by Hillel Kook, who had the pseudonym "Peter H. Bergson", the Bergson Group was a group formed during the Holocaust to advocate for the fight against Nazis and for rescuing Jews.[1][2]

Initially composed of ten Irgun activists from Europe, America and Palestine, including Aryeh Ben-Eliezer, Yitzhak Ben-Ami, Alexander Rafaeli, Shmuel Merlin, and Eri Jabotinsky, the Bergson Group was closely involved with various Jewish and Zionist advocacy groups, such as the American Friends for a Jewish Palestine and the Organizing Committee of Illegal Immigration. The group founded the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews, whose goal was the formation of an Allied fighting force of stateless and Palestinian Jews. Two American members of the Bergson Group were author and screenwriter Ben Hecht and cartoonist Arthur Szyk.[3][4]

As information about the Holocaust began to reach the United States, Kook's Bergson Group shifted efforts from trying to create a Jewish army to rescuing Jews in Europe.[5][6] This included putting full-page advertisements in leading newspapers, such as "Jews Fight for the Right to Fight", published in The New York Times in 1942,[7] and "For Sale to Humanity 70,000 Jews, Guaranteed Human Beings at $50 a Piece", in response to an offer by Romania to send their Jews to safety if the travel expenses would be provided. On March 9, 1943, the Group produced a huge pageant in Madison Square Garden written by Ben Hecht, titled "We Will Never Die", in memory of the 2,000,000 European Jews who the Nazis had already murdered in the ongoing Holocaust. The performance was seen by forty thousand people its first night, and it travelled to five other cities including Washington, D.C., where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, six Supreme Court Justices, and some 300 senators and congressmen watched it.[3]

After the creation of the Monuments Men to save European art in June 1943, at a time when the Roosevelt Administration was rejecting calls to save Jews who were being exterminated on an industrial scale by the Nazis, the Bergson Group took out full page ads the New York Times questioning the Roosevelt administration’s priorities.[8]

References

  1. ^ Penkower, Monty Noam (1981). "In Dramatic Dissent: The Bergson Boys". American Jewish History. 70 (3): 281–309. ISSN 0164-0178.
  2. ^ Oren, Michael B. (2002-10-28). "The Rescuer". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved 2024-02-07.
  3. ^ a b "The "Bergson Boys" | American Experience | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2024-02-07.
  4. ^ Gorbach, Julien (2019). The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist. Purdue University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv15wxnvf. ISBN 978-1-55753-865-9.
  5. ^ "Bergson Group". Encyclopedia. 2014-12-27. Retrieved 2024-02-07. The committee employed tactics that were unorthodox for that era, including mass rallies, lobbying Congress, and full-page newspaper ads with headlines such as "Jews Fight for the Right to Fight." Many of the ads were authored by the Academy Award-winning Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht. The ads featured long lists of political figures, labor leaders, intellectuals and entertainers endorsing the Jewish army cause. Some of the ads were illustrated by the famous artist Arthur Szyk, a Bergson supporter.
  6. ^ "Bergson Group" (PDF). Yad Vashem. In late 1941 the group formed the "Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews." However, when information about the mass murder of Jews in Europe went public in November 1942, the group decided to scrap its campaign for a Jewish army and focus all its energies on rescue efforts. The Bergson Group chose to use American public opinion to pressure the United States government into helping European Jewry.
  7. ^ "Bergson's race against the Shoah in America". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 2019-05-03. Retrieved 2024-02-07.
  8. ^ "Still Up And At It: One Of The Original 'Monuments Men'". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-02-07. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, D.C., pointed out that the Roosevelt administration's creation of the Monuments Men caught many by surprise. He noted that throughout the spring of 1943, "Jewish groups were urging creation of a government commission to rescue Jews, and the Roosevelt administration kept saying it couldn't divert any resources to help refugees. Then suddenly in June, the president turned around and created a special commission to rescue historic monuments and paintings. Jewish groups weren't against saving the paintings — they were just puzzled by the administration's priorities."
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