Shake Heaven & Earth: Peter Bergson and the Struggle to Rescue the Jews of Europe

Louis Rapoport

tammi 1999 · Gefen Publishing House Ltd

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Focuses on the activities of Hillel Kook, a Palestinian Jew who spent World War II in the USA, under the adopted name of Peter Bergson, trying to convince the USA and Britain that saving Jewish lives should be a war aim. After failing to persuade the Allies to establish a Jewish army, in 1943 Bergson founded the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, which used high visibility tactics like newspaper ads and lobbying to attempt to arouse the reluctant U.S. government to action. The Bergson Group was fiercely opposed by assimilated American Jews who feared antisemitism, including the American Zionist establishment led by Rabbi Stephen Wise. Another antagonist was Jewish congressman Sol Bloom, whose position was close to that of the State Department, which opposed allowing Jewish refugees into the U.S. Reveals how the Emergency Committee used political pressure to get President Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board, which is credited for saving between 50,000-200,000 Jewish lives. Argues that many more could have been saved if the Jewish establishment had been less concerned with attacking Bergson and less preoccupied with exclusively Zionist goals.