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.
91-517: 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. The Bergson Group was 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, and
182-617: A Parliament had been a putsch , and that he regretted not having resigned from the Knesset immediately after the decision had been made. Kook also favored the creation of a Palestinian state, albeit one established in modern-day Jordan . He was one of the first Israelis to call for a Palestinian state shortly after the Six-Day War . For the remainder of his life, Kook adamantly claimed that his position would have been shared by his mentor Jabotinsky. Kook repeatedly referred to himself as
273-613: A post-Zionist , and was one of the first in Israeli society to voluntarily (and positively) adopt the term. Since the late 1990s, some historians have attempted to re-examine and evaluate the significance of his activities during World War II and his role as a political opponent of Begin. One allegation is that Kook's adversaries in Israel and America downplayed some of his accomplishments and minimized their own role in curtailing his activities. David Wyman and Rafael Medoff , co-authors of
364-471: A "Jewish state" by having a majority of Jewish citizens, not through specific associations to Jewish nationalism. Paradoxically, Kook's " theocratic " vision of Israel gave him a great deal of ideological flexibility regarding some of Israel's more intractable problems. Accordingly, he supported all non-Jewish citizens of Israel with full rights and privileges, and once, in an interview with an Israeli Druze , commented that, like Jabotinsky, he saw "no reason" why
455-556: A 2002 Kook biography, suggested that, despite the frequent obstruction by the modern American Jewish establishment, Kook's rescue group's activism was the major factor in establishment of the War Refugee Board and that it was an instrument rescuing approximately 200,000, partly by means of the Raoul Wallenberg mission. A play, The Accomplices , written by Bernard Weinraub and based on Kook's wartime efforts in
546-513: A British withdrawal and Axis invasion of Palestine. Its members, young men and women, received specialist training in guerrilla tactics and sabotage. During 1942 the British gave assistance in the training of Palmach volunteers but in early 1943 they withdrew their support and attempted to disarm them. The Palmach, then numbering over 1,000, continued as an underground organization with its members working half of each month as kibbutz volunteers,
637-478: A Jewish state was in making a country to which all Jews would want to belong, and that once Israel had been created, any Jews who refused to make aliyah had made a conscious choice to become "integrated" citizens of their naturalized countries. Making a distinction between Jews and Hebrews was another point of contention between Kook and the Irgun leadership as early as the mid–1940s. Kook's views have been described as
728-692: A documentary about the activities of Kook during World War II: Not Idly By - Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust . The film won an award at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. The work-in-progress was screened in short versions beginning in 2009, and the final version was released in 2017. There was an earlier 1982 documentary Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die by Larry Jarvik, including many of his mid-1970s interviews with Hillel Kook in Manhattan. The more recent 2009 Against
819-414: A formal constitution could have solved many ongoing issues in Israeli society, such as discrimination against Israeli Arabs , by providing all of Israel's citizens with a clearly defined, and egalitarian, role in Israeli nationalism. He once remarked that the lack of a constitution was "Israel's greatest tragedy": that Ben-Gurion's decision to change the Israeli governing body from a Constituent Assembly to
910-586: A group of students who would later become prominent in the Revisionist movement, including David Raziel and Avraham Stern . Kook joined the pre-state Haganah militia in 1930 following widespread Arab riots . In 1931, Kook helped found the Irgun , a group of militant Haganah dissidents, and fought with them in Palestine through most of the 1930s. He served as a post commander in 1936, and eventually became
1001-677: A handful of politicians who met with the rabbis on the steps of the US Capitol, proposed legislation that would have allowed as many as 100,000 victims of the Holocaust to emigrate temporarily to the United States. A parallel bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D; New York). This also failed to pass. In 1947, the Bergson Group had purchased a ship originally intended to carry new immigrants to Palestine, but, perhaps partially due to Begin's influence,
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#17327731553451092-522: A huge pageant in Madison Square Garden written by Ben Hecht , titled " We Will Never Die ", memorializing the 2,000,000 European Jews who had already been murdered. Forty thousand people saw the pageant that first night, and it went on to play in five other major cities including Washington, D.C. , where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt , six Supreme Court Justices, and some 300 senators and congressmen watched it. In 1943, Kook established
1183-589: A large number of pistols with ammunition. The British exerted heavy pressure on the Polish government to stop these deliveries. One of the last purchases of Arazi were two airplanes and two gliders. When he fled Poland to France, around 500 rifles were abandoned in a Warsaw warehouse. Members of the Haganah were also trained in a military camp in Rembertow along with Betar members between the years 1931 and 1937; it
1274-558: A member of the Irgun General Staff. In 1937, Kook began his career as an international spokesperson for the Irgun and Revisionist Zionism . He first went to Poland , where he was involved in fundraising and establishing Irgun cells in Eastern Europe. It was there that he met the founder of the Revisionist movement, Ze'ev Jabotinsky , and became friends with his son Ari . At the founders' request, Kook traveled to
1365-432: A more moderate version of the " Canaanist " ideology espoused by Yonatan Ratosh . Like Ratosh, Kook was influenced by Adolf Gurevich, a Betar activist with connections to Bergson Group members Shmuel Merlin and Eri Jabotinsky . Kook had a specific body of critiques concerning what he saw as the distortion of Zionist philosophy and idealism by Israeli politics. He maintained that he had always conceived of Israel being
1456-605: A single assassination operation in which a British official who had been judged to be excessively cruel to Jewish prisoners was shot dead. The Haganah also organized the Birya affair . Following the expulsion of the residents of the Jewish settlement of Birya for illegal weapons possession, thousands of Jewish youth organized by the Haganah marched to the site and rebuilt the settlement. They were expelled by British shortly afterward while showing passive resistance , but after they returned
1547-643: A small group of Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. It was converted to Hashomer ( Hebrew : השומר ; "The Watchman") in April 1909, which operated until the British Mandate of Palestine came into being in 1920. Hashomer was an elitist organization which never had more than 100 members. During World War I , the forerunners of the Haganah/IDF were the Zion Mule Corps and
1638-502: A third time, the British backed off and allowed them to remain. In addition to its operations, the Haganah continued to secretly prepare for a war with the Arabs once the British left by building up its arms and munitions stocks. It maintained a secret arms industry, with the most significant facility being an underground bullet factory underneath Ayalon, a kibbutz that had been established specifically to cover it up. British estimates of
1729-643: Is estimated that training courses at the camp were attended by around 8,000 to 10,000 participants during their existence. By 1939, the British had issued the White Paper , which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, deeply angering the Zionist leadership. David Ben-Gurion , then chairman of the Jewish Agency , set the policy for the Zionist relationship with the British: "We shall fight
1820-607: Is to attain peace in order to establish the Israeli people as the political heir of the Jewish people. – Interview in 1977. There is no exile. The exile ended on May 14, 1948. – Interview in 1982. Haganah Haganah ( Hebrew : הַהֲגָנָה ha-Haganah , lit. ' The Defense ' ) was the main Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the British Mandate for Palestine . It
1911-655: The Rabbis' march . The protest took place in Washington, D.C., on October 6, 1943, three days before Yom Kippur . Joined by Bergson Group activists, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America marched on the United States Capitol , Lincoln Memorial , and White House in Washington, DC. They were met by a number of prominent members of Congress including William Warren Barbour ,
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#17327731553452002-476: The 1921 Jaffa riots , the 1929 Palestine riots , the 1936 Jaffa riots , and the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine , among others. The paramilitary was under the control of the Jewish Agency , the official governmental body in charge of Palestine's Jewish community during the British era. Until the end of World War II , Haganah's activities were moderate, in accordance with the strategic policy of havlagah ( lit. ' self-restraint ' ), which caused
2093-719: The Aliyah Bet program, in which ships carrying illegal immigrants attempted to breach the British blockade of Palestine and land illegal immigrants on the shore (most were intercepted by the Royal Navy ), and the Palmach performed operations against the British to support the illegal immigration program. The Palmach repeatedly bombed British radar stations being used to track illegal immigrant ships, and sabotaged British ships being used to deport illegal immigrants, as well as two British landing and patrol craft. The Palmach performed
2184-696: The British Mandate , leading through the Haganah to the national army of Israel, the IDF. The evolution went step by step from Bar-Giora , to Hashomer , to Haganah, to IDF. The Jewish paramilitary organizations in the New Yishuv (the Zionist enterprise in Palestine) started with the Second Aliyah (1904 to 1914). The first such organization was Bar-Giora , founded in September 1907. It consisted of
2275-544: The Hish units. At that time, the Haganah fielded 10,000 mobilized men along with 40,000 reservists. Although the British administration did not officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police , Jewish Supernumerary Police and Special Night Squads , which were trained and led by Colonel Orde Wingate . The battle experience gained during
2366-553: The Israeli Declaration of Independence and the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War on May 15, 1948, the Haganah, now the army of the new state, engaged the invading armies of the surrounding Arab states. On May 28, 1948, less than two weeks after the creation of the state of Israel on May 15, the provisional government created the Israel Defense Forces , merging the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi, although
2457-791: The Jewish Legion , both of which were part of the British Army. After the Arab riots against Jews in April 1920, the Yishuv's leadership saw the need to create a nationwide underground defense organization, and the Haganah was founded in June of the same year. The Haganah became a full-scale defense force after the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine with an organized structure, consisting of three main units—the Field Corps , Guard Corps , and
2548-633: The Palmach strike force. During World War II the successor to the Jewish Legion of World War I was the Jewish Brigade , which was joined by many Haganah fighters. During the 1947–48 civil war between the Arab and Jewish communities in what was still Mandatory Palestine, a reorganized Haganah managed to defend or wrestle most of the territory it was ordered to hold or capture. At the beginning of
2639-630: The United States with Jabotinsky in 1940, where he soon served as the head of the Irgun and revisionist mission in America, following the elder's death in August. This assignment was clandestine, and Kook publicly denied he was affiliated with the Irgun many times while in America. While in America, Kook led a group of Irgun activists under the pseudonym "Peter Bergson." The name "Bergson Group" or "Bergsonites" eventually became used to refer to all
2730-668: The first Knesset as part of the Herut party list, but quit the party with his close friend and fellow Herut Member of the Knesset Ari Jabotinsky . This followed two years of ongoing disagreements with their colleagues, particularly Menachem Begin , over the party's leadership and direction. Kook, who had returned to Israel after a ten-year absence, was now confronted with the reality that the country and movement he had fought for bore little resemblance to his ideals. Kook and Jabotinsky served as independent or "single" MKs for
2821-606: The " Bergson Group ", for example a number of the best known people on Broadway and Hollywood, probably due to Ben Hecht's contacts (such as Kurt Weill ). The Irgun declared an open revolt against British rule in Palestine. To assist in recruiting and propaganda efforts, Kook established the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation and the American League for a Free Palestine, both of which were involved in lobbying U.S. and other diplomats and in trying to attract
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2912-575: The American public to support the Irgun's rebellion. Kook remained strongly affiliated with the Revisionist camp after the war during the creation of the State of Israel. While he was unquestionably loyal to the cause, his position as the Irgun's leading American activist was not free from conflict. In 1946 Kook received a letter from Menachem Begin , who had become chief of the Irgun in 1943. Begin admonished Kook for various policy positions that strayed from
3003-446: The Bergson Group were author and screenwriter Ben Hecht and cartoonist Arthur Szyk . Initially the Bergson Group largely limited its activities to Irgun fundraising and various propaganda campaigns. The outbreak of World War II saw a dramatic transformation in the group's focus. As information about the Holocaust began to reach the United States, Kook and his fellow activists became more involved in trying to raise awareness about
3094-548: The Bergson Group's rescue activities were Jewish Congressman Blum and World Jewish Congress leaders Stephen Wise and Nahum Goldmann . A State Department protocol shows Goldmann telling the State Department that Hillel Kook did not represent organized Jewry, and suggested either deporting him or drafting him for the war effort. One of the Committee's more memorable activities was a protest Kook organized known as
3185-415: The British administration for protection from these gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah to protect Jewish farms and kibbutzim . The first head of the Haganah was a 28-year-old named Yosef Hecht, a veteran of the Jewish Legion . In addition to guarding Jewish communities, the role of the Haganah was to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinians. In the period between 1920 and 1929,
3276-624: The British authorities who had passed on information that led to the arrest of many Irgun activists. Many Jewish youth, who had joined the Haganah in order to defend the Jewish people, were greatly demoralized by operations against their own people. The Irgun, paralyzed by the Saison, were ordered by their commander, Menachem Begin , not to retaliate in an effort to avoid a full blown civil war. Although many Irgunists objected to these orders, they obeyed Begin and refrained from fighting back. The Saison eventually ended due to perceived British betrayal of
3367-506: The British stepped back from their all-out support for Haganah. In 1943, after a long series of requests and negotiations, the British Army announced the creation of the Jewish Brigade Group . While Palestinian Jews had been permitted to enlist in the British army since 1940, this was the first time an exclusively Jewish military unit served in the war under a Jewish flag. The Jewish Brigade Group consisted of 5,000 soldiers and
3458-586: The Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry. The Committee, which included Jewish and non-Jewish American writers, public figures, and politicians, worked to disseminate information to the general public, and also lobbied the President and Congress to take immediate action to save the remnants of Europe's Jews. United States immigration laws at the time limited immigration to only 2% of
3549-440: The Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah "units" were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim. Following the 1929 Palestine riots , the Haganah's role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from
3640-543: The Haganah sabotaged the Patria , an ocean liner being used by the British to deport 1,800 Jews to Mauritius, with a bomb intended to cripple the ship. However the ship sank, killing 267 people and injuring 172. In the first years of World War II , the British authorities asked Haganah for cooperation again, due to the fear of an Axis breakthrough in North Africa. After Rommel was defeated at El Alamein in 1942,
3731-570: The Haganah was conducting brigade size offensive. The brigades of the Haganah which merged into the IDF once this was created on 26 May 1948: The northern Levanoni Brigade , located in the Galilee, was split on February 22, 1948 into the 1st and 2nd Brigades. To the initial six brigades, three were added later during the war: The Palmach brigades which merged into the IDF: After the British announced they would withdraw from Palestine, and
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3822-459: The Haganah's strength at this time were a paper strength of 75,000 men and women with an effective strength of 30,000. After the British army, the Haganah was considered the most powerful military force in the Middle East. Research by Amos Perlmutter estimated that the Haganah budget in 1946 was £400,000, and by October 1947 its budget had reached £3.3 million. The same source estimated that
3913-502: The Holocaust Hillel Kook Hillel Kook ( Hebrew : הלל קוק , 24 July 1915 –18 August 2001), also known as Peter Bergson (Hebrew: פיטר ברגסון), was a Revisionist Zionist activist and politician. Kook led the Irgun 's efforts in the United States during World War II to promote Zionism and mainly to save the abandoned Jews of Europe during the Holocaust . His rescue group's activism
4004-628: 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. 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, 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
4095-477: The Irgun as hostages against the death sentences of three Irgun members in what became known as the Sergeants' affair . The Jewish Agency leadership feared the damage this act would do to the Jewish cause, and also believed that holding the hostages would only jeopardize the fates of the three condemned Irgun members. The attempts to free the sergeants failed, and following the executions of the three Irgun members,
4186-621: The Jews in the Land of Israel constitute the Hebrew nation—there isn't another nation to which they owe their allegiance but the Hebrew nation. We must state it clearly: the Jews in the United States do not belong to the Hebrew nation. These Jews are Americans of Hebrew descent. – From A Manifesto of the Hebrew Nation , 1944. Why did we respond the way we did? The question should be, why didn't
4277-699: The Middle East) by members of the Lehi , the Haganah worked with the British to kidnap, interrogate, and, in some cases, deport Irgun members. This action, which lasted from November 1944 to February 1945, was called the Saison , or the Hunting Season, and was directed against the Irgun and not the Lehi. Future Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was later revealed to be a Jewish Agency liaison officer working with
4368-422: The Organizing Committee of Illegal Immigration. The group also founded some separate initiatives of its own, specifically 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. Some credit the later formation of the Jewish Brigade , a British unit of Palestinian Jews, with Kook's activism. Two American members of
4459-476: The State of Israel could not have a non-Jewish president. He suggested amending the Law of Return for Jews residing outside Israel to be limited to a few years after Independence (1948) and to consider prospective immigrants on an individual, and not on a national or religious basis, except for cases of immediate danger. Kook was also a strong supporter of Israel's constitution, which had been stalled during its writing in 1948 and never completed. Kook claimed that
4550-419: The Tide , directed by Richard Trank and produced by Moriah Films of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, includes narration by Dustin Hoffman. We, the Hebrews, descendants of the ancient Hebrew nation, who remained alive on God's earth despite that great calamity that our people have experienced, have come together in the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation. The Jews today who live in the European hell together with
4641-417: The United Nations approved the partition of Palestine, the 1947-48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine broke out. The Haganah played the leading role in the Yishuv's war with the Palestinian Arabs. Initially, it concentrated on defending Jewish areas from Arab raids, but after the danger of British intervention subsided as the British withdrew, the Haganah went on the offensive and seized more territory. Following
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#17327731553454732-468: The United States premiered at The New Group in 2007 and played thereafter in regional theatres. It played also in Jerusalem in April 2009. The role of Hillel Kook was played twice onstage by actor Steven Schub (lead singer of The Fenwicks), in 2008 at The Fountain Theatre and in 2009 at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. Actor Raphael (Rafi) Poch (Artistic Director of J-Town Playhouse) played Hillel Kook in Jerusalem. Film maker Pierre Sauvage directed
4823-420: The Yishuv becoming more obvious to the public and increased opposition from Haganah members. The Saison officially ended when the Haganah, Irgun and the Lehi formed the Jewish Resistance Movement , in 1945. Within this new framework, the three groups agreed to operate under a joint command. They had different functions, which served to drive the British out of Palestine and create a Jewish state . The Haganah
4914-403: The activity of the underground groups in the pre-state period, recreating the everyday life of those imprisoned there. Some Bedouins had longstanding ties with nearby Jewish communities. They helped defend these communities in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine . During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War , some Bedouins of Tuba formed an alliance with the Haganah defending Jewish communities in
5005-614: The adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, Haganah came into the open as the biggest fighting force among the Palestinian Jews , successfully overcoming Arab militias during the Palestinian Civil War . Shortly after the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War , Haganah was merged with other paramilitary groups and reorganized into the official military force of the State of Israel . The evolution of Jewish defense organizations in Palestine and later Israel went from small self-defense groups active during Ottoman rule, to ever larger and more sophisticated ones during
5096-399: The best defense is a good offense . In 1931, the more militant elements of the Haganah splintered off and formed the Irgun Tsva'i-Leumi (National Military Organization), better known as " Irgun " (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced "Etzel"). During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine , the Haganah worked to protect British interests and to quell the rebellion using the Posh and then
5187-407: The breakaway of the more radical paramilitaries: Irgun and Lehi . Haganah militants received clandestine military support from Poland and sought cooperation with the United Kingdom in the event of an Axis -led invasion of Palestine through North Africa , prompting the creation of the Palmach , their elite fighting force, in 1941. Following the end of World War II, the British refused to lift
5278-407: The call-up was extended to men and single women aged between 26 and 35. Five days later a General Mobilization order was issued for all men under 40. "From November 1947, the Haganah, (...) began to change from a territorial militia into a regular army. (...) Few of the units had been well trained by December. (...) By March–April, it fielded still under-equipped battalion and brigades. By April–May,
5369-584: The cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create grenades and simple military equipment, transforming from an untrained militia to a capable underground army. Many Haganah fighters objected to the official policy of havlagah (restraint) that Jewish political leaders (who had become increasingly controlling of the Haganah) had imposed on the militia. Fighters had been instructed to only defend communities and not initiate counterattacks against Arab gangs or their communities. This policy appeared defeatist to many who believed that
5460-432: 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. Rescue of Jews during the Holocaus t United States and the Holocaust International response to
5551-499: The ensuing 1948–49 full-scale conventional war against regular Arab armies, the Haganah was reorganized to become the core of the new Israel Defense Forces. After the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and 1921 Jaffa riots by Palestinians , the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, to whom the League of Nations had given a mandate over Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront local Arab groups that frequently attacked Palestinian Jews. Believing that they could not rely on
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#17327731553455642-416: The fate of the Jews in Europe. 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, 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
5733-428: The first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine . In 1924, his family immigrated to Palestine , where his father became the first Chief Rabbi of Afula . Hillel Kook received a religious education in Afula and attended his uncle's Religious Zionist yeshiva, Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem . He also attended classes in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University , where he became a member of Sohba ("Comradeship"),
5824-449: The future Jewish state as the "Free State of Eretz Israel". In July of 1943, Kook and his followers began a campaign to lobby Congress for a resolution to create an independent agency to save European Jews. In this effort, they were opposed by American Zionist and progressive Jewish organizations. In December 1943, the American Jewish Conference launched a public attack against Bergson and his supporters in an attempt to derail support for
5915-404: The members of Kook's immediate circle. The Bergson Group was composed of a hard-core cadre 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
6006-399: The membership of the Haganah was 7% of the Jewish population in Palestine. In July 1947, eager to maintain order with the visit of UNSCOP to Palestine and under heavy pressure from the British authorities to resume collaboration, the Jewish Agency reluctantly came into brief conflict with the Irgun and Lehi, and ordered the Haganah to put a stop to the operations of the other two groups for
6097-475: The number of each nationality present in the United States since the census of 1890, which limited Jews from Austria and Germany to 27,370 and from Poland to 6,542; even these quotas often went unfilled, due to United States State Department pressure on US consulates to place as many obstacles as possible in the path of refugees. The proposal to admit more refugees was ratified by the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations , and, in response to
6188-412: The official Irgun party-line. These included Kook focusing on the transportation of illegal immigrants to Palestine instead of a "primary" assignment - arms shipments to Irgun fighters, as well as a (rather common) usage of the term "Palestine". At the time Kook was in the habit of saying "Palestine Free State", which Begin thought left too much potential for bi-nationalism. Begin demanded that Kook refer to
6279-504: The other two groups continued to operate independently in Jerusalem and abroad for some time after. The reorganization led to several conflicts between Ben-Gurion and the Haganah leadership, including what was known as The Generals' Revolt and the dismantling of the Palmach. Famous members of the Haganah included Yitzhak Rabin , Ariel Sharon , Rehavam Ze'evi , Dov Hoz , Moshe Dayan , Yigal Allon and Dr. Ruth Westheimer . The Museum of Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem commemorates
6370-495: The others? We responded as a human and as a Jew should. – On his Holocaust activism, 1973. I, who was the liaison officer of the Irgun central command with Jabotinsky, and who accompanied him almost daily for four years—remained loyal to his teachings. I also believe that the Land of Israel, on both banks of the Jordan River, is our historic homeland. But I am also certain that had Jabotinsky lived today, he would have argued that now, after we've achieved our independence, our mission
6461-406: The pressure by the Bergson Group as well as Jewish Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr and his team, President Roosevelt subsequently issued an administrative order in January 1944 for the establishment of a special national authority, the War Refugee Board (WRB) to deal with Jewish and non-Jewish war refugees. An official government emissary sent to Turkey was of considerable assistance in
6552-625: The protesters plead for U.S. intervention on behalf of the Jews in Europe. The delegation was received by Vice President Henry Wallace . Disappointed by the President's failure to meet with them, the rabbis stood in front of the US Capitol, where they were met by Senator William Barbour and other members of Congress. They refused to read their petition aloud, instead handing it to the Presidential secretary, Marvin H. McIntyre . The march garnered much media attention, much of it focused on what
6643-686: The remaining months of their terms, the first ever to do so. Profoundly disillusioned with the Israeli political process and future of the Revisionist movement, Kook left Israel in 1951 with his wife and daughter. In 1968, four years after his wife's death, he returned to Israel with his two daughters. He remarried in 1975 and lived near Tel Aviv in Kfar Shmaryahu until his death in 2001. While Kook never re-entered politics, he continued to give interviews in which he articulated his independent perspectives on Zionism, Jewish identity, and Israeli politics. He held that Jabotinsky's primary goal in creating
6734-938: The rescue of Romanian Jewry. The WRB saved about 200,000 Jews. Those rescued through the WRB were probably mostly in Hungary, in part through the Raoul Wallenberg mission which was sponsored by the WRB. Some of the members of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe were: Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) and Alex Hadani Rafaeli, Alex Wilf, Arieh Ben-Eliezer, Arthur Szyk , Ben Hecht , Rabbi Ben Rabinowitz (Robbins), Eri Jabotinsky , Esther Untermeyer, Gabe Wechsler, Senator Guy Gillette , Harry Selden, Johan Smertenko, Konrad Bercovici , M. Berchin, Samuel Merlin, Sigrid Undset , Stella Adler , Congressman Will Rogers, Jr. , Yitzchak Ben-Ami, Col. John Henry Patterson (author) . There were many others who actively supported
6825-617: The resolution. The British embassy and several American Zionist groups, including the American Jewish Committee and other political opponents sought to have Kook deported or drafted. They encouraged the IRS to investigate the Bergson Group's finances in an attempt to discredit them, hoping to find misappropriation, or at least careless bookkeeping, of the large amount of funds the groups handled. The United States IRS found no financial irregularities. Among those trying to stop
6916-484: The responsibility on the ground as chief of Operations. Palmach, commanded by Yigal Allon , was divided into 3 elite brigades, numbered 10–12, and constituted the mobile force of Haganah. Ben-Gurion's attempts to retain personal control over the newly formed IDF culminated with The Generals' Revolt . On 19 November 1947, obligatory conscription was instituted for all men and women aged between 17 and 25. By end of March 21,000 people had been conscripted. On 30 March
7007-498: The rest of the month spent training. It was never large – by 1947 it amounted to merely five battalions (about 2,000 men) – but its members had not only received physical and military training, but also acquired leadership skills that would subsequently enable them to take up command positions in Israel's army. In 1944, after the assassination of Lord Moyne (the British Minister of State for
7098-422: The restrictions on Jewish immigration that they had imposed with the 1939 White Paper . This resulted in Haganah leading a Jewish insurgency against the British authorities in Palestine ; the campaign included the paramilitaries' bombing of bridges, railways, and ships used to deport illegal Jewish immigrants , as well as assisting in bringing more diaspora Jews to Palestine in defiance of British policies. After
7189-468: The time being. As Palmach members refused to participate, a unit of about 200 men from regular Haganah units was mobilized, and foiled several operations against the British, including a potentially devastating attack on the British military headquarters at Citrus House in Tel Aviv, in which a Haganah member was killed by an Irgun bomb. The Haganah also joined the search for two British sergeants abducted by
7280-635: The training was useful in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War . During the interwar period, as part of its policy of supporting a Jewish state in Palestine in order to facilitate mass Jewish emigration from its territory, the Second Polish Republic provided military training and weapons to Zionist paramilitary groups, including Haganah. Envoys from Haganah headed by Yehuda Arazi received dozens of shipments with military supplies, including 2750 Mauser rifles, 225 RKM machine guns, 10,000 hand grenades, two million bullets for rifles and machine guns, and
7371-701: 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 Roosevel t, six Supreme Court Justices, and some 300 senators and congressmen watched it. After
7462-479: The two sergeants were killed and hanged in a eucalyptus grove. However, the campaign soon disintegrated into a series of retaliatory abductions and beatings of each other's members by the Haganah and Irgun, and eventually petered out. The campaign was dubbed the "Little Season" by the Irgun. After "having gotten the Jews of Palestine and of elsewhere to do everything that they could, personally and financially, to help Yishuv ," Ben-Gurion's second greatest achievement
7553-567: The war against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war." In reaction to the White Paper, the Haganah built up the Palmach as the Haganah's elite strike force and organized illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. Approximately 100,000 Jews were brought to Palestine in over one hundred ships during the final decade of what became known as Aliyah Bet . The Haganah also organized demonstrations against British immigration quotas. In 1940
7644-619: Was closely involved with 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 . As information about
7735-542: Was eventually used to ship arms. The ship was named Altalena , and was the focus of a violent confrontation between the newly formed Israel Defense Forces and the Irgun on the beaches of Kfar Vitkin and Tel Aviv . Following the Altalena Affair , Kook was arrested with four other senior Irgun commanders and held for over two months. Of the five, only Kook was a member of the Bergson Group. The five were eventually released after about two months. Kook served in
7826-414: Was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the region, and was formally disbanded in 1948, when it became the core force integrated into the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence . Formed out of previous existing militias, Haganah's original purpose was to defend Jewish settlements against Arab attacks ; this was the case during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots ,
7917-475: Was his having successfully transformed Haganah from being a clandestine paramilitary organization into a true army. Ben-Gurion appointed Israel Galili to the position of head of the High Command counsel of Haganah and divided Haganah into 6 infantry brigades, numbered 1 to 6, allotting a precise theatre of operation to each one. Yaakov Dori was named Chief of Staff, but it was Yigael Yadin who assumed
8008-458: Was initially deployed with the 8th Army in North Africa and later in Italy in September 1944. The brigade was disbanded in 1946. All in all, some 30,000 Palestinian Jews served in the British army during the war. On May 14, 1941, the Haganah created the Palmach (an acronym for Plugot Mahatz – strike companies), an elite commando section, in preparation against the possibility of
8099-753: Was less active in the Jewish Rebellion than the other two groups, but the Palmach did carry out anti-British operations, including a raid on the Atlit detainee camp that released 208 illegal immigrants, the Night of the Trains , the Night of the Bridges , and attacks on Palestine Police bases. The Haganah withdrew on 1 July 1946, but "remained permanently unco-operative" with the British authorities. It continued to organize illegal Jewish immigration as part of
8190-574: Was seen as the cold and insulting dismissal of many important community leaders, as well as the people in Europe they were fighting for. One Jewish newspaper commented, "Would a similar delegation of 500 Catholic priests have been thus treated?" Years later, Rabbi Soloveitchik , in recorded lectures, would bemoan the betrayal of the Rabbis' mission by Stephen Wise, who dismissed them as a group of Orthodox rabbis who didn't represent anyone. A week later, Senator William Warren Barbour (R; New Jersey), one of
8281-707: Was the main factor leading to President Roosevelt establishing the US War Refugee Board, which protected and rescued tens of thousands and possibly many more, partly via the Wallenberg mission. He later served in Israel's first Knesset . Hillel Kook was born in Kriukai in the Russian Empire (today in Lithuania ) in 1915, the son of Rabbi Dov Kook, the younger brother of Abraham Isaac Kook ,
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