Rabbi Stephen Wise promptly called it an exaggerated “atrocity tale.” Franklin Roosevelt’s White House did nothing about the report though it was promptly transmitted by Agudath Israel to the State Department.
My father waited two months – until November 1942 – hoping there would be action from the American government or, at least, from American Jewish organizations. He then published a bitter attack against the leadership of American Jewry in Der Yiddishe Shtime (The Jewish Voice). He reported that a cherem (ban) had been placed by Rabbi Wise on publicizing the report that had been received on September 3. And even after later telegraphic reports had confirmed what was reported on September 3 and “Jewish blood continued flowing,” Wise had ordered that there be delay and silence.
This, said my father, is a shreklich farbrechen – a terrible crime. From the moment the September 3 report arrived, Jewish delegations should have been traveling to Washington. This total commitment, insisted the young Polish refugee, is how Jewish leaders acted on Jews’ behalf throughout Jewish history.
Not enough, he declared, that two influential men like Dr. Stephen Wise and Dr. Nahum Goldmann made bi-weekly visits to Washington. On an issue involving millions of Jews, these personalities had the obligation to bring other Jewish leaders and representatives to Washington, und dort permanent arbeiten far dem dozigen inyan (and work permanently on this subject) – “the most important for the Jewish people at this moment because it concerns kiyum ha-uma (the survival of the nation).”
“There are Jews who remain alive in Poland! We don’t know where, and we don’t know how many there are. But it is a crime to abandon them. Every day makes a difference. Every minute is precious.”
He ended this dramatic call with the following question addressed to Jewish organizations in America: “How will you respond on the day of reckoning? What will you answer if one day you are called to account and asked what did you do while the blood of your brothers hot zich gegosen in shtramen (was being spilled in streams)?”
On February 2, 1943, following his participation in B’nai B’rith’s Pittsburgh conference, his column in the Morgen Journal was captioned: “Not Enough To Provide for the Jews After the War!” Now, he said, is a time unparalleled in the Jewish people’s 2,000 years of “martyrology,” and it calls for a united front of American Jewry – all its political strength, all its influential resources – to prevent the destruction of European Jewry.
The anguish in the Yiddish articles he published in the months preceding the rabbis’ now-famous trip to Washington on October 6, 1943, tears at one’s heart. What do I personally recall of that terrible time? My mother, father and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and I, a 7 year old, slept on a convertible sofa in the living room.
I became accustomed to hearing the clackety-clack of my father’s Hebrew typewriter. He hunt-and-pecked his articles with two fingers at the dining-area table as I was falling asleep – and I would hear that sound again as dawn’s light came through the window and I awoke to see him still working.
The telephone was in that room, and it would ring incessantly through the night. Strange names – rabbis involved in the rescue effort such as Kalmanovitch and Schenkolewski – identified themselves on occasions when, because my father was grabbing a few winks in the bedroom, the telephone’s ring pulled me from sleep and I asked who was calling.
I don’t personally remember my father’s trip to Washington in the company of the country’s leading Orthodox rabbis and scholars a few days before Yom Kippur. But I am certain he was involved in recruiting participants and encouraging them to protest in the nation’s capital. It seemed like an initial step to implement his public call for incessant lobbying in Washington.
Regrettably often in Jewish history – and particularly in 20th century America – our Torah-observant leaders and scholars have been mocked for their religiosity. So was it with the rabbis who marched on Washington. A column of my father’s in the Morgen Journal of November 26, 1943 – almost two months after the march – decried the disunity of American Jews in the effort to save European Jewry.