(from the Connecticut Jewish Ledger - April 25, 2003)


WASHINGTON, D.C. — For 90 minutes on a recent afternoon, the stately chambers of the House Judiciary Committee were transformed into the site of a commemoration of the efforts by a small group of American Jewish activists to shatter the silence surrounding the Holocaust.

The event coincided with the 60th anniversary of the presentation in Washington of "We Will Never Die," a pageant that tried to alert the public about Hitler's slaughter of European Jewry. The program was co-sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington and the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on America's response to the Holocaust. The event was chaired by Congressman Tom Lantos and sponsored by 25 Members of Congress, the mayor and city council of Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian Institute, and D.C.'s Jewish Federation, Jewish Community Council, and Board of Rabbis.

The standing room-only audience included Members of Congress, government officials, Holocaust survivors and students from the Eshkol Academy, a local Jewish day school.

Academy Award winning screenwriter Ben Hecht authored "We Will Never Die" in early 1943. Hecht, who was best known for his work on movies such as "Gone With the Wind," was active in the 1940s group led by Peter Bergson, a Zionist emissary from Palestine who sought to bring about Allied action to rescue Jews from Hitler. Alarmed by the American media's failure to treat the Holocaust as a serious issue, the Bergson group turned to drama to rouse public consciousness.

With its cast of hundreds, "We Will Never Die" was an extraordinary production. Actors stood in front of 40-foot-high tablets of the Ten Commandments and described the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in painful detail. A dramatic reciting of "Kaddish," the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, by 50 elderly refugee rabbis, closed the performance. The cast included some of the biggest names in Hollywood, such as Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni and Sylvia Sydney. In some cities, it guest-starred Burgess Meredith and Claude Rains. Billy Rose produced the show, Moss Hart directed it and Kurt Weill composed an original score. Hecht's ability to recruit such prominent Hollywood figures gave the Bergson group a crucial boost.

More than 40,000 people viewed the opening performances of "We Will Never Die" in Madison Square Garden in March 1943. In Washington the following month, it was staged at Constitution Hall before an audience including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, six Supreme Court justices and over two hundred Members of Congress.

The commemoration of "We Will Never Die" that was held in Washington earlier this month recreated portions of the historic drama of the 1943 D.C. performance. U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida read parts of the original script, as did 80 year-old Rudy Arkin, who was one of the actors in the 1943. Dr. Rebecca Kook, daughter of the late Peter Bergson, also took part and was moved to tears as she read from Hecht's 1943 script, as were some members of the audience.

A large photo display, mounted behind the speakers, showed scenes from the 1943 production and the original program book, which was illustrated by Arthur Szyk of New Canaan.

Television screens were brought into the House Judiciary Committee room to show a brief but moving 1943 newsreel clip of "We Will Never Die." In between the speakers, the public address system broadcast mournful excerpts from the original soundtrack of the pageant.

The speakers included U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California), the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, and his wife, Annette. They were teenagers in Hungary during World War II, and their lives were saved through the intervention of rescue hero Raoul Wallenberg.

Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S.Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, who also spoke, said that it was particularly fitting that Lantos was chairman of the event, in view of the connection between the Bergson group and the rescue work of Raoul Wallenberg. Medoff explained that "We Will Never Die" launched Bergson's year-long campaign for rescue, which included public rallies, full-page newspaper ads, a march to the White House by 400 rabbis just before Yom Kippur, and lobbying Congress. The lobbying culminated in the introduction of a Congressional resolution calling for creation of a U.S. government agency to rescue Jewish refugees. With Congress poised to pass the bill, FDR decided to avoid embarrassment by unilaterally doing what the resolution sought — creating the War Refugee Board. The Board's activities included financing the rescue work of Raoul Wallenberg, to whom the Lantoses owe their lives.

Thus the Historical Society-Wyman Institute event, by bringing together Rep. Lantos and Bergson's daughter in the very halls of Congress where Bergson had lobbied for rescue, symbolically accomplished the same thing that "We Will Never Die" accomplished in 1943 — it helped make Washington face the Holocaust.

Connecticut supporters of the Bergson Group

Many prominent residents of Connecticut supported Peter Bergson's political action campaigns to rescue refugees and build a Jewish state. Among those listed on Bergson's newspaper ads were Governor Robert A. Hurley and U.S. Senator Francis Maloney as well as seven members of the Connecticut Congressional delegation — Clare Boothe Luce, Joseph F. Ryter, Le Roy D. Downs, Lucien Maciora, Thomas A. Shanley, John D. McWilliams and Herman P. Koppleman. Rabbi Joseph Aronson of New Britain, Rabbi Ephraim Pelcovitz of Bridgeport and Rabbi I. Solomon Rosenberg of Hartford also signed some of the advertisements.

The most memorable Bergson activist from Connecticut was the world-famous artist, Arthur Szyk. From his modest studio in New Canaan, Szyk produced a stream of paintings, illustrations, and caricatures that were featured in newspaper ads, brochures, and Bergson's magazine, The Answer.

"Arthur Szyk was our one-man art department," Ben Hecht later recalled. "He worked for eight years [for the Bergson group] without a pause. Nobody paid him anything and nobody thought of thanking him ... If there was ever an artist who believed that an hour of valor was better than a lifetime of furtiveness and cringe, it was Szyk."

Dr. Rebecca Kook, daughter of Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), addressing the event

Dr. Rebecca Kook, Ari Roth, director of Theater J (Jewish Community Center of
Washington, D.C.)

Dr. Stephen Luckert, curator of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (left) with
Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies