A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has agreed to recast part of its permanent exhibition to include the story of the Bergson Group, a World War II citizens' group that called attention to the horrors facing European Jews and urged the American government to help.

The group was created in 1942 by a Lithuanian Jew who had immigrated to Palestine and taken the name Peter Bergson. He had come to Washington to represent a Zionist group and had visions of creating a Jewish army that would fight alongside the Allied armies. But on Nov. 25, 1942, he saw a story in The Washington Post reporting that the Nazis had killed 250,000 Polish Jews and planned the extermination of half of the Jewish population in that country by the end of the year.

The story ran on Page 6.

Bergson was so angry at the news and the placement of the story that he decided to start a massive lobbying effort.

Some of his tactics were considered divisive and controversial at the time. The group, formally called the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, bought newspaper ads pointing to the failure of the government and other efforts to save the Jews. There were also demonstrations, including a march of 400 rabbis in Washington.

He enlisted celebrities, including writers Ben Hecht and Moss Hart and actors Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni. They created a dramatic pageant called "We Will Never Die," with music by Kurt Weill and readings praising the achievements of Jews throughout history, as well as describing the horrific plight of victims of the Nazis. The pageant traveled the country, drawing 40,000 people to Madison Square Garden. When it was performed at Washington's Constitution Hall on April 12, 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt and dozens of politicians watched it. When Mrs. Roosevelt wrote her next newspaper column about the pageant, according to the Holocaust Museum, "it was the first time [millions of American newspaper readers] heard about the Nazi mass murders."

At one point, Bergson advocated the bombing of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Finally, the group won the support of Congress, which prepared resolutions asking President Roosevelt to take action. Before the vote, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in 1944.

Museum officials said yesterday that at the urging of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies they would revise the segment on the board, a federal agency formed in the waning months of the war to help people flee Nazi oppression. It helped finance Raoul Wallenberg's work and saved about 200,000 people. The materials, which will be introduced next spring, will include wall text and photo reproductions and a new case for artifacts on the Bergson efforts.

While the permanent exhibition is often updated, this is the most extensive revision of one subject to date.

"The Bergson Group was important in calling American attention to what was happening during the Holocaust and demanding action," said Steven Luckert, curator of the museum's permanent exhibition.

"Most of what Americans know about our country's response to the Holocaust is that the Jews in Europe were abandoned. There were some Americans who did speak out, and it is important that their work be highlighted," said Rafael Medoff, director of the Washington-based Wyman Institute. He started lobbying for the change in August 2002.

Though historians have focused on the Bergson work, the museum's treatment is groundbreaking, Medoff said. "The story should have been included since Day One. The museum has never disputed the Bergson Group had a role, but they told us [the inclusion] would take time. There have been changes by some of the smaller Holocaust institutions, but the U.S. Holocaust Museum is the most important address," he said.

The museum's permanent exhibition, an account of the Nazi atrocities against Jews and others, was installed when the museum opened in 1993. It has been changed before. "The museum tries to address a variety of public concerns," Luckert said. Artifacts are added and rotated. The work of the Bergson Group was covered in a 2002 exhibition of Arthur Szyk, a Polish Jewish artist, and in related online exhibitions.

The Bergson Group's "willingness to take a stand and the willingness to launch controversial publicity campaigns and lobby congressmen for a cause" underscores its relevance today, Luckert said.

The group's ultimate goal of saving millions of Jews from Nazi persecution was unsuccessful. By 1943, 2 million Jews had already been murdered and the total would surpass 6 million. But museum scholars believe the Bergson Group should be singled out for its efforts to change public opinion.

Around Washington, Bergson earned the nickname "the nuisance diplomat."