Opinion

Rosh Hashanah 1944: Shoah Controversy

Washington

E

very year, on the eve of Rosh
Hashanah, American political
leaders, candidates for office and
other VIPs send the Jewish community
their wishes for a happy new year. Under
ordinary circumstances, such greetings
are welcomed in the spirit of friendliness
in which they are offered.
But not on Rosh Hashanah in 1944.
That year, while Jews around the
country dipped their apples in honey to
symbolize their hopes for a sweet new
year, the American public received a vivid
reminder that for the Jewish people it was,
in fact, a bitter holiday. Readers of the New
York Times, the Philadelphia Record and
other major dailies opened their morning
newspaper to find a large advertisement
headlined "What's So Happy About This
New Year?"
In the center of the ad was a riveting
illustration of a ragged European Jewish
refugee child, drawn by the renowned art-
ist Arthur Szyk.
"As the Jewish New Year approached,
greetings and messages of good will" were
issued by the various Allied leaders, the ad
began. It continued:
"What's happy about a Jewish New Year
which mourns millions of our people,
brutally murdered, burned alive, asphyxi-
ated in gas chambers, thrown, still living,

into burial trenches, while the
sponsored more than 200 full-
governments of our friendly
page newspaper ads, lobbied
nations dilly-dallied and split
Congress and organized rallies,
hairs about matters of rescue?
including a march by 400 rabbis
"What's happy about this
to the White House to plead for
new year for us if one of the
U.S. rescue of Jewish refugees.
foremost democratic allies
The Bergson Group also
[Britain] ... still blockades the
assembled an impressive coali-
sole practical route of escape
tion of supporters from across
[from Hitler's Europe] through
the spectrum. The 1944 new
the Balkans into Palestine?
year's
ad, for example, fea-
Rafael Medoff
"With three to four million of
tured
a
long list of signatories,
Sp ecial
our brethren already dead, it is
including
singer Eddie Cantor,
Comm entary
fair to say that good wishes are
Harvard criminologist Sheldon
not enough. It is fair to say that
Glueck, poet and Academy
what has happened to us will go down in
Award winning screenwriter (for A Star is
history as democracy's greatest disgrace ... Born) Dorothy Parker, Unitarian Church
"You have the last chance to do some-
official Rev. Albert Dieffenbach, one of
thing for a people who will not know hap-
the most prominent Orthodox rabbis in
piness this new year, nor next new year,
America, Eliezer Silver, Nobel Literature
nor for generations ... Let your govern-
Prize laureate Sigrid Undset, actress Stella
ment and your Congress know that vague
Adler, and the governors of Pennsylvania,
promises and polite good wishes are not
Indiana, and Rhode Island.
enough. Let them know that we can accept
The public and Congressional pressure
new year's greetings only in the form of
that the Bergson Group mobilized helped
rescue — in the form of a haven-open the
bring about (in early 1944) the creation of
gates of Palestine — so that we can live
the War Refugee Board, a U.S. government
and the world can have peace?'
agency to rescue refugees from Hitler. The
The ad was sponsored by the
board played a crucial role in saving more
Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish
than 200,000 Jews. Among other things,
People of Europe, a group led by Peter
it financed the work of rescue hero Raoul
Bergson (real name: Hillel Kook), a young
Wallenberg in Nazi-occupied Budapest.
Jewish activist from Jerusalem.
Many more could have been saved if the
During 1943-44, Bergson's group
Roosevelt administration had taken an

interest. For example, U.S. bombers repeat-
edly struck German oil factories adjacent
to Auschwitz; but no order was ever given
to bomb the mass-murder machinery.
On Sept. 13, 1944 — just one week
before the "What's So Happy About This
New Year?" ad was published — a fleet of
96 American bombers struck German oil
plants less than five miles from the gas
chambers of Auschwitz. Stray bombs even
accidentally hit an SS barracks and the
railway line leading into the death camp.
Jews serving in the slave labor battalions
there, including 16-year-old Elie Wiesel,
watched the U.S. planes dropping bombs
nearby and prayed that the gas chambers
were on their list of targets.
Years later, in his best-selling memoir
Night, Wiesel recalled: "We were not afraid.
And yet, if a bomb had fallen on [the prison-
ers' barracks], it alone would have claimed
hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were
no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of
that death. Every bomb that exploded filled
us with joy and gave us new confidence in
life. The raid lasted over an hour. If it could
only have lasted 10 times 10 hours!"
It was not to be. The planes did not aim
at Auschwitz. It was indeed a very bitter
Rosh Hashanah. E

Dr. Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman

Institute for Holocaust Studies, www.

Wymanlnstitute.org .

Mosque Couple: Model Of Tolerance

New York/JTA

0

ver the last few months, I have
had a front-row seat to history.
Last May, I spoke at a public
hearing of Manhattan's Community Board
No. 1 in support of Imam Feisal Abdul
Rauf and Daisy Khan, the husband-and-
wife team who initiated plans to build a
13-story Islamic community center two
blocks north of Ground Zero.
I was there on behalf of the Foundation
for Ethnic Understanding, which has
worked with the group Rauf and Khan
lead, the American Society for Muslim
Advancement, in ongoing efforts to
strengthen Muslim-Jewish relations in the
United States and around the world.
In my testimony at the hearing, I
said that since our organizations began
cooperating three years ago, I have con-
sistently found both Feisal and Khan to
be unequivocally opposed to violence and
terrorism and deeply committed to the

48

September 2 • 2010

American values of democracy
and pluralism. These are values,
Feisal argues in his book What's
Right with Islam, that are
intrinsic to Islam as well.
For this reason, our founda-
tion has consistently supported
Feisal's effort to create an Islamic
community center in New York
that will serve as a high-profile
platform from which to articu-
late that vision of peaceful and
pluralistic Islam to Muslims and
non-Muslims alike.
Months ago, he and his wife
told the president of our foundation, Rabbi
Marc Schneier, that they hope to create a cen-
ter for Muslim-Jewish dialogue at the Islamic
community center in cooperation with our
foundation and the larger Jewish community.
Over the past three years, Rauf and
Khan have taken part in an annual event
sponsored by our foundation known as
"The Weekend of Twinning of Mosques

and Synagogues Across North
America',' during which mosques
and synagogues offer one-on-
one programs focusing on and
celebrating commonalities in
our two faith traditions.
From what I have learned,
when Feisal set out during the
past few years to bring to frui-
tion his decades-old dream of
creating an Islamic community
center with a strong interfaith
component in New York City,
he was never much concerned
about where the center would
be located. Yet, when a space large enough
to fulfill his vision became available two
blocks north of Ground Zero, he saw spe-
cial significance in the site.
He argued that the building of an
Islamic community center there dedicated
to non-violence and mutual understand-
ing among faiths would represent a deeply
felt gesture of compassion and healing by

the Muslims of New York to the entire New
York community, including those who lost
loved ones on 9-11.
In retrospect, Feisal can justly be accused
of naivete for not perceiving that building
an Islamic community center so close to
Ground Zero would unleash the kind of
firestorm of fear, loathing and anti-Muslim
rhetoric that has erupted in recent weeks.
From my conversations with him and his
wife on the subject of the proposed center
going back almost a year, it is clear to me
that they never anticipated the kind of
political backlash that has occurred.
Together with the American Society for
Muslim Advancement and other moder-
ate Muslim organizations, our foundation
will continue to nurture a movement of
Muslims and Jews committed to communi-
cation, reconciliation and cooperation.

Walter Ruby is the Muslim-Jewish relations

program officer at the Foundation for Ethnic

Understanding.

