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December 26, 2003/Tevet 1 5764, Vol. 56, No. 14
Christmas without Jews?RAFAEL MEDOFFDuring the 1940s, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ben Hecht authored a series of controversial newspaper advertisements intended to alert Americans about the Holocaust. But none of the ads caused more of a stir than the one he wrote in 1943, which declared that the world was looking forward to a Christmas with no Jews left alive in Europe.Hecht's ads were placed in major newspapers around the country by a Jewish activist organization known as the Bergson group, headed by Peter Bergson. The advertisements featured headlines such as "Time Races Death: What Are We Waiting For?" In early 1943, Hecht read a newspaper report in which Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels was quoted as vowing to finish the task of murdering all European Jews in time for Christmas. This inspired Hecht to pen an advertisement headlined "Ballad of the Doomed Jews of Europe." Hecht's second stanza challenged the Roosevelt administration: "Four million murders are quite a smear/Even our State Department views/The slaughter with much disfavor here/But then - it's busy with other news." Even those Jews who were privately troubled by Roosevelt's refusal to aid European Jewry were reluctant to speak out, fearing that any public disagreement with the president might provoke anti-Semitism. The last stanza of Hecht's ballad was the most jarring: "Oh World be patient - it will take/Some time before the murder crews/Are done. By Christmas you can make/Your Peace on Earth without the Jews." Someone at The Times leaked the text to officials of the American Jewish Committee. AJC President Joseph Proskauer warned Bergson that "such an anti-Christian attitude (as implied in the ad) could well bring on pogroms in the USA." Bergson agreed to withdraw the ad, but insisted that Proskauer convene a meeting of Jewish leaders to discuss taking steps to press for U.S. action to aid European Jewry. The meeting, held in New York City some weeks later, was attended by officials of more than a dozen prominent Jewish organizations. "They wanted just to get a repeated assurance that (the ad) won't be published," Bergson later recalled. Bergson published the ad in The New York Times on Sept. 14, 1943. The campaign culminated in October 1943 with the introduction of a congressional resolution urging the creation of a U.S. government agency to rescue Jewish refugees. The controversy caused by congressional hearings convinced Roosevelt in January 1944 to establish the rescue agency the resolution had sought - the War Refugee Board. The Board's activities saved the lives of more than 200,000 people during the final 15 months of the war. Those American Jewish leaders who believed nothing could be done to help European Jewry, or who claimed there would be a severe anti-Semitic backlash if American Jews protested, had been proven wrong. Rafael Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. |
