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Holocaust scholar says Yad Vashem divided over commemorating Bergson Group
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: Yad Vashem, Israel News

The refusal of Yad Vashem to commemorate in its museum Americans who helped save Jews from the Holocaust is creating an internal rift in the ranks of the museum's leadership, according to a leading Holocaust scholar from the U.S. This rift, according to Rafael Medoff, director of the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington D.C., concerns the honoring of the Bergson Group.

Under the leadership of Hillel Kook, a Revisionist Zionist politician also known as Peter Bergson, the ten members of the group pressured the U.S. administration to save 200,000 Jews in the 1940s. All 10 members belonged to the Irgun, a right-wing underground movement operating in pre-state Israel.

Unlike the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., Yad Vashem's permanent display bears no mention of the Bergson Group. Medoff says that Yad Vashem has until now largely ignored its efforts. Yad Vashem denies ignoring the Group, noting that it is honored in non-museum activities. Mentioning it in the permanent display while "ignoring context and other influences, would be misleading, exaggerating and out of proportion," according to Yad Vashem.
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But while on a visit to Israel last month, Medoff told Anglo File that some of Yad Vashem's top figures have been warming up to the idea of honoring its members, known as "Bergsonites." This has caused Yad Vashem to speak with "two voices," according to Medoff.

He says the inauguration of Rabbi Israel Meir Lau in November as chairman of the Yad Vashem's council has brought new hope for recognition of the Bergsonites - who in 1943 formed the Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry to lobby the president and Congress to save the remnants of Europe's Jews from the Nazis.

"Lau tells us privately that he's sympathetic to our cause," Medoff said. In contrast with his predecessor, Lau has begun mentioning the Bergson Group in speeches, most recently before the UN General Assembly in January.

Public pressure and political lobbying by the Bergson Group begot a proposal to admit more refugees into the U.S., which the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations ratified. This, in turn, compelled President Franklin Roosevelt to order the establishment of the War Refugee Board, which in 1943 took in 200,000 European Jews.

"The speeches [by Lau] are an important and positive development," said Medoff, who recently delivered a lecture on the matter at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. "But Yad Vashem's ongoing refusal to add the Bergsonites to the permanent display is unacceptable."

While Lau praises the Bergsonites, other prominent figures from Yad Vashem - including chief historian Yahuda Bauer and editor-in-chief David Silberklang - have downplayed its significance. Bauer is quoted as saying in 2005 in Yad Vashem that Kook "saved no one."

This duality, according to Medoff, indicates Yad Vashem is experiencing -an internal debate. Ultimately, he says that Yad Vashem "will not be able to ignore the Bergson Group because their actions are just too important, and because not mentioning them is telling only a part of the story of the reaction to the Holocaust in the Free World."

Yad Vashem spokesperson Iris Rosenberg commented that Medoff has a -fundamental misunderstanding of what Yad Vashem is? because commemoration at Yad Vashem is done through a myriad of ways. Rosenbeg noted that Yad Vashem translated and published David Wyman?s book highlighting the Group?s activities. "Yad Vashem has employed such means to discuss the group?s activities."
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