On Jewish Infighting, 1943

On December 1, 1943,  a Congressional committee meeting was held on a resolution that would extend help for Jews suffering Nazi extermination by setting up an actual government unit to do that.

Dr. Stephen Wise, in his testimony sought to belittle the group that was behind the resolution and said:

The several handfuls in the group, of which you have spoken [The Emergency Committee], are not any part of the American Jewish Conference, because it is not authorized by anyone. It represents no one but a handful, a very small number of Jews and a number of Christians, who might become interested in and won over to this cause. ...

Congressman Will Rogers Jr. responded, saying, 

We are fighting a war for our life. . . And it is to be regretted that one little group is always accusing another group of Jews of trying to grab something before the war is over. 

P.S.

Rabbi Wise...emerges quite poorly from the new research, not because of his suppression of the Riegner telegram but because of his record during the two years to follow (1943–44). Scholarly studies of the Bergson Group, Jewish student activists, and the Orthodox rescue group known as the Va’ad ha-Hatzala have revealed that Wise was almost fanatical in his efforts to stymie dissidents and protect President Roosevelt from Jewish criticism. The time and energy Wise and his colleagues devoted to attacking Bergson and other activists could have been used so much more productively had they focused on rescue instead of worrying about the competition.

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