Conference of American Rabbis, Call for Help for European Jews, & Statement by UNRRA Director-General

From American Jewish Newspapers, 80 Years Ago Today

By: Yaakov Rosenfeld

1

Call to the Conference of American Rabbis

Exactly eighty years ago, during the twilight of Nazi rule across Eastern Europe, when the campaign of extermination of Hungarian Jewry was in full swing, the Conference of Rabbis of the United States and Canada convened a meeting in the United States.

The conference, whose stated goal was to strengthen Torah and Judaism in the United States, was held at the beginning of the month of Kislev and was attended by Orthodox rabbis, activists, and delegates from all over the United States.

In preparation for this major conference, Agudath Israel published a public appeal to the conference organizers and participants in the Yiddish daily press, which had a huge circulation throughout the United States at the time.

This is the call we find in the American newspaper “Der Tag,” which was published on November 17th, 1944 (2 Kislev 5705).

Agudath Israel supports the conference and its goals, and welcomes such an important gathering, which would surely result in the community’s sanctification of the name of Heaven, and will make Torah and Judaism rise throughout the world, but at the same time asks and urges people to pay attention to the tragedy of the orphaned children, refugees from European Jewry, who are being given over to secular education in the Land of Israel against the will of their holy parents. Below is part of the call. (Translated from Yiddish to Hebrew by Y.R. and from Hebrew to English by R.P.)

At a time of great sorrow, when everything is ruined and destroyed, when the world is destroyed because of us, you, the rabbis of America, gather in your great conference.

It is clear that in this country we must find the right ways to raise the honour of the Torah and the honour of the bearers of the Torah’s ways, to raise the prestige of Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) Judaism, but, at the same time, you must not, in your deliberations, ignore the terrible tragedy that is now unfolding in the Land of Israel.

Thousands of child survivors, survivors of the European hell who arrived in the Land of Israel, face the danger of being given, G-d forbid, a secular education, a heretical education, foreign to Torah and faith, an education contrary to the will of their holy parents, who went to the death camps, to the gas chambers, and with the verse “Shema Yisrael” (Hear Oh Israel) on their lips… Make noise about this injustice! Jewish children will be forced to grow up as strangers to all the holy ones of the nation! The rabbinical court is the father of orphans, and no one else! Strengthen the hands of the great Torah scholars in the Land of Israel who are tirelessly standing in the difficult war for the children of Israel. And with this, we publish the statement of the Agudath Israel Union, which was registered with the consent of all the (religious) geniuses and righteous people present in the Land of Israel.

A segment of Agudath Israel’s call

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A Call on Behalf of our Jewish Brethren who are in Distress

In that newspaper clipping, our eyes were caught by the call of the Boyaner Rebbe, the Rabbi Mordechai Shlomo, z”l, head of the Relief Committee of the Association of Rebbes, to New York residents, to take part in a campaign that was already underway in other states of the US for the benefit of the Jewish people in distress and captivity. The goal was a quarter of a million dollars (a huge sum according to the exchange rate at the time), and in the coming month of Kislev, the fundraising would focus on New York. We will write about the Relief Committee and its great activities here, G-d willing, soon.

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The Land of Israel – The Only Anchor of Salvation

On page 3 of the same newspaper, a news item appears:

Herbert Lehman, Director-General of UNRRA declares: “The Land of Israel is the only anchor of salvation for thousands of Jews!”

(Note: UNRRA is an acronym for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, an organization assisting WWII refugees. It is not to be confused with modern day UNWRA.)

The newspaper brings the words and conclusions of Lehman, former governor of New York and (then) the first director of UNRRA, regarding Jewish settlement in Israel until the war, employment opportunities and the state of agriculture, and more, and then Lehman declared:

Although, as is well known, I have never been a Zionist (…) I have been completely, head and shoulders, devoted to the cause of Israel for a long time, and I can declare that even today, in view of the approaching defeat, in view of the end of Nazi rule, Israel is the only hope for many thousands of Jews.

Lehman, after whom one of the evacuated communities on the Lebanese border bears its name, was the first director general of the organization.

Quote from Wikipedia:

“The settlement of Lehman, 2.5 km from the Lebanese border, was established in 1949 by a group of discharged soldiers who temporarily settled in the houses of the Arab village of A-Ziv, whose Arab residents had left during the War of Independence. The garin (group of settlers) was called the Kol Tov garin. A few months later, it settled on the lands of the village of A-Ziv (identified with the ancient settlement of Achziv) and on some of the lands of Al-Basa, and established the settlement there.”

“The new settlement was initially called Tzahal (IDF), because the core members were discharged from the army. The name created confusion in the postal system, so on April 28th, 1959, it was renamed Lehman after Herbert Lehman, a Jewish-American senator and governor of New York who was visiting the area at the time.”