The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
August 21, 2008
Mr. Avner Shalev, Chairman, Yad Vashem Directorate
Yad Vashem – The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority
Jerusalem, Israel
Dear Mr. Shalev:
As scholars who have researched and written about the Holocaust, we support the recent appeal, by a wide cross-section of Israeli scholars and political and cultural figures, urging Yad Vashem to add to its exhibit materials about the Bergson Group’s role in promoting rescue from the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem’s exhibit already includes material about the failure of the United States to admit significant numbers of refugees or to bomb Auschwitz. But this chapter of Holocaust history is incomplete without reference to those in America who did act to bring about the rescue of Jews from the Nazis. The Bergson Group mobilized the Congressional and public pressure that was crucial to bringing about the creation of the War Refugee Board, which in turn played a central role in the rescue of over 200,000 Jewish refugees.
We are pleased that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum recently added to its Permanent Exhibit materials acknowledging the efforts by the Bergson Group, and we urge Yad Vashem to do likewise.
Sincerely,
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton
President, Genocide Watch
President, International Association of Genocide Scholars
Rabbi Dr. Irving Greenberg
Former Chairman, United States Holocaust Memorial Council
Prof. Israel W. Charny
Editor, Encyclopedia of Genocide
Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
Past President, International Association of Genocide Scholars
Prof. Henry R. Huttenbach
City Colllege of New York
Director, Center for the Study of Ethnopolitics and Ethnonationalism
Editor, Journal of Genocide Research
Prof. Richard L. Rubenstein
President (Emer.) & Distinguished Professor of Religion
University of Bridgeport
Author, After Auschwitz
Irving Abella
Shiff Professor of Canadian Jewish History
York University, Toronto
Author, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948.
Prof. Marcia Sachs Littell
Founding Director, Master of Arts Program in Holocaust & Genocide Studies
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey
Dr. Racelle R. Weiman
Executive Director, Global Dialogue Institute, Temple University
Founding Director, Center for Holocaust and Humanities Education,
Hebrew Union College
Prof. Aaron Berman
Dean, Hampshire College
Author, Nazism, the Jews, and American Zionism 1933-1948
Prof. Elihu Richter
Associate Director
Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
Prof. Susannah Heschel
Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
Author, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (2008)
Recipient of the National Jewish Book Award (1999)
Prof. Fred A. Lazin
Lynn and Lloyd Hurst Family Professor of Local Government
Chair, Department of Politics & Government
Ben Gurion University
Prof. Samuel Totten
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Author, Dictionary of Genocide
Prof. Paul Oppenheimer
City College and Graduate Center, The City U. of New York
Author, Evil and the Demonic: A New Theory of Monstrous Behavior
Prof. Laurel Leff
Northeastern University
Author, Buried by ‘The Times’: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper
Prof. Rochelle L. Millen
Wittenberg University
Editor, New Perspectives on the Holocaust
Prof. John C. Zimmerman
University of Nevada Las Vegas
Author, Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies & Ideologies
Prof. Wendy C. Hamblet
North Carolina A&T State University
Author, The Sacred Monstrous: Reflections on Violence in Human Communities
Prof. Gerald Sorin
American and Jewish Studies
State University of New York, New Paltz
Prof. Allon Gal
Department of Jewish History (emer.)
Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel & Zionism
Ben-Gurion University
Prof. Michael J. Cohen
Lazarus Philips Chair of History, Bar-Ilan Un iversity
Author, Churchill and the Jews
Dr. Sharon Lowenstein
Author, Token Refuge
Prof. Ron Hollander
Montclair State University
Contributor, Why Didn’t the Press Shout?
Dr. Harold Brackman
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Author, “The Holocaust in the Thought of W.E.B. DuBois”
Prof. Paul Lawrence Rose
Mitrani Professor of European History, The Penn. State U.
Author, Archives of the Holocaust, vol. XIV: The Hecht Archive. University of Haifa
Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin
President, Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem
Editor, Megillat HaShoah
Prof. Paul Miller
McDaniel College and the International University of Sarajevo
Executive Producer, They Looked Away
Prof. Bat-Ami Zucker
Bar Ilan University
Author, In Search of Refuge
Dr. Peter I. Rose
Sophia Smith Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Anthropology
Smith College
Editor, The Dispossessed: An Anatomy of Exile
Prof. Haim Genizi
Bar Ilan University
Author, American Apathy: Christian Refugees from Nazism
Prof. Monty N. Penkower
Professor of Jewish History (emer.)
Machon Lander Graduate School for Jewish Studies, Jerusalem
Author, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust
Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs
Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies
The University of Alabama
Associate Editor, The Encyclopedia of Genocide (2 vos.)
Prof. Thane Rosenbaum
John Whelan Distinguished Lecturer in Law
Director of the Forum on Law, Culture & Society
Fordham University School of Law / Author, The Myth of Moral Justice
Prof. Stephen H. Norwood
University of Oklahoma
Coeditor, Encyclopedia of American Jewish History
Prof. Zev Garber
Professor Emeritus, Jewish Studies, Los Angeles Valley College
Author, Shoah: The Paradigmatic Genocide
Series Editor, Studies in the Shoah
Prof. Saul S. Friedman
Youngstown State University
Author, No Haven for the Oppressed
Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein
Kehilath Jeshurun / Ramaz School
Author, Were We Our Brothers’ Keepers?
Dr. Allen Podet
Professor, Philosophy and Humanities
State University College at Buffalo, NY
Author, Success and Failure of the Anglo-American Committee
Prof. Harry Reicher
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Author, Law and the Holocaust Law
Prof. Melvin Small
Distinguished Professor of History, Wayne State University
Co-editor, Appeasing Fascism
William Bemister
Recipient of Emmy and CINE Golden Eagle Awards
Producer-Correspondent, The Search for Mengele
Prof. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath
The Leah and Paul Lewis Chair of Holocaust Studies
The University of Texas at Dallas
Author, In the Footsteps of Orpheus
Stuart G. Erdheim
Director, They Looked Away
Author, “Could the Allies Have Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau?”
Prof. Eunice G. Pollack
University of North Texas
Coeditor, Encyclopedia of American Jewish History
Dr. Alex Grobman
Brenn Institute
Author, Rekindling the Flame
Sarah E. Peck
Author, “The Campaign for an American Response to the Nazi Holocaust”
Prof. Myrna Goldenberg
Montgomery College (emer.)
Co-editor, Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis, and the Holocaust
Dr. Erich H. Loewy
Professor of Medicine and Founding Chair of Bioethics (emer.)
Associate in Philosophy
University of California, Davis
Dr. Rafael Medoff
Director, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Author, Blowing the Whistle on Genocide
Prof. David S. Wyman
Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. Professor of History (emer.)
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Author, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945
(Institutions listed for identification purposes only.)