New Research Sheds Light On Failure To Bomb Auschwitz

Research by the Wyman Institute has shed important new light on the Roosevelt administration's refusal to bomb the Auschwitz death camp or the railways leading to it.

For years, defenders of the Roosevelt administration's response to the Holocaust have tried to mitigate the Roosevelt administration's refusal to bomb Auschwitz by alleging that leaders of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, including future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, opposed bombing the death camp for fear of harming the prisoners there.

But the new research shatters that claim.

Speaking at the Wyman Institute's seventh national conference, held in New York City on September 13, 2009, Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff described the research, which he recently undertook in the Central Zionist Archives, in Jerusalem. His work focused on the papers of the late Zionist leader Yitzhak Gruenbaum, which had been closed to the public more than twenty five years.

The documents Dr. Medoff uncovered demonstrate that Ben-Gurion and his colleagues opposed asking the Allies to bomb Auschwitz only for a period of several weeks, when they believed that Auschwitz was a labor camp. After they learned that Auschwitz was a death camp, the Jewish Agency leadership reversed its position and Agency officials in London, Washington, Cairo and elsewhere lobbied the Allies to bomb Auschwitz.

Click here to read Dr. Medoff's new report, "The Roosevelt Administration, David Ben-Gurion, and the Failure to Bomb Auschwitz."

The Wyman Institute intends to present the new evidence to officials of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1996, the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute convinced the Holocaust Museum to change its exhibit on the bombing issue. The original exhibit stated that Jewish leaders favored bombing Auschwitz, but the administration refused their requests. The revised exhibit makes it appear that many Jewish leaders opposed bombing.

(A full report on the Wyman conference will be posted shortly.)

"New Evidence" on FDR and 1930s Refugee Crisis? Not New, Not Evidence

Leading Holocaust scholars have refuted a new book’s claim to have uncovered evidence that President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to help Jewish refugees from Nazism in the 1930s.

The book, Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald 1933-1945, edited by Richard Breitman, Severin Hochberg, and Barbara McDonald Stewart, was published in May by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Indiana University Press. The book claims to “reveal” FDR’s interest in settling large numbers of Jewish refugees in Africa or Latin America in the 1930s.

“The claims in the book are not new, and they are not evidence that FDR was seriously interested in rescuing Jewish refugees,” said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. “It is well known that President Roosevelt dabbled in all kinds of pie-in-the sky resettlement schemes, but refrained from taking practical steps to implement them.”

The Wyman Institute has issued a report titled “Not New, Not Evidence: An Analysis of the Claim that Refugees and Rescue Contains New Evidence of FDR’s Concern for Europe’s Jews.” (Click here for the full text of the report)

Prof. Henry Feingold, who wrote extensively on the 1930s resettlement schemes in his book The Politics of Rescue, issued this statement to the Wyman Institute this week:

Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1941. President Roosevelt claimed to be interested in finding a haven for Europe's Jews, but never took serious steps to make it happen.

“President Roosevelt considered himself a nation-builder --even to the point of falsely taking credit for writing the constitution of Haiti, in order to show his impact on history. His own administration had an agency that resettled large numbers of farmers from the Dust Bowl to Alaska and other undeveloped regions.

“There was no financial or political cost in having experts research all sorts of tropical regions and dozens of other remote locations where Jews might theoretically be settled. But when it came to projects that actually had some practical potential, such as Alaska, he was unwilling to cross swords with restrictionists who did not want refugees coming to American territory.

“It was not expensive for Roosevelt to sit in his office and say ‘if you can get me a large scheme that can attract money, I could pursue it’. It cost him nothing to say he was interested. But ultimately he was just being his normal expansive self. The Jewish issue was peripheral to him. FDR was unwilling to confront powerful restrictionists and isolationists, and take the political risks involved.”

See the full article here

400 Rabbis Urge Yad Vashem to Recognize Bergson Group

More than 400 rabbis, including senior leaders of all denominations, have signed a petition urging Yad Vashem, Israel’s central Holocaust museum, to add materials recognizing the march by 400 rabbis to the White House in 1943 and other Holocaust protests organized by the Bergson Group.

The petition was delivered to Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the new head of Yad Vashem, who was visiting New York to address the United Nations on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan. 27, 2009).

The rabbis marching from Union Station to the Capitol.

For the text of the petition and the complete list of signatories, click here.

The petition was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and spearheaded by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, one of the first historians to write about the rabbis’ march, and Rabbi Benyamin Kamenetzky, dean emeritus of the South Shore (Long Island) Yeshiva, who was one of the marchers in 1943.

“The rabbis’ march was the only rally for rescue of Europe’s Jews that was held in the nation’s capital during the Holocaust,” the petition states. “The march and the Bergson Group’s other protests --rallies, lobbying in Washington, and hundreds of newspaper advertisements-- helped shatter the silence surrounding the Holocaust, and put pressure on the Roosevelt administration to take rescue action. These efforts played an important role in bringing about the creation of the U.S. government’s War Refugee Board, which helped save more than 200,000 Jews from Hitler.”

Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook)

“Yad Vashem already includes material pertaining to various aspects of the Allies’ disappointing response to the Holocaust,” the petition points out. “Visitors to Yad Vashem need to know that although too many people were silent during the Holocaust, there were some who spoke out. Publicizing this fact can help inspire future generations to speak out against injustice.”

Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute, said: “Yad Vashem cannot ignore the fact that sich a wide range of American Jewish religious leaders feel so strongly about the omission of the Bergson Group from Yad Vashem’s museum.”

Dr. Medoff called the petition “a remarkable and unprecedented display of intra-Jewish unity,” and noted: “Imagine how much more might have been accomplished during the Holocaust years, if Jewish leaders had acted in this spirit and set aside their differences. Today’s rabbinical leaders recognize the mistakes of the past and want the historical record to be set straight, so that we can all learn from it.”

Leaders of all Jewish religious denominations signed the petition to Yad Vashem.

Reform leaders who signed the petition include Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; Rabbi Peter Knobel, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis; former CCAR president Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman; Hebrew Union College vice president Rabbi Chalres Kroloff; and Rabbi Uri Regev, former president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

Conservative leaders who signed include Rabbi Daniel S. Nevins, dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary; Rabbi Dr. David Golinkin, president of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies and grandson of one of the 1943 marchers; and the the Rabbinical Assembly’s executive vice president, Rabbi Joel H. Meyers and past president, Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz.

Orthodox leaders who signed include Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University; Rabbi Shalom Carmy, editor of the Orthodox scholarly journal, Tradition; Rabbi Michael Myers, dean of the Hebrew Theological College; Rabbi Avi Weiss, head of the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah rabbinical school; and the Biala Rebbe, Grand Rabbi Aaron Shlomo Rabinowitz.

Reconstructionist leaders who signed include Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, the president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; Rabbi Gail Glicksman and Rabbi Amber Powers, deans of the college; and Rabbi Jack Cohen, former leader of Reconstructionism’s world center, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism.

Other notable signatories:

* The Chief Rabbi of Poland, Rabbi Michael Schudrich.

* Franklin D. Roosevelt’s great-grandson, Rabbi Joshua Boettiger.

* The director of the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission,
Rabbi Allen I. Freehling.

Other recent developments regarding the Bergson Group:

--The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, recently installed a new display recognizing the achievements of the Bergson Group, including a photo of the rabbis’ march.

--More than 130 prominent Israelis, including past and present Knesset Members, cabinet ministers, Supreme Court justices, writers, and artists last year signed a petition to Yad Vashem, urging recognition of the Bergson Group.

--Research by the Wyman Institute revealed that then-Congressman Thomas D. Alesandro, Jr. father of current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was an active supporter of the Bergson Group. In her recent memoir and in speeches, Pelosi said she is “deeply proud” of her father’s link to Bergson.

Pope Pius XII Defended
With Voodoo Math

Apologists for Pope Pius XII's Holocaust record have been citing an obscure book written in 1967 by an Israeli diplomat, Pinchas Lapide, which claimed that the Vatican rescued 700,000 to 860,000 Jews during the Holocaust.

How did Lapide reach that conclusion? Through voodoo math.

Dr. Susan Zuccotti, the foremost scholar of the Vatican's response to the Holocaust, explains:

"The estimate that the pope and his representatives saved hundreds of thousands of Jews came from Pinchas Lapide, who explained clearly that he came to that conclusion first by subtracting the 6 million Jewish dead from the total of 8.3-million Jews in German-controlled Europe before the war,then by subtracting roughly 1 million who fled into the free world from the total of 2.3 million who escaped death, and finally by subtracting 'all reasonable claims' of rescues made by Protestants and non-Christians. He thus calculated that 'the Catholic Church had been instrumental' in saving at least 700,000 Jews, and more probably 860,000. Such methodology was obviously flawed, and the results were unreliable. Also, Lapide did not say that the 700,000 to 860,000 Jews were all saved by the pope and his representatives. He included Catholics in general among the rescuers. See his 'The Last Three Popes and the Jews' (Souvenir, 1967), 212-215. The book was published by Hawthorn in New York the same year, under the title 'Three Popes and the Jews'."

(From page 394, note 7, of Prof. Zuccotti's book Under His Very Windows: The Vatican, and the Holocaust in Italy [Yale University Press, 2000].)

Jewish Leaders “Failed Miserably”
in 1940s, Hebrew Union College
Pres. Says at Wyman Conference

Rabbi Stephen Wise and other American Jewish leaders “failed miserably” in their response to the Holocaust, Rabbi Dr. David Ellenson, president of Reform Judaism’s Hebrew Union College, said at the Wyman Institute’s recent national conference in New York City.

Click here to order Blowing the Whistle on Genocide

Rabbi Ellenson was a featured speaker at “They Spoke Out: American Voices for Rescue from the Holocaust,” the Wyman Institute’s sixth national conference, which was held on September 21, 2008, at the Fordham University Law School. His statement about Rabbi Wise was particularly significant because Wise was the founder and longtime leader of Hebrew Union College.

Rabbi Ellenson said that while it was “understandable” that many American Jews were afraid of provoking an anti-Semitic backlash, “Jewish leaders have an obligation to be sufficiently flexible and imaginative to deal with unprecedented situations.”

See the full article here

130 Israeli Leaders Urge Yad Vashem to Recognize Bergson Group

JERUSALEM- One hundred and thirty Israeli political and cultural leaders --including former Supreme Court justices, cabinet ministers, and cultural figures-- have signed a petition to Yad Vashem, Israel's central Holocaust institution and museum, urging it to add to its exhibits material about the Holocaust rescue activists known as the Bergson Group.

The petition was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

The Bergson Group was a maverick political action committee in the United States in the 1940s that used rallies and newspaper ads to pressure the Roosevelt administration to rescue Jews from Hitler. Its efforts played a key role in facilitating the rescue of more than 200,000 Jews during 1944-1945.

The signatories on the petition included former Supreme Court chief justice Meir Shamgar and fellow-justice Mishael Cheshin; political leaders from the left such as Meretz Party leader Yossi Beilin and former Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, as well as political leaders from the right such former Defense Minister Moshe Arens and former Justice Minister Dan Meridor; leading novelists and playwrights, among them A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, and Yehoshua Sobol; and senior historians such as Pulitzer Prize winner Saul Friedlander and Mordecai Paldiel, former head of Yad Vashem 's Department of the Righteous.

(The text of the petition, and the complete list of signatories, follows in the continuation of this article.)

Comic Book Legends & Wyman Institute Fight For Return of Auschwitz Art

Three of the biggest names in the comic book world have teamed up with the Wyman Institute to launch a new campaign for the return of the portraits that Dina Babbitt painted in Auschwitz.

The Auschwitz State Museum, in Poland, has seven of Mrs. Babbitt's paintings but refuses to return them. (For more about the background to this story, click here.)

Neal Adams, one of the famous artists in comic book history, has drawn a comic strip chronicling Mrs. Babbitt's experiences in Auschwitz and her battle for return of her artwork. The text for the comic strip was authored by Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff. Comic art legend Joe Kubert inked part of the strip; Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and the Hulk and longtime head of Marvel Comics, authored the introduction.

See the New York Times's recent feature story about the new Babbitt comic strip here.

Previously, the Wyman Institute and Joe Kubert mobilized 450 cartoonists and comic book creators from around the world to sign a petition urging the Auschwitz State Museum, in Poland, to return Mrs. Babbitt's paintings. (To read more about the petition, click here.)

For those interest in expressing their opinion regarding the Babbitt case, please contact the director of the Auschwit Museum, Mr. Piotr Cywinski, at: muzeum@auschwitz.org.pl

Pres. Bush and Democrats Agree:
U.S. Should Have Bombed Auschwitz

“We should have bombed it.”

With those five words, President George Bush joined a growing list of U.S. leaders from both political parties who have said publicly that the United States should have bombed the Auschwitz death camp or the railroad lines leading to it.

On his visit to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on January 11,208, the president viewed an enlargement of an aerial reconnaissance photograph of Auschwitz that was taken in the spring of 1944. Mr. Bush then turned to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and remarked, “We should have bombed it.”

Similar statements have been made in the past (see below) by President Bill Clinton; Cyrus Vance, when he was Secretary of State in the Carter administration; U.S. Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern; and U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell (D-Rhode Island), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

For many years after World War Two, the popular assumption in the United States was that President Franklin Roosevelt, with his reputation as a humanitarian and champion of the ‘little man’, surely must have done whatever was feasible to save Jews from the Holocaust.

See the full article here


The photo President Bush viewed at Yad Vashem: Auschwitz as seen from U.S. airplanes in 1944.

U.S. Holocaust Museum Agrees to
Recognize Bergson Activists in Exhibit

In response to petitions by Holocaust scholars, Jewish leaders, and families of Holocaust rescue activists, and an appeal by Elie Wiesel, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has for the first time publicly pledged to change its Permanent Exhibit to acknowledge the rescue work of the Bergson Group.

The Wyman Institute organized the petitions following statements made at the Institute's June 2007 conference by Prof. Wiesel, Prof. David S. Wyman, and Jewish leader Seymour Reich, urging the Holocaust Museum to add the Bergson Group to its exhibits. (To read more about the conference, click here.)

The Bergson Group, also known as the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, was a maverick 1940s political action committee that used newspaper ads, rallies, and lobbying on Capitol Hill to publicize the plight of the Jews under Hitler and the need for U.S. rescue action.

In a letter to The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, dated July 30, 2007, Dr. Steven Luckert, chief curator of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, pledged to make changes in the Museum’s Permanent Exhibit “by early spring of 2008” in order to acknowledge “the positive contributions that the Bergson Group made in raising American awareness of the Holocaust and in advocating Jewish rescue.”

The changes will be made in the Museum’s segment concerning the War Refugee Board, a U.S. government agency that was belatedly established by President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1944, as a result of pressure by the Bergson Group, Members of Congress, and Treasury Department officials.

continued...

For the text of the petition by the scholars and Jewish leaders, click here.

For the text of the petition by the families of the rabbis, click here.

Elie Wiesel delivering the keynote address at the Wyman Institute conference.

Catholics, Jews Urge Vatican:
Open Holocaust Archives

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Thirty-five leading Catholic and Jewish scholars and interfaith activists have signed a petition urging the Vatican to open its archives pertaining to the response of Pope Pius XII to the Holocaust.

The petition was organized by internationally-known Jewish leader Seymour Reich and The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

Although the signatories have a variety of views on the Vatican's response to the Holocaust, they found common ground in the demand to open the archives so the full historical record can be revealed. The signatories include Holocaust scholar Prof. Deborah Lipstadt; Catholic scholar and activist Prof. Leonard Swidler, editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies; Rev. Vincent A. Lapomarda, S. J., Holocaust Collection coordinator at Holy Cross College; Prof. Padriac O'Hare, director of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations at Merrimack College; and Prof. Michael Berenbaum of the University of Judaism.

For the full text of the petition and the list of signatories, click here.

continued...

55 Scholars Protest New Book's Claim
That Criticism of FDR on Holocaust is
"Anti-American"

Fifty-five leading Holocaust scholars have denounced a new book which asserts that criticism of President Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust is "anti-American" and "America-bashing." The book also contains false allegations against reputable historians, severely misrepresents key historical facts, and contains at least twenty-one passages that use language from other books without appropriate attribution.

The book, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust, by South Carolina divorce attorney Robert N. Rosen, was published by Thunder's Mouth Press earlier this year. Rosen has been invited to address the Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, NY, and the Carter Presidential Library, in Atlanta, as well as other institutions.

continued...

220 Clergy Urge Arrest of Sudan's Leader

Ministers, bishops and rabbis seek action against Darfur war criminal.

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Ten Most Absurd Statements in 2009 About Allies' Response to the Holocaust

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THE BERGSON GROUP:
A History in Photographs

More than one hundred rare photos of the Bergson Group's leaders, supporters, and remarkable activities.

Click here to view this extraordinary chronicle.

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An American Hero of the Holocaust

The amazing story of the man who helped force FDR to rescue Jews from the Holocaust is told for the first time in Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust.

Click here to read more about the book

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"Maus" Creator and Wyman Institute Create Cartoon About the St.Louis

View the new graphic art feature by Art Spiegelman (Pulitzer Prize winning creator of "Maus") and the Wyman Institute about the voyage of the St. Louis, as published in the Washington Post on June 21, 2009.

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New Petition to Yad Vashem on Bergson Group

Click here to read about the petition by Holocaust scholars to Yad Vashem, urging recognition of the Bergson Group.

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Bergson Group Conference
in Tel Aviv

Click here to read about the conference on the Bergson Group that took place recently in Tel Aviv.

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Columbia U. and the Nazis

Click here to watch
the video of the
Wyman Institute's
event on Columbia University
ties to Nazi Germany, sponsored by Targum Shlishi, a Raquel and Aryeh Rubin Foundation.

Or click here to read about the event

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Hadassah Honors
Bergson Group

Click here to learn more about the Hadassah-Wyman Institute event in Washington, D.C., honoring a leader of the Bergson Group.

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Nancy Pelosi, the Wyman Institute, and the Bergson Group

Click here to view a recent speech in which Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, discussed the Wyman Institute's research on the involvement of her father, the late U.S. Congressman Thomas D'Alesandro, in the Bergson Group.

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COLUMBIA
AND THE NAZIS

Click here to read about Columbia University's
relations with Nazi Germany.

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A Jewish Refugee
Ship That
Changed History

Click here to view the Wyman Institute's new photo exhibit, "The Voyage of the S.S. Ben Hecht: A Refugee Ship That
Changed History"

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The British Loan Battle That Divided U.S. Jews

Click here to read this feature story in the Jerusalem Post

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Petition for a
Varian Fry Stamp

The Wyman Institute and The Jewish Standard of New Jersey are co-sponsoring a petition to the U.S. Postal Service, asking it to issue a stamp honoring Holocaust rescuer Varian Fry.

Click here to sign the petition

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Wyman Institute Issues Year-End Report on Holocaust Denial

Click here to read the report, Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2007.

(To read the 2006 report, click here.)

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Journal of Ecumenical Studies devotes entire issue to The Abandonment
of the Jews.
Click here to read more.

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Utah Senator Honored for Efforts to Rescue Refugees
read more...

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Reflections on U.S. Jews and the Holocaust

click here to read this important new article in Midstream magazine

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Chagall's Granddaughter Speaks at Wyman Event

To view the Palm Beach Post's coverage of the event, click here.

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The Day the Rabbis Marched
An online exhibit created by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
click here to view the exhibit

click here to read more

In response to a Wyman Institute petition signed by more than eighty leading journalists and journalism professors, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has publicly expressed regret at the failure of U.S. newspaper publishers to aid Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Nazi Germany.  The NAA also pledged to highlight the issue at its national convention and board of directors meeting.

The petition was organized by the Wyman Institute and former New York Times reporter Laurence Zuckerman.  It was based on new research by Prof. Laurel Leff, of Northeastern University, revealing that U.S. journalism schools refused all requests to take in German Jewish journalists fleeing Hitler, and that the American Newspaper Publishers Association (precursor to the Newspaper Association of America) rejected a request by Harvard Prof. Carl Friedrich to discuss the issue for ten minutes at its 1939 convention.  Prof. Leff found evidence that some of the refusals to help were motivated at least in part by antisemitism.  The petition asked the NAA to acknowledge these failures and permit Prof. Leff to address the organization.

continued...

The Bush administration has appointed a special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism around the world, as required by legislation that passed after the intervention of the Wyman Institute.

The new envoy, Dr. Gregg Rickman, assumes a post required by the terms of Congressman Tom Lantos's Global Antisemitism Review Act of 2004.  To learn more about the bill, the Wyman Institute's role, and the challenges facing Dr. Rickman in his new position, click here.

Josiah E. DuBois, Jr.

A senior U.S. diplomat in Vichy France in 1940 ordered his staff to refrain from giving visas to Jewish refugees or helping British POWs, according to a newly-discovered interview with one of his deputies.

The tape-recorded interview with the deputy, U.S. vice-consul Hiram Bingham IV, was played in public for the first time at a May 24 event on Capitol Hill Capitol Hill honoring Bingham for his work with journalist Varian Fry to rescue Jewish refugees from the Nazis.

continued

Lamb and Lynx Gaede,
wearing their "Happy Hitler"
T-Shirts

In response to a protest by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Teen People magazine, which is owned by Time Inc., has removed from its web site an article that whitewashed a neo-Nazi teenage singing duo.

"It was irresponsible for Teen People to post an article describing these neo-Nazis as 'white separatists' without ever acknowledging that they are racists, admirers of Hitler, and Holocaust-deniers," said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute.  "Time Inc has done the right thing by removing the offensive article from the Teen People web site."

continued...

Hundreds of teenagers in South Florida learned for the first time about efforts to smuggle Jews from Europe to Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust, at two programs organized by the Wyman Institute.

continued... 

Jordan Cancels Anti-Semitic TV Series, After Wyman Institute Organizes Protest

The government of Jordan has canceled an antisemitic television series after receiving a letter of protest from 24 American rabbis who had met recently with Jordan's king.  The protest was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

continued...

Editorial - Jewish Ledger (Connecticut) - November 4, 2005

Beating antisemitism too…
It’s easy to get anxious about the renewal of antisemitism both here and abroad. Jewish graves are desecrated in Russia and headstones were overturned in Hartford. The antisemitic “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” common fare in the Arab world, now pop up at book fairs in Germany, and according to Mark Levin, producer of a film titled “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” are sold on the streets of Paterson, N.J. and New York City. (continued...)

A large crowd of local residents and dignitaries was on hand as the town of Ridgewood, New Jersey named a street after its most famous native son, Holocaust rescuer Varian Fry, on June 26, 2005.

The featured speaker was William S. Bingham, son of Hiram Bingham IV, the U.S. diplomat who secretly worked with Fry in rescuing more than 2,000 of the world's most famous artists and writers from Vichy France.

continued - click here

Bill Bingham speaking at the
Varian Fry Way ceremony
in Ridgewood, NJ

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