New US Holocaust Museum Display Features Bergson Group

For some reason, I didn't see anything about this in the Washington Post today--but Etgar Lefkovits' story made the Jerusalem Post:

The exhibition was unveiled less than a month after Yad Vashem rebuffed a petition signed by 100 Israeli political and cultural leaders from across the political spectrum to include an exhibit about the group in Israel's Holocaust Museum as well.

The new exhibit, which is located in a section of the museum devoted to rescue, is in a display titled "American Rescue Efforts: The War Refugee Board" near another display about the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

The new display states that US congressmen and Jewish organizations began openly criticizing the State Department for its inaction, and that the Bergson Group, which was known as the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, organized a campaign for the creation of a US government rescue agency to help save the Jews of Europe.

The exhibit then offers a brief summary of the work of the War Refugee Board and states how it helped save lives.

"This was a totally neglected issue which was not on their agenda," said Rabbi Benyamin Kamenetzky, 85, founder and longtime head of the South Shore Yeshiva in Long Island and one of the few surviving participants of a historic march by 400 Orthodox rabbis in Washington that the group organized during the Holocaust to protest the US government's inaction to save the Jews of Europe.

"It took a lot of effort and influence to have it exhibited," he said. The new exhibit was also welcomed by the prominent American Holocaust Institute, which had lobbied the US Holocaust Museum, and more recently Yad Vashem, to include an exhibition about the Bergson Group in their museums.

"The US Holocaust Museum has officially recognized that the Bergson Group's rallies, newspaper ads, and congressional lobbying played a significant role in the process leading to the creation of the War Refugee Board," said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. "We urge other Holocaust museums and institutions around the world to take note of the US Holocaust Museum's important step and likewise update their own exhibits."

Didn't see anything about this on the US Holocaust Museum website, either...