Hillel Kook

MKs


Date of birth = 24 July 1915
Year of Aliyah = 1924
Date of death = 18 August 2001
Knesset(s) = 1st
Party = None (Independent)
Former parties = Herut
Gov't roles =

Hillel Kook ( _he. הלל קוק, born 24 July 1915, died 18 August 2001), also known as Peter Bergson (Hebrew: פיטר ברגסון), was a Revisionist Zionist activist, politician, and prominent member of the Irgun. He was the nephew of Abraham Isaac Kook, Israel's first Ashkenazi chief rabbi.

Early life

Hillel Kook was born in Lithuania in 1915, the son of Rabbi Dov Kook, Abraham Isaac Kook's younger brother. In 1924, his family immigrated to Palestine, where his father became the first Chief Rabbi of Afula. Hillel Kook received a religious education in Afula and Jerusalem and went on to receive a degree in Jewish Studies at Hebrew University. While there, he became a member of "Sohba", or "Comradeship", a group of students who would later become prominent in the Revisionist movement, including David Raziel and Avraham Stern.

Kook joined the pre-state Haganah militia in 1930 following widespread Arab riots. In 1931, Kook helped found the Irgun, a group of militant Haganah dissidents. He fought with the Irgun through the 1940s, serving as a post commander in 1936, and eventually became a member of the Irgun General Headquarters.

World War II

In 1937 Kook began his career as an international spokesperson for the Irgun and Revisionist Zionism. He first went to Poland, where he was involved in fundraising and establishing Irgun cells in Eastern Europe. It was there that he met the founder of the Revisionist movement, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and became friends with his son Eri. In 1940, at the elder Jabotinsky's suggestion, Kook travelled to the United States, where he served as the head of the Irgun mission in America. This assignment was clandestine, and, many times during his time in America, Kook publicly denied he was affiliated with the Irgun.

Bergson Group

While in America, Kook led a group of Irgun activists under the pseudonym "Peter Bergson", supposedly to avoid embarrassing his family (particularly his famous uncle Abraham Isaac) with his political activities. The name "Bergson Group" or "Bergsonites" eventually became used to refer to all the members of Kook's immediate circle. The Bergson Group was composed of a hard-core cadre of ten Irgun activists from Europe, America and Palestine, including Aryeh Ben-Eliezer, Yitzhak Ben-Ami, Alexander Rafaeli, Shmuel Merlin, and Eri Jabotinsky. The Bergson Group was closely involved with various Jewish and Zionist advocacy groups, such as the American Friends for a Jewish Palestine and the Organizing Committee of Illegal Immigration. The group also founded some separate initiatives of its own, specifically the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews, whose goal was the formation of an Allied fighting force of stateless and Palestinian Jews. Some credit the later formation of the Jewish Brigade, a British unit of Palestinian Jews, with Kook's activism. Two American members of the Bergson Group were author and screenwriter Ben Hecht and cartoonist Arthur Szyk.

Initially the Bergson Group largely limited its activities to Irgun fundraising and various propaganda campaigns. The outbreak of World War II saw a dramatic transformation in the group's focus. As information about the Holocaust began to reach the United States, Kook and his fellow activists became more involved in trying to raise awareness about the fate of the Jews in Europe. This included putting full-page advertisements in leading newspapers, such as "Jews Fight for the Right to Fight", published in "The New York Times" in 1942, and "For Sale to Humanity 70,000 Jews, Guaranteed Human Beings at $50 a Piece", in response to an offer by Romania to send their Jews to safety if the travel expenses would be provided. On March 9, 1943, the Group produced a huge pageant in Madison Square Garden written by Ben Hecht, titled "We Will Never Die", memorializing the 2,000,000 European Jews who had already been murdered. Forty thousand people saw the pageant that first night, and it went on to play in five other major cities including Washington, D.C., where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, six Supreme Court Justices, and some 300 senators and congressmen watched it.

In 1943, Kook established an "Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry". The Committee, which included Jewish and non-Jewish American writers, public figures, and politicians, worked to disseminate information to the general public, and also lobbied the President and Congress to take immediate action to save the remnants of Europe's Jews. United States immigration laws at the time limited immigration to only 2% of the number of each nationality present in the United States since the census of 1890, which limited Jews from Austria and Germany to 27,370 and from Poland to 6,542; even these quotas often went unfilled, due to United States State Department pressure on US consulates to place as many obstacles as possible in the path of refugees.The proposal to admit more refugees was ratified by the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and, in response to the pressure, President Roosevelt subsequently issued an administrative order for the establishment of a special national authority, the War Refugee Board (WRB) to deal with Jewish and non-Jewish war refugees. An official government emissary sent to Turkey was of considerable assistance in the rescue of Romanian Jewry. The WRB saved about 200,000 Jews. (Wyman 1984:285) Those rescued through the WRB were probably mostly in Hungary, in part through the Wallenberg mission which was sponsored by the WRB.

Some of the members of the "Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe" were: Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson) and Alex Hadani Rafaeli, Alex Wilf, Arieh Ben-Eliezer,
Arthur Szyk, Ben Hecht, Rabbi Ben Rabinowitz (Robbins), Eri Jabotinsky,
Esther Untermeyer, Gabe Wechsler, Senator Guy Gillette, Harry Selden, Johan Smertenko, Konrad Bercovici, M. Berchin, Samuel Merlin, Sigrid Undset, Stella Adler, Congressman Will Rogers, Jr., Yitzchak Ben-Ami.

There were many others who actively supported the "Bergson Group", for example a number of the best known people on Broadway and Hollywood, probably due to Ben Hecht's contacts (such as Kurt Weill).

Opposition to Bergson

Hillel Kook had much opposition during the war which continues today. Noted Israeli Holocaust historian Professor Yehuda Bauer exclaimed "Hillel Kook didn't save anyone!" (Ref. Conversation with Prof. Yehuda Bauer at Yad Vashem circa 2005.)

Kook and his followers were widely opposed by large sections of the American public, particularly by many prominent American Zionist organizations. In December 1943, the American Jewish Conference launched a public attack against the Bergsonites in an attempt to derail support for the resolution. (Wyman 1984:202)

The British embassy and several American Zionist groups, including the American Jewish Committee and other political opponents sought to have Kook deported or drafted. (Wyman 184:346) They encouraged the IRS to investigate the Bergson groups finances in an attempt to discredit them, hoping to find misappropriation, or at least careless bookkeeping, of the large amount of funds the groups handled. The IRS found no financial irregularities. (Wyman 1984:346) Included in those trying to stop the Bergson Group's rescue activities were Steven Wise, Nahum Goldmann and Congressman Blum . A State Department protocol shows Nahum Goldmann telling the State Department that Hillel Kook doesn't represent organized Jewry, and suggested either deporting him or drafting him for the war effort.(See the Wyman-Medoff book in "References", with appendix)

Neither the U.S. Holocaust Museum nor Yad Vashem present the Bergson Group's activism, its unprecedented impact on rescue, the intensity of opposition and its consequences (lives unnecessarily lost)and surrounding controversies. [http://www.wymaninstitute.org/wieselurgesmuseum.php| article re speech by Eli Wiesel] .

The Day the Rabbis Marched

One of the Committee's more memorable activities was a protest Kook organized known as the "Rabbis' march". The protest took place in Washington, D.C. on October 6, 1943, three days before Yom Kippur. While the Bergson Group was largely secular, Kook successfully used his family's rabbinic heritage to convince between 400 and 500 Orthodox rabbis to attend. Among the participants were Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi Eliezer Silver, president of the Va'ad Ha-Hatzala and co-president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, Rabbi Mordechai Shlomo (sometimes recorded as Solomon Mordechai) Friedman, the Boyaner Rebbe of New York and president of the Union of Grand Rabbis of the United States, Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz, rabbinical dean of the Mir Yeshiva, Rabbi Naftali Carlebach, father of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rabbi Charles Kahane,father of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg and his father, Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Hertzberg. No representatives from Conservative Judaism, or Reform Judaism were present.

Joined by Bergson Group activists, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, and a number of prominent members of Congress including William Warren Barbour, the protesters marched on the United States Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, and White House, pleading for U.S. intervention on behalf of the Jews in Europe. Though the delegation was reluctantly received by Vice President Henry Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt avoided them entirely, both out of concerns regarding diplomatic neutrality, but also influenced by the advice of some of his Jewish aides and several prominent American Jewish spokespeople (including Dr. Stephen Wise), who thought the protest would stir up anti-Semitism and claimed that the marchers, many whom were both Orthodox as well as recent immigrants (or first-generation Americans) were not representative of American Jewry. Shortly before the protest reached the White House, FDR left the building through a rear exit to attend an Army ceremony, and then left for a weekend in the country. Disappointed and angered by the President's failure to meet with them, the rabbis stood in front of the White House where they were met by Barbour and others, and refused to read their petition aloud, instead handing it off to the Presidential secretary, Marvin McIntyre. The march garnered much media attention, much of it focused on what was seen as the cold and insulting dismissal of many important community leaders, as well as the people in Europe they were fighting for. One Jewish newspaper commented, "Would a similar delegation of 500 Catholic priests have been thus treated?" [http://www.wymaninstitute.org/special/rabbimarch/pg03.php] Years later, Rabbi Soloveitchik, in recorded lectures, would bemoan the betrayal of the Rabbis' mission by Stephen Wise, who dismissed them as a group of Orthodox rabbis who didn't represent anyone. [See 'The Obligation to save the Kahal' at http://download.bcbm.org/Media/RavSoloveitchik/Moadim/Purim_ObligationtoKahal_1_69.mp3]

Post-War activities

Growing divisions

Without waiting for the end of World War II, the Irgun declared an open revolt against British rule in Palestine. [Rosen, Robert N., "Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust", Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2006, p. 333] To assist in recruiting and propaganda efforts, Kook established the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation and the American League for a Free Land of Israel, both of which were involved in lobbying U.S. and other diplomats and in trying to attract the American public to support the Irgun's rebellion. Kook remained strongly affiliated with the Revisionist camp after the war and the creation of the state of Israel. While he was unquestionably loyal to his cause, his position as the Irgun's leading American activist was not free from conflict. In 1946 Kook received a letter from Menachem Begin, who had become chief of the Irgun in 1943. Begin admonished Kook for various positions of his that strayed from the official Irgun party-line. These included Kook focusing on the transportation of illegal immigrants to Palestine instead of his "primary" assignment, arms shipments to Irgun fighters, as well as his (rather common) usage of the term "Palestine". At the time Kook was in the habit of saying "Palestine Free State", which Begin thought left too much potential for bi-nationalism. Begin demanded that Kook instead publicly refer to the future Jewish state as the "Free State of Eretz Israel". He also criticized Kook for keeping too high a profile, angrily reminding him that the Irgun was an underground organization and that he was supposed to be using his resources to help the revolt in Palestine, not organize parades and marches.

Begin's letter illustrated the deep tensions that existed between the formal Irgun leadership and its independent and influential activists in the United States. It also revealed the increasing ideological schism that emerged between the camps of Begin, who inherited the political and military infrastructure of Jabotsinky, and Kook and his followers, who saw themselves as Jabotinsky's true ideological and political heirs. This tension would later come to a head when Kook and many of the Bergson Group members returned to Israel after its establishment in 1948.

One of Hillel Kook's associates in New York (Elie Metz, summer 2007 meeting in New York) said that Hillel Kook was the senior leader in ETZEL who was not imprisoned or killed and he had Menachem Begin appointed as ETZEL's commander. This requires further research. If this is in fact the historical record then had Hillel Kook chosen to be the commander himself the post-war Israeli political scene and perhaps the dynamics of the region would have been very different.

Kook returns to Israel

In 1947, the Bergson Group had purchased a ship originally intended to carry new immigrants to Israel, but, perhaps partially due to Begin's influence, was eventually used to ship arms. The ship was named "Altalena", and would eventually be destroyed by Palmach fighters under Yitzhak Rabin's command at Ben Gurion's order off Tel Aviv's shore, near today's Dan Hotel. Begin was on the ship; he escaped Palmach fire. He spoke in tears the same night on ETZEL's underground radio and asked the ETZEL fighters not to shoot back at other Jews. Interviews in a documentary called "Altalena" show a Palmach soldier who admits that some in the Palmach were shooting at those on the Altalena who jumped overboard. There was much hatred at the time toward ETZEL and other Zionist underground groups. This manifested itself in the (hunting) "Season", when ETZEL and other underground groups were hunted, beaten and turned over to the British. Elie Metz claims that Hillel Kook intended the weapons on the Altalena to be given to the Hagannah and that Begin changed the orders. This important claim needs to be researched. Following the Altalena Affair in 1948, Kook was arrested with four other senior Irgun commanders on Ben-Gurion's orders and held for over two months. Of the five, only Kook was a member of the Bergson Group. The five were eventually released following a series of public protests and appeals. Hillel Kook was concerned that while in jail he may be assassinated.

Kook served in the first Knesset as part of the Herut party list but quit the party with his close friends and fellow MKs Ari Jabotinsky and Shmuel Merlin after two years following ongoing disagreements with their colleagues, particularly Menachem Begin, over the party's leadership and direction. Hillel Kook was also much influenced by the way the USA government was designed by skilled architects, and apparently called 1948 "1776". He is said to have had many heated discussions with Ben Gurion, in an attempt to base Israel on a Constitution, much like the USA was created. (Ref. discussions with Elie Metz) Kook, who had left Israel over ten years earlier, was now confronted with the reality that the country and movement he had fought for bore little resemblance to his ideals. Kook and his friends served as independent or "single" MKs for the remaining months of their terms, the first ever to do so. Profoundly disillusioned with the Israeli political process and future of the Revisionist movement, Kook left Israel in 1951 with his wife and daughter. In 1968, four years after his wife's death, he returned to Israel with his two daughters. He remarried in 1975 and lived near Tel Aviv until his death in 2001.

Philosophy

While Kook never re-entered politics, he continued to give interviews for many years, in which he continued to articulate his independent perspectives on Zionism, Jewish identity, and Israeli politics. His more controversial ideas included declaring that Jabotinsky's primary goal in creating a Jewish state was in making a country to which all Jews would want to belong, and that once Israel had been created, any Jews who refused to make aliyah had made a conscious choice to become "integrated" citizens of their naturalized countries. This distinction between Jews and Hebrews was another major sticking point between Kook and the larger Irgun leadership as early as the mid-1940s.

Kook had a specific body of critiques concerning what he saw as the distortion of Zionist philosophy and idealism by Israeli politics. He maintained that he had always conceived of Israel being a "Jewish state" by having a majority of Jewish citizens, not through specific associations to Jewish nationalism. Paradoxically, Kook's "theocratic" vision of Israel gave him a great deal of ideological flexibility in regards to some of Israel's more intractable problems. He supported according all non-Jewish citizens of Israel with full rights and privileges, and once, in an interview with an Israeli Druze, commented that, like Jabotinsky, he saw "no reason" why the State of Israel could not have a non-Jewish president. He was in favor of amending the Law of Return to consider prospective immigrants on an individual, and not national or religious basis, except for cases of immediate danger.

Kook was also a strong supporter of Israel's constitution, which had been stalled during its writing in 1948 and never completed. Kook claimed that a formal constitution could have solved many ongoing issues in Israeli society, such as discrimination against Israeli Arabs, by providing all of Israel's citizens with a clearly defined, and egalitarian, role in Israeli nationalism. He once remarked that the lack of a constitution was "Israel's greatest tragedy", that Ben-Gurion's decision to change the Israeli governing body from a Constituent Assembly to a Parliament had been a putsch, and that he regretted not having resigned from the Knesset immediately after the decision had been made. Kook also favored the creation of a Palestinian state, albeit one established in modern-day Jordan. He was one of the first Israelis to call for a Palestinian state shortly after the Six-Day War. For the remainder of his life, Kook adamantly claimed that his positions would have been shared by his ideological father, Jabotinsky.

Kook repeatedly referred to himself as a post-Zionist, and was one of the first in Israeli society to voluntarily (and positively) adopt the term.

Legacy

Hillel Kook was a man with exceptional talent. His main accomplishments are as follows:

* was one of the founders of ETZEL
* was one of the most important figures in rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. Despite enormous obstruction created by the Jewish leadership his group is credited with among the major contributors leading to rescue of over 200,000 people, mostly Jews in Hungary (other main contributors: George Mantello, Rabbi Kotler, Secretary of Treasury Morgenthau and his staff, Rabbi Weissmandl, Wetzler and Vrba - two Jews who escaped from Auschwitz in Spring 1944)
* as an ETZEL commander he appointed Menachem Begin to be the head of ETZEL (to be verified)
* his group raised considerable resources, including weapons and ammunition on the ship Altalena, for Israel's War of Independence
* he advocated calling citizens of Israel "Hebrews"
* he lobbied for Israel to be established as a constitutional state
* he was a member of independent Israel's first Knesset
* apparently he was also a successful businessman

He was jailed by Ben-Gurion after the Altalena affair.

Kook had been largely forgotten in the years leading up to his death, which was likely both the result of his decision to abandon his public activist persona, as well as his clashes with Begin and his loyalists, for whom it was convenient to downplay Kook's accomplishments and involvements in the Irgun and Herut Party's histories. Similarly, Kook's role in America has been given fairly minimal scholarly attention. Again, this must be seen as at least partially the result of Kook's iconoclastic personality, which made him few friends among the American Jewish establishment or its successors.

Since the late 1990s, some historians have attempted to restore Kook to a position of semi-prominence by re-examining and evaluating the significance and importance of his American activities during World War Two, and, in a secondary capacity, his role as a political opponent of Begin. One allegation Kook historians and supporters have made is that Kook's adversaries, both in Israel and America, have historically downplayed some of his accomplishments, as well as attempted to minimize their own role in curtailing his activities. David Wyman and Rafael Medoff, co-authors of a 2002 Kook biography, [ David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust (New York, NY, 2002)] suggested that, had it not been for the interference of the American Jewish establishment, Kook might have become as successful (and noteworthy) a rescuer as Oskar Schindler or Raoul Wallenberg. Some have also suggested that Kook's story remains politically troubling for authority figures in Israel and America, as it illustrates that their main priorities were not in promoting awareness of the Holocaust, in trying to stop it, or in helping the survivors flee Europe.

While Kook remains relatively unknown among the general Jewish and Israeli publics, his vocal and independent activism on behalf of the dying Jews of Europe has earned him a distinguished place in Jewish history during a period largely known for passivity, silence and even obstruction of rescue.

A play, The Accomplices, written by Bernard Weintraub and based on Kook's wartime efforts in the United States premiered at The New Group in 2007 and played thereafter in regional theatres. [ [http://www.americantheaterweb.com/Regions/date_shows_reg.asp?function=4&st=10] ] [ [http://www.gablestage.org/season07-08/season08.php#accomplices 2007 - 2008 Season at GableStage at the Biltmore. Live theatre. Coral Gables, Florida ] ]

Controversy

Not all historians agree that Hillel Kook and his rescue group had impact on rescue. Notably, Prof. Yehuda Bauer stated "Hillel Kook didn't save anyone." [conversation with Prof. Bauer at Yad Vashem circa 2004. Someone said this statement was repeated in his published works. Fact|date=October 2007] .

Yad Vashem's modern, new museum's chamber on rescue excludes Hillel Kook and the rescue group he led, but does present some other Jews as rescuers, including Dr. Rudolf Kastner, whom many in Israel consider to be at best highly controversial in the Holocaust context, and at worst to have been a traitor. Since Yad Vashem is the Israeli government's Holocaust center this is one of the many indications that the State of Israel declines recognizing Hillel Kook's rescue efforts. Apparently Hillel Kook is presented in an obscure corner of the Washington Holocaust museum situated in such a manner that about 2% of the visitors see it [Stated at a public lecture in early 2007 at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs by Dr. Michael Berenbaum, currently Executive Editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, who had a central role in the museum.]

Quotes

"We, the Hebrews, descendants of the ancient Hebrew nation, who remained alive on God's earth despite that great calamity that our people have experienced, have come together in the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation. The Jews today who live in the European hell together with the Jews in the Land of Israel constitute the Hebrew nation—there isn't another nation to which they owe their allegiance but the Hebrew nation. We must state it clearly: the Jews in the United States do not belong to the Hebrew nation. These Jews are Americans of Hebrew descent."- From "A Manifesto of the Hebrew Nation", 1944.

"Why did we respond the way we did? The question should be, why didn't the others? We responded as a human and as a Jew should."- On his Holocaust activism, 1973.

"I, who was the liaison officer of the Irgun central command with Jabotinsky, and who accompanied him almost daily for four years—remained loyal to his teachings. I also believe that the Land of Israel, on both banks of the Jordan River, is our historic homeland. But I am also certain that had Jabotinsky lived today, he would have argued that now, after we've achieved our independence, our mission is to attain peace in order to establish the Israeli people as the political heir of the Jewish people."- Interview in 1977.

"There is no exile. The exile ended on May 14, 1948."- Interview in 1982.

ources

* [http://wymaninstitute.org/articles/conf07videos.php Wyman Conference 2007 Videos]
* [http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=296 The Day the Rabbis Marched on Washington] , from the American Jewish Historical Society
* [http://www.wymaninstitute.org/special/rabbimarch/pg02.php The Day the Rabbis Marched On-line Exhibit] , from the "David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies".
* [http://www.etzel.org.il/english/ac16.htm Irgun in Exile]
* [http://www1.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007041 Bergson Bio] , from USHMM
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX88.html The "Bergson Boys"] , from "America and the Holocaust", PBS.
* [http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mk_eng.asp?mk_individual_id_t=595 Hillel Kook Knesset Bio]
* [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_jewish_history/v089/89.1wyman.html The Bergson Group, America, and the Holocaust: A Previously Unpublished Interview with Hillel Kook] , by David S. Wyman, from "American Jewish History" 89:1 (2001)
* [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/israel_studies/v010/10.3kaplan.html A Rebel with a Cause: Hillel Kook, Begin and Jabotinsky's Ideological Legacy] , by Eran Kaplan, from "Israel Studies" 10.3 (2005)
* [http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/tobin082701.asp Jewish World Review op-ed]

Notes

Books

* Agassi, Joseph, "Liberal Nationalism for Israel", Gefen Publishing House, Ltd., 1999.
* Baumel, Judith Tydor. Trans. Dena Ordan. "The "Bergson Boys" And the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy." Syracuse University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8156-3063-8
* Ben Hecht, "Perfidy"
* Medoff, Rafael. "Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States,." University of Alabama Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8173-1071-1
* Rapaport, Louis. "Shake Heaven & Earth: Peter Bergson and the Struggle to Rescue the Jews of Europe." Gefen Publishing House, Ltd., 1999. ISBN 965-229-182-X
* Wyman, David S., Medoff, Rafael. "A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust." New Press, 2004. ISBN 1-56584-856-X

Videos

* "ALTALENA" (VHS video produced in Israel)
* Laurence Jarvik, "Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die" (dist. on DVD by KINO International at:http://www.kino.com/video/news.php?news_id=51)
* [http://www.varianfry.org/not_idly_by1_en.htm "Not Idly By: The Peter Bergson Interview"] (2008 documentary short) from the Varian Fry Institute

Web Sites/Pages

* David Wyman Institute [http://www.wymaninstitute.org]
* eProceeding Web page [http://www.geocities.com/eproceeding/hillelkookmemoriallecture20030827]
* Jerusalem Working Group Web Site (in particular the downloadable JWG's White Paper): [http://www.geocities.com/jerusalem_working_group]
* Dr. Stephen Wise - Wikipedia article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Samuel_Wise]
* Varian Fry Institute [http://www.varianfry.org/not_idly_by1_en.htm]