Eliezer Silver - World War II Rescue Activities

World War II Rescue Activities

Rabbi Silver convened an emergency meeting in November 1939 in New York City, where the Vaad Hatzalah (Rescue Committee), was formed, with Rabbi Silver as president. Rabbi Silver spearheaded its efforts in rescuing as many European Torah scholars as possible from Nazi Europe.

Rabbi Silver launched a fund-raising drive that raised more than $5 million, and also capitalised on an exemption to US immigration quotas allowing entry to ministers or religious students. At his direction, synagogues in Cincinnati and across the country sent contracts to rabbis, thereby securing 2,000 emergency visas that were telegraphed to Eastern Europe.

With the increasingly desperate race against time, the Vaad, under Rabbi Silver turned to all channels, whether legal or not, to save as many lives as possible by bringing Jews to the US, Canada and Palestine.

During WWII, a Vaad representative in Switzerland even negotiated with the SS, offering to ransom concentration camp prisoners for cash and tractors - talks that freed hundreds from Bergen-Belsen and other death camps.

In October 1943, as the scale of Nazi atrocities was becoming clearer, Rabbi Silver helped organise and lead a mass rally of more than 400 rabbis in Washington, D.C. to press for more decisive action by the US government to save European Jews. The rabbis' march was organized by Hillel Kook's "Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe".