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".
Read more about this topic: Eliezer Silver
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world, war, rescue and/or activities:
“During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadership in industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds.
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er dusted;
The present eye praises the present object.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I have never believed that war settled anything satisfactorily, but I am not entirely sure that some times there are certain situations in the world such as we have in actuality when a country is worse off when it does not go to war for its principles than if it went to war.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“I positively like the sense, when I dine out, and stoop to rescue a falling handkerchief, that I am not going to rub my shoulder against a heart. What are hearts doing on sleeves?”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“...I have never known a “movement” in the theater that did not work direct and serious harm. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that the very people associated with various “uplifting” activities in the theater are people who are astoundingly lacking in idealism.”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)