Perspective The Congress of'42

...I could mingle in the halls and corridors, couldn't I? True, there were lulls in the proceedings...

...And yet assuredly the Extraordinary Zionist Conference of the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, which took place on May 9-11, 1942, in the Biltmore Hotel, was just that...

...The democracies have a clear duty before them...

...Nahum Goldmann, not known then or later to be simplistic or naive, stated publicly that he refused to accept the assessment that approximately eight hundred Jews are being killed daily in the Warsaw Ghetto, for that would mean the total of one-half million Jews being wiped out in the course of two years...

...Weizmann had called for a general debate...

...endowed by a later intelligence...

...No one actually called for Weiz-mann's dismissal...

...The ring came into Wise's possession in a roundabout way...

...Goldmann did admit that nobody knew for sure what was transpiring...

...The other spokesman, still going strong in our day, was Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein, who called for re-direction...

...It seems to have weathered the years better than the exterior of its neighbor, the Grand Central Railroad terminal...

...when that historian overwhelmed by the tragic evidence sets down the verdict of the future upon this savage phenomenon...

...It was the closing night when Wise arose and presented Herzl's personal ring to Weizmann...

...Would some sort of new alignment arise...

...It adopted the Biltmore Platform calling for the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine, thus fleshing out the ethereal Balfourian promise of a National Home...

...So much for the canard accusing the Zionist leadership of exclusive pre-occupation with Palestine as the sole haven...

...That person was rather unceremoniously escorted out, and Weizmann rose to the occasion: "I am sure every one shares my sorrow for this unpleasant intermezzo...

...At which Stephen Wise took umbrage and thundered: How could you...

...If you scan a list of Congress cities, you will find that New York actually does not figure...

...It was a heady experience for a young college man with Zionist pre-requisites: parents devoted to the cause of Torah and Israel, and a sound, traditional Hebraic education...

...So what if I wasn't invited by the Hadassah ladies to a reception in the Fountain Room at the conclusion of the Saturday night session, a reception for delegates and very important guests only...

...It was a wonder how they arrived under wartime conditions...

...It had all the trappings...

...Then also, and this is something to which historians of the times have not accorded sufficient attention, it was the only world-wide Zionist conference held under the black cloud of the Holocaust...

...No such image emerges...

...Then Weizmann the pragmatist reiterated calmly his philosophy: "I have been taught that the Messiah will come quietly, without drums...

...You see, it was a May Saturday night in wartime 1942...

...It did nothing, but did so pleasantly...

...I remember the earlier scene through a reddish glow...

...Jerusalem, most certainly...

...It is still an impressive hostelry with its somewhat faded rust-colored awnings, gilt-edged doors and a marble base for its stone facade...

...But not one of the twenty-nine Zionist Congresses ever convened in New York...

...Within its precincts, there seem to be more private clubs and business offices now than there were then...

...Furthermore, even his critics realized what a difficult task beset Weizmann in his meetings with Roosevelt and Churchill, in his attempts to have them change their narrow, pre-conceived notions centering around a victory which they believed would be fairly imminent and certainly inevitable...

...The 1937 Peel Commission plan carving up the Jewish National Home and the anti-immigration 1939 White Paper and the way some Zionist leaders handled them, brought cogent criticism...

...They for bad and we for good...

...Let havens be designated in the vast territories of the United Nations which will give sanctuary to those fleeing from imminent murder...

...The grand ballroom and meeting rooms retain their elegance, but the beige curtains and lights protruding from white half-shells on the balustrade appear to have changed...

...The audience rose, cheered and applauded...

...The faces were aflame as the lights were dimmed...

...Rabbi Wolf Gold, mentioned by Wise, cut a special figure at the Biltmore conclave...

...The Overseas Press Club is ensconced on the nineteenth floor...

...Maybe it was the Jew from Motol, of the Province of Minsk, who spoke so, the Jew who had to deal with world leaders of limited vision and their even more myopic advisors...

...Like all of us, I am a deeply wounded Jew...

...For all intents and purposes it was a Zionist Congress, and possibly of more moment and significance than some prior or subsequent ones...

...What were the feelings, the emotions, the passions that raged there...

...The Holocaust hovered in the air and speakers at the lectern addressed themselves to it, but the specifics of the Zionist programs also had to be attended to...

...His tale was that of a great Rabbi who once said that a Jew who left his faith and embraced another faith will be punished for every Minchah prayer he will miss in his life...

...The conference went fully on record for a sovereign Jewish Commonwealth rather than an amorphous Jewish National Home...

...But more than anything, its abiding interest for us today is two-fold...

...In that respect, this is indeed different from a Congress...

...Maybe it is a remembrance Israel Melammed is the pen name of Dr...

...However, these were inevitably relieved by a bon mot, an anecdote, a compelling thought or an unexpected, dramatic turn in the events...

...Here I was with a coveted ticket for an up-front gallery seat affording a full view of the leaders, the orators, the policy-makers at a very critical juncture in Jewish history...

...second, the reaction of the world to the crime...

...He is a specialist in Jewish history...

...Leon Gellman arose, and with the mien of a Jew about to perform a sacred Mitzvah, pronounced: Behold, I am ready and willing to fulfill the commandment of general debate, and then proceeded directly, and without oratorical circumlocution, to call the leadership to task...

...Two other Mizrachi leaders left an impression...

...The hour struck...

...However, most certainly not everyone regarded Weizmann as the personification of failed leadership...

...What a misnomer of colors for such contents...

...Black-bearded, with aristocratic bearing and demeanor, he was a master orator, especially in Yiddish, a Tal-mudic and Midrashic scholar with a retentive memory for events and people...

...It had multi-colored cards for categories of guests and visitors, a brew of ceremony and oratory of good Congress vintage, and the leaders of the World Zionist Organization in the heroic mold of yesteryear...

...Basle and Geneva, yes...

...The critics were also aware of Weizmann's contributions and commitment...

...It was the night when the single "Zionist Congress" to take place in the largest American city was called into session under very dire circumstances...

...In a lighter vein he reminded Weizmann of how at Versailles he, Weizmann, was worried as to what effect a certain non-Zionist Professor Sylvan Levy would have upon the Big Four...

...Rabbi Gold more than implied that the delegates could put to use some great Talmudic teaching, even if they weren't ready for any serious Talmudic learning...

...The official minutes do not record what happened next, but there reverberates in my ears to this day the one cry of anguish from the Revisionist ranks: No, no, no...

...As for Weizmann, the General Zionist forces rallied behind him, and Stephen Wise inserted a surprise dramatic scene into the program script...

...Sokoloff explained simply: "When I have a serious problem, I consult the old scholars...

...he will be puzzled by the apathy of the civilized world...

...In countenance, if not in ideology, he was the most Herzlian of all delegates...

...What was missing at the Bilt-more Conference was the knowledge and the imagination for plumbing the full depravity of the enemy...

...The Conference was not constituted to arrogate unto itself the powers of a Zionist Congress...

...Hatikvah was sung...

...Was this an assemblage fanatically dedicated to achieving its nationalist goals, concentrating on the Land of Israel alone, and turning away stone-heartedly and fatalistically from contemplating other avenues of escape for European Jewry...

...These offered a chance of escape to a land where there existed a local population ready to receive the escapees, even if the Mandatory government promulgated an anti-immigration White Paper...

...Ah, the faith in the power of a speech or an address in those days...

...No doubt Wise or someone else added under his breath, "and Stephen Wise...

...There, cars skim along the raised parapet of the station, but the hotel stoically has turned its side away from them, protective of its own quietude...

...Here was Meyer Weisgal on Saturday night announcing Sunday's program, and remarking with a rueful smile that Mizrachi's religious delegates will have no excuse for being late to that one...

...Israel D. Lerner, a Hebrew educator and essayist who writes and publishes in English as well...

...At this moment, expressions of sympathy, without accompanying attempts to launch acts of rescue, become a hollow mockery in the ears of the dying...

...There was a presidium and a secretariat, a credentials committee which recognized five hundred and eighty-six delegates, sixty-seven of them from overseas...

...Tamar De Sola Pool, a most gracious and charming person, religious in her own right but representing the broad ideological spectrum of Hadassah, called earnestly upon Weizmann to strive and strive again to rectify the wrongs perpetrated against Zionism by Great Britain, and to arrive at a broad consensus with non-Zionist Jews for the purposes of inner unity and strength...

...History was not kind to Dr...

...How would those in leadership positions perceive their roles...

...These offered, after all, a means of staving off the Holocaust from reaching the Jewish Community of Palestine, the Yishuv...

...A conference hearing Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Wolf Gold, Abba Hillel Silver, could not be a conference in vain...

...This was the tragic refugee ship with its human cargo of some seven hundred who were not permitted to seek out safety anywhere on the Mediterranean or Black Sea coasts...

...The rest of the resolutions said all the proper things concerning the war effort, Nazi tyranny, rescue work, the White Paper and the sinking of the "Struma...

...It happened in one year...

...Maybe it was the bombed and buffeted Englishman in him who spoke so...

...What comes through is the same Weizmann who some months later, on March 1, 1943, declared in anguished tones in Madison Square Garden: "When the historian of the future assembles the black record of our days, he will find two things unbelievable: first, the crime itself...

...There was David Wer-theim of the Labor Zionists, impatient with the talk, chafing for action, stating that the Conference reminds him of what has been said periodically of the House of Cornmons...

...Would more incisive thinking and vigorous action infuse the Zionist movement...

...Chaim Weizmann was there, and so were David Ben-Gurion, Stephen S. Wise, Abba Hillel Silver and others...

...Indeed, the Biltmore Platform which emerged denoted change...

...Yet finally some passion crept into his voice, rivalling the passion when he spoke earlier of Arab claims and our claims...

...Weizmann sought out Nahum Sokoloff and to his astonishment found the latter immersed in the intricacies of a passage in a Talmudic folio...

...It was midnight at the Biltmore in New York City in 1942...

...Let them negotiate with Germany through neutral countries...

...Chaim Weizmann, fatigued and spent, declared at the opening session: "I have no glad tidings to bring, neither have I sensational revelations to make...

...The fact that he is guilty of one sin does not free him to forego other commandments...

...The curtains were maroon, or so I recall them to be, and the lights were covered by lampshades of a fiery hue...

...All the pent-up feelings of a Jew steeped in Jewish tradition, thought and emotion came through at the conclusion when, speaking of us and our enemies, he recited the words used upon the completion of studying a tractate of the Talmud: "They run and we run...

...It was midnight in Jewish history...

...The sixth paragraph referred to President Woodrow Wilson's interpretation of the Balfour Declaration as affording the Jewish People the opportunity and right to found a Jewish Commonwealth in their ancestral home...

...Then demurring at the honor, he lightened the atmosphere by saying: "I am equally grateful to those who spoke warmly of me...

...And the Zionist programs offered the classic answer of nationalism to anti-Semitism...

...Was there a lack of sensitivity to the writhing masses of their brethren in their incipient death throes in the concentration camps...

...The question was one of interplay of forces...

...Goldmann...

...In a sense these were the president, prime minister and cabinet members of the as yet non-existent Israel, and they were appearing in the very glamorous surroundings of one of New York's leading hotels...

...Comparing the greatness of a David, who was ready to admit he sinned, to an intransigent Saul who did not, he called upon the leadership to admit past errors...

...Weizmann didn't know more, but possibly sensed more...