April 11, 2007
Pelosi's father and the Holocaust
RAFAEL MEDOFF
When Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives,
stepped to the podium at a Knesset dinner during her visit earlier
this month, she made history in more ways than one.
Not only was she the first woman Speaker of the House to address
Israel's lawmakers, Pelosi was also addressing the parliament of a
country whose creation her own father championed, at the risk of his
career - and perhaps her career, as well.
Speaker Pelosi's father, the late US congressman Thomas D'Alesandro,
Jr., of Maryland, was known as a Roosevelt Democrat. What is not
widely known is that D'Alesandro broke ranks with president Franklin
D. Roosevelt on the issues of rescuing Jews from Hitler and creating
a Jewish State.
D'Alesandro was one of the congressional supporters of the Bergson
Group, a maverick Jewish political action committee that challenged
the Roosevelt administration's policies on the Jewish refugee issue
during the Holocaust, and later lobbied against British control of
Palestine.
The Bergson activists used unconventional tactics to draw attention
to the plight of Europe's Jews, including staging theatrical
pageants, organizing a march by 400 rabbis to the White House, and
placing more than 200 full-page advertisements in newspapers around
the country. Some of those ads featured lists of celebrities,
prominent intellectuals, and members of Congress who supported the
group - including D'Alesandro.
D'Alesandro's involvement with the Bergson Group was remarkable
because he was a Democrat who was choosing to support a group that
was publicly challenging a Democratic president. And D'Alesandro was
not one of the conservative Southern "Dixiecrat" Democrats who
sometimes tangled with FDR over various issues; he was a staunch
supporter of Roosevelt and the New Deal. He even named his first son
Franklin Roosevelt D'Alesandro.
UNTIL LATE in the Holocaust, the Roosevelt administration's position
was that nothing could be done to rescue Jews from the Nazis except
to win the war. The Bergson Group was convinced that there were many
steps the US could take to rescue refugees, without impeding the war
effort.
Bergson's strategy for changing US policy was anchored in the hope
that humanitarian-minded Democrats like D'Alesandro would break ranks
with the White House over the plight of the Jews. Rallying Congress
was a way to put pressure on the president.
The Bergson Group's Holocaust campaign culminated in the introduction
of a Congressional resolution, in late 1943, urging creation of a
government agency to rescue refugees. Senator Tom Connally of Texas,
a loyal FDR supporter and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, blocked the committee's consideration of the resolution.
But when Connally was out sick one day, his replacement, Senator
Elbert Thomas (D-Utah) quickly ushered the resolution through. In the
House of Representatives, too, there was growing support for the
rescue resolution.
This Congressional pressure helped influence President Roosevelt to
do what the resolution urged -- in early 1944, he established the War
Refugee Board. Despite its small staff and meager funding, the Board
played a key role in the rescue of more than 200,000 Jews from the
Holocaust. Its many accomplishments included sponsoring the heroic
life-saving activities of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in
Nazi-occupied Budapest.
AFTER THE war, D'Alesandro continued supporting the Bergson Group as
it campaigned for the establishment of a Jewish State in Mandatory
Palestine. That sometimes meant clashing with the Truman
administration, which wavered back and forth on the issue of Jewish
statehood.
Every member of Congress who supported the Bergson Group had his own
particular reasons for doing so. Senator Thomas, for example, was a
Mormon, and his kinship with the Jewish people had been forged by
both his community's experiences as a mistreated minority and his
religious convictions about the Jews and the Holy Land. Rep. Andrew
Somers (D-NY) was of Irish descent, and his resentment of British
rule in Ireland strengthened his support for Bergson's campaigns
against the British shutdown of Palestine to Jewish refugees. Another
important Bergson supporter, Rep. Will Rogers, Jr. (D-CA), son of the
famous entertainer, was part Native American, and he attributed his
interest in the plight of the Jews to his general concern for
minorities.
Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. was a Catholic and the son of Italian
immigrants. Perhaps those factors fueled his sympathy for religious
minorities and refugees. Or perhaps it was just the simple
humanitarian instinct of every sensitive person who hears of
innocents being persecuted and wants to help, regardless of political
considerations.
Whatever his motives, D'Alesandro was taking a big risk. He knew that
by defying Roosevelt and Truman, he might be making enemies in the
White House. In 1947, at the very moment he was breaking ranks with
Truman over Palestine, D'Alesandro decided to run for mayor of
Baltimore. If the White House had chosen to retaliate against him for
his dissent on Palestine, he might never have been elected.
And if that had happened, his daughter Nancy might never have
embarked on a political career of her own.
The 12 years that D'Alesandro served as mayor of Baltimore were the
crucial formative years of Nancy's political education. She "learned
her politics at the elbow of her father," a recent Washington Post
profile of the House speaker noted. Throughout high school and into
her college years, Nancy was at the center of her father's intense
political world. As a result, she was a political veteran long before
she even entered politics. And she was fortunate to have as her role
model a man who courageously put his humanitarian principles above
his narrow political needs.
The writer is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust
Studies.
http://www.WymanInstitute.org
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