Editing World Jewish Congress (section)

===The Holocaust and its aftermath===
The WJC's initial priorities included safeguarding Jewish minority rights, combating anti-Semitism in Europe, and providing emergency relief to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. The WJC also concentrated on security for Jewish refugees and victims of the war. In 1939, the World Jewish Congress set up a relief committee for Jewish war refugees (RELICO) and cooperated with the [[International Committee of the Red Cross]] to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied countries.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205816.pdf|title=Relief Committee for the Warstricken Jewish Population (RELICO)}}</ref>

[[File:Nahum Goldmann, Stephen Wise, Henri Torres at World Jewish Congress conference in New York, June 1942.jpg|upright=1.5|thumb|left|Left to right: [[Nahum Goldmann]], [[Stephen Samuel Wise|Stephen Wise]], and French lawyer [[Henri Torres|Henry Torrès]] (speaking) at a World Jewish Congress conference in New York City, 7 June 1942<ref>{{cite web|url=http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/06/08/2857896/immediate-restoration-of-jewish-rights-in-europe-after-allied-victory-demanded|title=Immediate Restoration of Jewish Rights in Europe After Allied Victory Demanded|date=8 June 1942}}</ref>]] Under the auspices of the WJC, 18 committees were set up in the United States composed of exiled representatives of the different European Jewish communities under Nazi rule. The committees were modeled on the governments-in-exile, and their task was to provide moral and material support for Jews in the respective countries, and to prepare a program of Jewish postwar demands. All representative committees together formed the Advisory Council on European Jewish Affairs, which came into being at a conference in New York City in June 1942.<ref>''World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress'', New York, 1948, pp. 128–129</ref>

The WJC also lobbied Allied governments on behalf of Jewish refugees, and urged US Jewish organizations to work towards waiving immigration quotas for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. In 1940, General [[Charles de Gaulle]], the leader of the French government in exile, pledged to the WJC that all measures taken by the [[Vichy regime]] against the Jews would be repudiated upon France's liberation.<ref>Garai, p. 14</ref>

In late 1941 and early 1942, Western diplomats and journalists received scattered information about Nazi massacres of many thousands of Jews in German-occupied Poland and Russia. However, the news was difficult to confirm. In June 1942, [[Ignacy Schwarzbart]], one of two Jewish representatives on the Polish National Council of the Polish government-in-exile, held a press conference with WJC officials in London, where it was stated that an estimated one million Jews had already been murdered by the Germans.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jtnews.net/index.php?/viewpoints/item/9254/C26 |first=Rafael |last=Medoff |title=How America first learned of the Holocaust|date=2012-06-20|access-date=2012-06-21}}</ref>

====Riegner Telegram====
{{Main|Riegner Telegram}}

On 8 August 1942, the WJC's Geneva representative [[Gerhart Riegner]] sent a telegram to the US vice-consul in Geneva in which he informed the Allies for the first time about the Nazis' planned [[Final Solution]] to exterminate all Jews in the German-occupied territories.<ref name="pbs.org">[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/newsusdept.html U.S. State Department receives information from Switzerland regarding the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170208191539/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/newsusdept.html |date=2017-02-08 }}: The American Experience</ref> Riegner had received his information from the German industrialist [[Eduard Schulte]].

His telegram read as follows:

<blockquote>Received alarming report about plan being discussed and considered in ''Führer'' headquarters to exterminate at one fell swoop all Jews in German-controlled countries comprising three and a half to four million after deportation and concentration in the east thus solving Jewish question once and for all stop campaign planned for autumn methods being discussed including hydrocyanic acid stop<ref name="pbs.org"/></blockquote>

[[File:World Jewish Congress War Emergency Conference Atlantic City 1944.jpg|thumb|[[Louise Waterman Wise]], Jewish activist and wife of WJC President [[Stephen Samuel Wise|Stephen S. Wise]], addressing the World Jewish Congress War Emergency Conference in Atlantic City, November 1944]]
It was only several weeks later, on 28 August 1942, that WJC President [[Stephen S. Wise]] received Riegner's alarming message.<ref>Rafael Medoff, [http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/06/11/how-america-first-learned-of-the-holocaust "How America First Learnede of the Holocaust"] The Algemeiner (June 11, 2012). Retrieved June 26, 2012.</ref> The [[Riegner Telegram|telegram]] was met with disbelief despite preexisting evidence for mass executions. The US State Department considered it "a wild rumor, fueled by Jewish anxieties", while the British Foreign Office refused to forward the telegram for the time being and called for the allegations to be investigated first. It was only on 25 November 1942 that the WJC was allowed to release the news to the world.<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, p. 159</ref>

On 28 July 1942, 20,000 people participated in a WJC-organized "Stop Hitler Now" demonstration at New York's Madison Square Garden. Nine months later, on 1 March 1943, an estimated 22,000 people crowded into the same hall and a further 15,000 stood outside at a WJC rally addressed by Wise, [[Chaim Weizmann]], New York Mayor [[Fiorello LaGuardia]] and others.<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, p. 162</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX101.html |title=The American Experience.America and the Holocaust.People & Events &#124; Rabbi Stephen Wise (1874–1949) |publisher=PBS |date=1942-08-28 |access-date=2013-08-18}}</ref> However, the US government did not heed calls to rescue European Jews. Early in 1944, US Treasury Secretary [[Henry Morgenthau Jr.|Henry Morgenthau]] stated in front of President [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] that "certain officials in our State Department" had failed while it would have been commanded by duty to "prevent the extermination of the Jews in German-controlled Europe".

====Rescue efforts====
Throughout the war, the WJC lobbied the Allied governments to grant visas to Jewish refugees from Europe and to ensure the restoration of Jewish minority rights in areas liberated by the Allied forces.<ref>Garai, p. 16</ref> Despite the US State Department's opposition, the WJC obtained permission from the [[US Treasury Department]], headed by [[Henry Morgenthau Jr.|Henry Morgenthau]], to transmit funds to Europe for the rescue and assistance of persecuted Jews. According to a report by Riegner, these funds helped to bring 1,350 Jewish children from the occupied countries to Switzerland and 70 to Spain.<ref>Garai, p. 18</ref>

However, at the [[Bermuda Conference|Bermuda Refugee Conference]] in 1943, both the United States and Britain refused to relax their immigration policies, not even for British Mandatory Palestine. In reaction, the WJC published a comment which said: "The truth is that what stands in the way of aid to the Jews in Europe by the United Nations is not that such a program is dangerous, but simple lack of will to go to any trouble on their behalf."<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, p. 165</ref> Only in January 1944, President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] ordered the setting up of the [[War Refugee Board]], whose purpose was to "rescue victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death".<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, p. 166</ref>

The World Jewish Congress also tried – mostly in vain – to convince the [[International Committee of the Red Cross]] (ICRC) to assert its authority more forcefully vis-à-vis the Germans, and urged it to secure the status of civilian prisoners of war under the [[Third Geneva Convention]] on prisoners of war for those Jews that were confined to ghettos and Nazi concentration camps, which would have entitled the ICRC to provide care to them. However, the ICRC stuck to the view that it was "in no position to bring pressure to bear upon governments", and that the success of its work "depended on discreet and friendly successions".<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, pp. 168–169</ref>

The Holocaust era president of WJC, [[Stephen Samuel Wise|Stephen Wise]], used his great influence with Jewish communities nationwide to energetically obstruct the [[Bergson Group]]'s strategical level rescue activism.<ref>The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (Pantheon Books, 1984) {{ISBN|978-0-394-42813-0}}</ref><ref>The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1987)</ref> Later president of the WJC [[Nachum Goldman]] told the State Department (per department protocol) that [[Hillel Kook]] (aka [[Peter Bergson]]) is an adventurer and does not represent "organized Jewry". He pleaded to either deport or draft Hillel Kook in order to stop his activism, which organized Jewry strongly opposed. Eleanor Roosevelt, many from Hollywood and Broadway and many in Congress supported the Bergson Group, including Senator [[Harry Truman]] for a while.<ref>A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust, with David S. Wyman (The New Press, 2002)</ref>

====Letter to State Department====
[[File:A. Leon Kubowitzki.jpg|thumb|upright=0.6|left|[[Aryeh Leon Kubowitzki]]]]

On 9 August 1944, Leon Kubowitzki (later Aryeh Leon Kubovy), the head of the WJC's Rescue Department, relayed a message from Ernest Frischer of the Czechoslovak State Council to the US State Department urging the destruction of the gas chambers and the bombing of railways lines leading to the [[Auschwitz]] death camp. US Undersecretary of War John J. McCloy rejected the suggestion five days later, writing to Kubowitzki:

<blockquote>After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/bombworld.html|title=The World Jewish Congress in New York asks the War Department to bomb the crematoria at Auschwitz, August 9, 1944. The War Department turns down the request (August 14, 1944).|website=[[PBS]]|access-date=September 18, 2017|archive-date=March 23, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170323041231/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/reference/primary/bombworld.html|url-status=dead}}</ref></blockquote>

In November 1944, at the War Emergency Conference held in [[Atlantic City]], USA, the WJC elaborated a program for the post-war period, which included calls for reparations from Germany to Jews and the use of heirless Jewish property for Jewish rehabilitation. Also at that conference, [[Stephen S. Wise]] was elected president of the World Jewish Congress. Delegates decided to embark on a $10,000,000 fund-raising effort for relief and increased political activity throughout the world. The news agency JTA also reported the following:

<blockquote>The closing session of the conference also adopted a resolution recommending that the Congress establish a Department of Community Service which would be charged with aiding in the reconstruction of the spiritual and cultural life of Jews in liberated countries. Another resolution extended the gratitude of the gathering to the Vatican and to the Governments of Spain, Sweden and Switzerland for the protection they offered under difficult conditions to the persecuted Jews in German-dominated Europe. At the same time, it expressed regret at the fact that 'deplorably little has been done to have Axis civilians under the power of the United Nations exchanged for Jews in ghettos, internment, concentration and labor camps.'<ref>[https://archive.today/20130113022310/http://archive.jta.org/article/1944/12/03/2865512/world-jewish-congress-10000000-drive-no-challenge-to-other-groups-leaders-say World Jewish Congress $10,000,000 Drive No Challenge to Other Groups, Leaders Say], Publisher:JTA, Date: 1944-12-03</ref></blockquote>

''Related video: [http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675039006_Dr-Stephen-Wise_War-Emergency-Conference-of-World-Jewish-Congress_Dr-Nahum-Goldmann Stephen Wise addresses the World Jewish Congress War Emergency Conference in Atlantic City, November 1944]''

====Meeting with Heinrich Himmler====
In February 1945, the head of the Swedish office of the WJC, Hilel Storch, established contact through an intermediary with SS chief [[Heinrich Himmler]].<ref>World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion – A History of the World Jewish Congress, New York, 1948, pp. 190–191</ref> In April, [[Norbert Masur]] of the Swedish Section of the WJC secretly met with Himmler at Harzfeld, around 70 kilometers north of Berlin. Masur had been promised safe conduct by Himmler. Through negotiations with the Nazi leader and the subsequent talks with the head of the Swedish Red Cross, [[Folke Bernadotte]], the WJC was allowed to save 4,500 inmates from the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. Approximately half of these women, who had been deported to Germany from over forty countries, were Jewish.<ref>Frank Fox, [http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje38/text18p.htm 'A Jew Talks to Himmler'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120110174719/http://www.zwoje-scrolls.com/zwoje38/text18p.htm |date=2012-01-10 }}</ref><ref>See also: [http://archive.jta.org/article/1983/04/27/2996184/hilel-storch-dead-at-80 Hilel Storch]</ref>

====Post-war efforts====
At the end of the war, the WJC undertook efforts to rebuild Jewish communities in Europe, pushed for indemnification and reparation claims against Germany, provided assistance to displaced persons and survivors of the Holocaust, and advocated for the punishment of Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The World Jewish Congress notably took part in the formulation of the principles governing the [[Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal]] and furnished evidence against Nazi leaders to the US prosecutors.<ref>Garai, pp. 20–22</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nuremberg/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-06-12&documentid=C106-16-5&studycollectionid=&pagenumber=1y|title=Truman Library: Minutes, Meeting of World Jewish Congress with Robert H. Jackson in New York City, June 12, 1945. Records of the World Jewish Congress. (Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives)|website=www.trumanlibrary.org|access-date=2012-06-26|archive-date=2017-12-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171207013036/https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nuremberg/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-06-12&documentid=C106-16-5&studycollectionid=&pagenumber=1y|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nuremberg/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-06-01&documentid=C106-18-21&studycollectionid=&pagenumber=1|title=Truman Library: List, "Anti-Jewish Utterances of Nazi Leaders", Institute of Jewish Affairs, World Jewish Congress, June 1, 1945. Records of the World Jewish Congress. (Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives)|website=www.trumanlibrary.org|access-date=2012-06-26|archive-date=2017-12-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171207013740/https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nuremberg/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-06-01&documentid=C106-18-21&studycollectionid=&pagenumber=1|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nuremberg/index.php?action=docs&sortorder=category|title=The War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg|website=www.trumanlibrary.org|access-date=2012-06-26|archive-date=2017-12-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171206202021/https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nuremberg/index.php?action=docs&sortorder=category|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[File:1948 World Jewish Congress Montreux - 2.jpg|thumb|Stephen Wise addresses World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in Montreux, [[Switzerland]], August 1948]]
On 19 August 1945, a conference of representatives of European Jews was organized in Paris, France by the WJC, whose leadership (Wise, Goldmann, Kubowitzki) traveled there from the US. Delegates from Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland attended the gathering.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://archive.jta.org/article/1945/07/23/2867727/jews-of-western-europe-to-meet-in-paris-delegates-from-seven-countries-expected|title=Jews of Western Europe to Meet in Paris; Delegates from Seven Countries Expected|date=23 July 1945}}</ref>

On 21 September 1945, [[Pope Pius XII]] received WJC Secretary General Leon Kubowitzki in audience, who recounted to the pope the "great losses" suffered by the Jews during the war and expressed gratitude for what the church had done to help "our persecuted people". Kubowitzki suggested a papal encyclical on the Catholic Church's attitude toward the Jews and a condemnation of anti-Semitism. "We will consider it," Pius XII reportedly replied, adding: "certainly, most favorably, with all our love". The WJC also urged the Vatican to assist in the recovery of Jewish children saved by Catholics during the Holocaust.<ref>Michael R. Marrus, [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_1_133/ai_n26741974/pg_2 "The missing: the Holocaust, the Church & Jewish orphans"]</ref><ref>Garai, p. 22</ref>

The WJC also supported the foundation of the [[United Nations]] Organization in 1945. In 1947, the organization became one of the first NGOs to be granted [[consultative status]] with the [[United Nations Economic and Social Council]] (ECOSOC).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about|title=About Us|first=World Jewish|last=Congress|website=www.worldjewishcongress.org}}</ref>

In 1947, an estimated 30,000 people attended the opening of the Latin American Conference of the World Jewish Congress at [[Luna Park, Buenos Aires]], Argentina.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://archive.jta.org/article/1947/06/30/3010696/80000-at-opening-of-latinamerican-parley-of-world-jewish-congress-in-buenos-aires|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130113064634/http://archive.jta.org/article/1947/06/30/3010696/80000-at-opening-of-latinamerican-parley-of-world-jewish-congress-in-buenos-aires|url-status=dead|archive-date=2013-01-13|title=30,000 at Opening of Latin American Parley of World Jewish Congress in Buenos Aires, JTA, 30 June 1947}}</ref>