10 Things You Need to Know About…Stephen Wise

American reform rabbi and Zionist leader

1. Stephen Samuel Wise was born in Budapest in 1874 and brought to the United States at the age of 17 months. His maternal grandfather had created the Herend Porcelain Company. When Wise’s father tried to unionize the company, it is said that the grandfather gave the family one-way tickets to New York!

2. Young Stephen was the son and grandson of rabbis, and he wanted to be one as well. He graduated from Columbia at the age of 18 and was ordained the following year, 1893. He went on to serve as rabbi to a number of American congregations, pioneering interfaith cooperation, social service and civic leadership. He and his followers founded the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City in 1907.

3. He was a founder of the New York Federation of Zionist Societies and led in the formation of the national Federation of American Zionists in 1898. He served as secretary of the World Zionist Organization.

4. During the years 1916-19, he acted as intermediary to President Wilson on the Balfour Declaration and other matters and is said to have been instrumental in influencing Wilson to support the Balfour Declaration. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he spoke on behalf of Zionist aspirations.

5. He served as vice-president of the Zionist Organization of America, 1918-20, and as its president, 1936-38. He led in the organization of the American Jewish Congress, 1916-20, served as its vice-president, 1921-25, and as president or honorary president for another 24 years until his death.

6. During the 1920s and 30s, he was a friend of the Soviet Union, and for this he was known by the sobriquet “Red Rabbi.” In response to the rise of Nazism, he encouraged the formation of the World Jewish Congress and headed it until his death. In this role, he presented the Jewish cause to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the State Department and to the general public.

7. He was co-founder of the NAACP and the ACLU and was prominent in other liberal American causes throughout his life.

8. More about his fight against Nazism: In 1933 he urged a Jewish boycott of Germany. In November 1942, he held a press conference in Washington, DC, announcing that the Nazis had a plan to exterminate European Jewry and had already killed two million Jews. He made this statement based on a message from Switzerland that he had received in August 1942. Did the story make any front pages? No.

9. He had his share of disapprobation. He was a close friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt and was criticized for spending too much of his time trying to protect the president’s good name. And he was said to have halted relief packages to Jews in Europe, fearing accusations of providing aid to the enemy.

10. He died in New York City in 1949 at the age of 75.

In Haifa, you’ll find Stephen Wise Street in Ramat Sha’ul, west of Tchernikovsky.

10 Things You Need to Know About…Charles Lutz

Swiss diplomat who save Jewish lives

1. Charles “Carl” Lutz was born in Walzenhausen, Switzerland, in 1895. He studied in the United States and then elected to remain there for more than twenty years, working at the Swiss legation in Washington, DC and in various consular offices.

2. From the mid-thirties until early in the forties, he served in Palestine as Swiss consul. His photo files of those years are housed at Yad Vashem.

3. In January 1942, he arrived in Budapest as the Swiss vice-consul. Because of the war then raging, he also served the interests of the United States, Great Britain and twelve other countries that had cut off ties with Hungary.

4. When the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944, Lutz tried to stop deportations of Jews to the extermination camps.

5. Working alone and with Raoul Wallenberg (of the Swedish foreign ministry), the Red Cross and others, he issued passports and documents and organized rescue missions, providing safe houses for Jews. Here’s how it worked: Initially he issued four group certificates of aliyah for 1000 persons each – he could issue these because the British held the mandate in Palestine. Soon he “augmented” the certificates, so that each of the thousand persons could bring their families along with them. Almost 50,000 Jews were put out of harm’s way with Swiss letters of protection that safeguarded them until their departure for Palestine.

6. He allowed Zionist youth activists to work out of his office; in October 1944, they forged 100,000 more of these documents – but the plot was discovered, and Lutz was forced by the authorities to identify the false papers.

7. The Germans established a separate ghetto for the document holders. Lutz managed to procure additional buildings to house 3000 more Jews under his protection. Only a handful of them did not survive the war.

8. When, in November of 1944, Eichmann ordered a forced march of Budapest’s Jews to the Austrian border, Lutz –  among others – pulled as many Jews as he could out of the shuffling columns and returned them to Budapest. He is said to have jumped into the Danube to save a bleeding Jewish woman, bluffing his way with her past her firing squad and into his car.

Swiss stamp honoring Lutz

9. When the Soviets invaded, he and his wife Gertrud (“Trudi”) fled Budapest and returned to Switzerland. In 1964, he and his wife were named to the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem.

10. Lutz was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He died in Bern in 1975. He is estimated to have saved the lives of 62,000 people.

In Haifa, Rehov Charles Lutz runs from the railway station to the northernmost point of the Bat Galim neighborhood.

10 Things You Need to Know About…Hanna Senesh

National heroine

1. Hanna Senesh (Szenes) was born in Budapest in July 1921 to a wealthy, distinguished, assimilated family. Her father was a well-known writer.

2. She, too, wished to write and, starting at age thirteen, kept a diary. She had a modern Hungarian education, but became attracted to Zionism when, in high school, she came into contact with anti-Semites.

3. In 1939, she went to study agriculture in Palestine. At the end of the two-year course, she joined a kibbutz at Caesarea. Working there in the kitchen and the laundry, she was less than satisfied, as reflected in her diary. During this time, she wrote poetry and a play about kibbutz life.

4. In 1943, the Jewish agency approached her about a clandestine military operation to offer aid to European Jewry. Her Hungarian background made her perfect for the project.

5. She joined the Palmach, studying first to be a wireless operator and then a paratrooper.

6. In March 1944, she was dropped into Yugoslavia – one of more than thirty Jews parachuted in by the British Army to establish contact with Hungarian partisans and to aid the beleaguered Jewish populations. She crossed into Hungary in June, her entry delayed by the German invasion. Within hours, she was picked up by the Hungarian police, imprisoned in Budapest and tortured. Most of her fellow parachutists also were captured within days; only one managed to survive the war.

7. Her mother was arrested and brought to the same prison in an attempt to break her. To no avail: she would not give up the wireless codes that her enemy wanted. In November 1944 she was tried for treason and sentenced to death. Age twenty-three, she faced her firing squad.

8. Her mother survived the war, and it was through her mother that her diaries were brought to public attention. In 1950, her remains were transferred to Israel and buried in the parachutists’ section on Mount Herzl. That same year, Kibbutz Yad Hannah was established, named in her memory.

9. In 1993, a Hungarian military court officially exonerated her.

10. Here are four samples of her writing; some you may have seen set to music (please forgive the spacing in the poetry):

There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world even though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind.

 

In my life’s chain of events nothing was accidental. Everything happened according to an inner need.

 

My God, my God, I pray that these things never end

The sand and the sea,

The rustle of the waters,

Lightning of the Heavens,

The prayers of Man.

 

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its breath for honor’s sake

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

 

In Haifa, you’ll find Hanna Senesh Street south of the Municipal Theatre, running parallel to Sederot Wingate.