Trudy Gold
Ben Hecht and The Bergson Group

Trudy Gold - Ben Hecht and The Bergson Group

- Well, good evening, everyone, and tonight, the subject is Ben Hecht and the Bergson Group. Now, over the past couple of sessions, I’ve been looking at the role of America, and how news of the Shoah gradually hits America. What I’m going to be doing in the next couple of presentations, I’m going to be talking about its impact on Ben Hecht and the Bergson Group who were in fact the Irgun in America. And then, my next presentation is going to be looking at Stephen Wise, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and Nahum Goldmann who were very much seen as the Jewish establishment and how they responded. And I want to say there’s a proviso on all of this because this was one of the most challenging times in Jewish history as gradually the news of the horrors of Europe were unfolding, and so many people did try in their own way to make things happen to try and save the Jews, and in the end, nothing really worked. Yes, there were some extraordinary individuals, but in the end, 1/3 of all Jews perished, and I think that has made such a deep mark on the Jewish world that it hasn’t gone away. And today, when we are again faced with Israel in trouble, the horror of October the seventh, how do Jews in the diaspora respond to what’s going on in Israel? And the other point that I think you need to think about is Jewish identity. To what extent were the Jews of America tied in with what was going on in Europe? How much did they feel part of it? How much did they want to be American? How frightened were they to put their heads above the parapet?

And with Ben Hecht, you’re looking at one of the most extraordinary individuals of the 20th century. I’m going to be doing two presentations on him. Tonight, we’ll be looking at the Bergson and his relationship and his work with the anti-fascist community. But then I am going to do a session on him as a screenwriter and as a journalist, and we will be looking at some of his post-war plays and films because he continues his support with the Irgun and writes an extraordinary play called “A Flag Is Born,” which starred the young Marlon Brando, and he himself became very disillusioned with the left in Palestine and wrote a book called “Perfidy.” And I’ll be covering all of that in my second presentation on Ben Hecht. But can I first recommend to you a brilliant book by Adina Hoffman. It’s called “Ben Hecht.” He called himself a child of the century, so may I first recommend that book. And I’m going to begin. Can we see his picture, please? Can we please, Lauren? Let’s have a good look at the man, thank you. I’m going to read you a few quotes on who he was. He was a genius according to Jean-Luc Godard. This is what he said in 1968. He said, “Hecht invented 80% of what is used in Hollywood movies today.” Menachem Begin, at his huge funeral in 1964 in Manhattan, he gave one of the eulogies, he said, “He wrote stories and he made history.” Back in 1918, the anti-Semitic Ezra Pound was one of the reasons why he wouldn’t return to America. “There’s only one intelligent man in the whole of the America to talk to, and that is Ben Hecht.” As I said, he called himself the child of the century.

He was most famous for his scripts. It’s estimated he had a hand in more than 140 films. Pauline Kael, a critic, pronounces him the greatest American screenwriter. I was having a debate with my daughter about that. And she’s going to come in and do a session on Mankiewicz because who was the greatest, Hecht or Mankiewicz? But they both were genius. He won the first-ever Academy Award in the Academy Award series of 1929, the first ever, and that was for “Scarface.” He won other Academy Awards. The front page, so many of his films are absolutely legendary. He had a hand in “Gone with the Wind.” The story goes that Selznick just couldn’t make it work, so he wasn’t happy with the script, he wasn’t happy with anything, so he and Hecht took themselves off to the Bahamas, and according to Hecht, they lived on bananas and milk for nearly 10 days. They worked more or less 24 hours a day. I believe Hecht played Scarlett and Ashley, and David Selznick played Melanie and Rhett until they collapsed. So one of the most famous films in the world, although he hasn’t got a notice on it, he was really responsible for the final screenplay. Richard Corliss, who is the great critic, he calls him, “The Hollywood screenwriter who personified Hollywood itself. He is the Shakespeare of Hollywood.” Now, that’s all very well, and I’m going to talk about his screen career in another session, but in 1939, can we see the next slide, please? I want you to see just a collage. Let’s have a collage of some of his films, and I hope this will take you back to the wonderful memories. These are my favourite films. That particular era, “Gone with the Wind,” “Wuthering Heights,” that’s Sam Goldwyn, then “His Girl Friday.” I’m just showing you a little smattering. You’ll see much more in the next session I do on him. Can we go on, please? “Stagecoach,” “Gunga Din,” “It’s a Wonderful World,” more, please.

“Shop Around the Corner,” one of the greatest films of all time, in my view. “Angels Over Broadway.” Now, that’s just to establish. I’m sure most of you know exactly who he is, but that’s to establish his credentials. But now, I want you to have a look at the next slide, please. That is, of course, the invasion of Poland. September, 1939, the Nazis roll into Poland, and this is what Hecht had to say, next slide, “I became a Jew, and I looked at the world with Jewish eyes.” Now, we’ve already looked at how America was divided between isolationism, even certain amount of support for Nazi Germany. And here, of course, you see the America First Committee. You will recall when we looked at Lindbergh, it had 850,000 members, and here, you see Lindbergh making a speech. And, of course, they’re not discredited until Pearl Harbour, and I’m talking now about 1939. As a result of that, a group of individuals came together to show that there was another America, and Hecht was right at the centre of it. And let’s have a look at them, next slide. This is the Fight for Freedom Committee, okay? Now, they decide to have a huge pageant, and the Fight for Freedom Committee urged American entry in the war well before Pearl Harbour. It’s very much in response to Lindbergh. And he and Charles MacArthur, they’d already worked together in Chicago as journalists, and I’ll talk about that next time. They joined forces to write a rousing patriotic review. Now, let’s have a look at Charles MacArthur ‘cause he’s a fascinating character. Not a Jew. He was born into an evangelical family. He didn’t want to follow his father’s profession, being an evangelist, so he actually became a journalist where he meets up with Ben Hecht in Chicago. Both brilliant, they begin collaborating on plays. He’s also close to the Algonquin Round Table, of course, those intellectuals in New York, and he had an affair with Dorothy Parker. He married Helen Hayes.

Let’s have a look at her. Let’s see the next, that’s Helen Hayes. She is interesting. She became known as the first woman of American theatre, and she was the second person and the first woman to win an Emmy, a Grammy, and an Oscar, and a Tony Award. She was one of the great stars of the American theatre, and she’s going to be involved in the pageant that MacArthur is going to write with Ben Hecht. He marries, so go back to Charles, he marries Helen Hayes. He’s nominated, he writes “Wuthering Heights” with Ben Hecht. He was very much a hard drinker, a hard player. He was puzzled by Hecht’s Jewishness. He later said to Peter Bergson, “Ben will never be with any cause more than six weeks. I am waiting for the six weeks to pass, and you son of a bitch, it’s five years. How did you do it?” And Ben Hecht said of Charles MacArthur, “Charlie was more than a man of talent. He was himself a great piece of writing. His strange wildness and kindness, his love for his bride, Helen, his wit, his adventures will live forever.” So the poetry of it all, that these two brilliant writers come together to put together a pageant. So can we go on with the slides, please? Now, they need money, so who does Hecht go to? He calls on his friend Lubitsch, of course, Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch, the brilliant German theatre director who came to America, became one of the top cinema directors in Hollywood, German Jew. And he said, “Why haven’t you called on David Selznick?”

Now, David O Selznick, you could spend sessions on all these characters, and I think I might do one on Selznick because he was extraordinary. His father, Lewis Selznick, was in the movie business. He was meant to be the most unpleasant man in Hollywood, and evidently, Sam Goldwyn offered him $5,000 a week for life if he’d go and live in China. David Selznick was bought up as a sort of crown prince. His father then lost all his money, but he later goes, Selznick goes to work for Louis B Mayer. He marries Louis B Mayer’s daughter Irene, and it was said of him, the son-in-law also rises, and he is responsible for some of the great films of Hollywood, including, of course, “Gone with the Wind,” “Notorious,” “Spellbound.” I can go on and on and on. So he called on David Selznick that Hecht and MacArthur need money for this pageant. So he said, “I was fonder of David than his other bosses. I feared finding in him the Jew cringing behind his Hollywood greatness. I called, there was no cringing in my friend but arguments. They were not the arguments of a Jew but of a non-Jew. 'I don’t want anything to do with your cause for the single reason that it’s a Jewish political cause, and I’m not interested in Jewish political problems. I am an American. I am an American and not a Jew. I’m interested in this war as an American. It would be silly of me to pretend suddenly that I am a Jew with some sort of full-blown Jewish psychology.’ If, David, I can prove you are a Jew, will you co-sponsor? I will call up three people you would name and ask them the following, would you call David O Selznick an American or a Jew? If any of the three answer an American, you win.”

He picked three names, Martin Quigley, who published the motion picture exhibitions, Nunnally Johnson, and Leland Hayward. The latter, the latter said, “For God’s sake, what’s the matter with David? He is a Jew, and he knows it.” They all said he’s a Jew. He honourably admitted defeat. According to Hecht, in everybody’s eyes but his, he was a Jew, he sponsored. And I think this also gives you a notion of the problem of identity. We’ve talked about the rise of anti-Semitism in America. Think about Hollywood. On one level, these guys were kings. On another level, they’re terribly insecure in their Jewishness, and now there is a war in Europe. How is it all going to pan out? Okay, now, the pageant is going ahead. Can we, this is the “Fun to Be Free.” It’s going ahead, and it is going to be, the music is going to be written by two incredible characters. Can we see the next slide, please? Mr. Irving Berlin, Mr. American Music, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” Somebody sent me a cartoon the other day, and it was very funny. It showed all the great American songs about Christmas, and the note was, “If you don’t like the Jews, you’re going to have a very quiet Christmas.” And, of course, these characters, he was born in Eastern Europe. He later gets the Congressional Medal of Honour. He’s a great American patriot, but he’s also a Jew, and the other person involved in writing who was a very close friend of Hecht, let’s have a look at the next person.

A real hero, Kurt Weill. Now, Kurt Weill, fascinating individual. He was born in Dessau. That was the home place of Moses Mendelssohn, the first Jew to cross out of the ghetto to the world of German culture. His father was a cantor. Music was in his blood. He had piano lessons from 12. He wrote his first composition at 13. It was actually a Jewish wedding song. His first public performance when he was 15. He composed various lieder, song cycles. He actually made the music to a German translation of Yehuda Halevi. He studied music in Berlin and wrote his first string quartet. After World War I, the family was in financial trouble, so he returned to Dessau where he became an accompanist at the Friedrich-Theater. He then returned to Berlin, and to finance his way through musics, he worked in a Bierkeller to support his family. In 1922, he joined a group of intellectuals called the Novembergruppe. They were leftist Berlin artists, included Hanns Eisler. He worked with him and Georg Kaiser on several one-set operas. He then married Lotte Lenya, and now, Lotte Lenya will be famous to you as the hero, as the villain, rather, in James Bond’s second outing, “From Russia With Love.” She is older Krebbs. Olga Krebbs, the woman with the toe cap with a sort of sword that comes out of her foot. But he married Lotte Lenya. They were divorced, they remarried. And in 1928, his most famous piece of music, “The Threepenny Opera,” with Brecht. “Mack the Knife,” the great “Mack the Knife,” the great standard, other operas. He parted company with Brecht because, quote, “I am unable to set the ‘Communist Manifesto’ to music.” He flees to Paris in ‘33.

The Nazis arrive. Can you imagine what it did to all that Berlin talent? Well, we’re seeing what it did. A lot of them, thank goodness, finished up in America. Again, he worked with Brecht. He comes to London. He is working, working, working. He wrote a biblical drama, “The Eternal Road,” with Franz Werfel. It was actually commissioned by Manhattan’s Jewish community and performed in 1937 at the Manhattan Opera House. It ran for 153 performances. He worked with Ira Gershwin. He wrote film scores for Fritz Lang, and his epitaph, “Kurt managed to make thousands of beautiful things during the short life he had travelled and the time he had.” Now, the point is, he is now working on the music for the pageant, and you’re going to see this group are going to come together as a team. Can we go on, please? Yeah, these are some of the artists who are going to star in it. Billy Rose, by the way, produced it. Billy Rose was a fascinating Jewish producer, great Zionist who later on, I don’t have a picture of him, I’m afraid. Later on, he’s a huge supporter of Israel, and he founded the sculpture garden at the Israel Museum, and they said to him, “Israel doesn’t need a sculpture garden.” He said, “Well, if there’s a problem, they can always turn the sculptures into bullets, can’t they?”

And he, of course, was married to Fanny Brice. So, Jack Benny, a brilliant Jewish comedian famous for “To Be or Not to Be,” which Ben Hecht also had a hand in, and I’m going to be talking about that when I’m going to be talking about war films, image of the Jew in films when I look at a specific section on that. “To Be or Not to Be,” very interesting and very strange film. Can we go on and have a look at some of the stars? The great Ethel Merman performs in it. You need to know that a lot of these characters were on the side of the good guys. Ethel Merman, the great songstress. Of course, if you think of some of her great songs, wonderful. I think Patrick’s lectured on her, absolutely superb. Go on, please. Betty Grable had starred in some of Hecht’s films. She put her support behind it. They all wanted freedom, go on. Helen Hayes, again, MacArthur’s wife. And somebody who was a huge support to them, this, of course, is Fiorello La Guardia. Now, he was the mayor of New York. He was a very, very interesting character. He was half Italian, half Sephardic Jewish, and he fought fascism. He fought, he was very in favour of civil rights. He was a very strong pugnacious character. He was a interesting, interesting character. Oh, he supported the boycott of German goods when he worked with Stephen Wise, and I’m going to talk about that next week. He constantly denounces Nazism. He called Hitler “a brown-shirted fanatic,” and he did try and help in the rescue of Jews.

His sister and her husband actually were living in Hungary, and they themselves were arrested on June the seventh, 1944. Eichmann, he was in Hungary. Now think how late that was. June the seventh, 1944. There’d been a minute silence, remember, for the murdered Jews of Europe in December, 1942. Now, Eichmann knew who she was. She was held as a political prisoner. She and her husband were deported to Mauthausen where he died. She was transported to Ravensbruck. Her daughter was there with her infant son. The mother didn’t know about it, but in the end, they survived, but the daughter’s husband didn’t. And finally, after a couple of years, she made it to Europe, sorry, to America. So basically, there was another character there. Let’s have a look at the next slide. Leo Durocher, now he was in charge of the Dodgers. He screamed, “We don’t want Hitlerism. We want Americanism.” Okay, so this is the first pageant, and it was, of course, an incredible amount of publicity, go on, because America’s not yet in the war. Now, meanwhile, Ben Hecht is doing something else. He has also decided he’s going to write and tell as many stories as possible about what’s going on in Europe, and he did so in a magazine, and it’s called “1,001 Afternoons in Chicago.” He wrote one article, “My Tribe Is Called Israel.” He pledged, this is April, 1941, he pledges allegiance to a flagless people. Remember, America’s not yet in the war, and this is another one of August '41. He describes in detail a photo taken by the Gestapo just for fun and smuggled out of Poland. It’s a picture of a German officer shaving a Jew they had lassoed in Warsaw.

And I’m using his words, “The officer is pulling the whiskers from his cornered Jew as you might pluck feathers from a dead chicken. The Jew meanwhile stands, looking directly into the averted eyes of his tormentor, as if this young Jew was standing on a rostrum in Jerusalem many years ago, his eyes could not hold a prouder look.” The article got many, many responses. And can we have a look at one other character who got in touch with him? Now, sorry, I want to talk now about Joseph Kennedy. There was a scathing article about Joseph Kennedy, and how he went to Hollywood, and he told the moguls to shut up. He basically said to them, “You don’t want Jewish concerns. They’re all going to call you Jews, keep quiet.” And Hecht talks about those cringing moguls, and he was absolutely, absolutely furious. But another one of his articles, can we go on? Groucho Marx, Groucho responds, “Your piece was wonderful. It’s what we need. A little more belligerency, Professor, and not quite so much cringing.” But the most fateful response as far as Hecht and the Jewish ward was concerned was that of a man, can we see the next slide, please, called Peter Bergson. Peter Bergson. I’m going to give you a bit of a biography of his, and he is going to write a fan letter to Hecht. He wants Hecht on his side because he’s from Palestine, and he is in America heading up the Bergson Group, better known as the Irgun in America, and he is trying to raise money for an army of Palestinian Jews to fight against the Nazis. So who is Peter Bergson?

He is the son of Rabbi Dov Kook. He’s born in Lithuania. Rabbi Dov Kook is the younger brother of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi in Mandate Palestine, and that is why he changed his name. He didn’t want to embarrass his family. The family fled the horror of Eastern Europe, and his father became the chief rabbi of Afula. He had a very strong religious education, and he went to a religious but Zionist yeshiva in Jerusalem. You see, his family, whereas many of the religious were not Zionist, his family were. His uncle had founded Merkaz HaRav in 1924. He wanted to integrate traditional study, both with Jewish philosophy and Jewish history. If only we did it today, our children would be far better prepared to cope with the world they’re in now if they knew more. I know I keep on saying it to you, but I so passionately believe it. They need the knowledge. He also went to Jewish study classes at Hebrew U, where he joined a group called Comradeship, and that group included two young men who are going to play a huge part in Jewish history, David Raziel and Abraham Stern. David Raziel was a Haganah commander who broke away to join the Irgun and was one of the founders of the Irgun. Abraham Stern later breaks away from the Irgun and forms, of course, Lehi or the Stern Group. And out of Irgun, of course, will come Begin, and out of Stern will come Shamir. When Bergson was 16, he joined the Haganah, following the Arab riots of 1929, and in 1931, Bergson is with David Raziel founding the Irgun.

And the reason the Irgun was created was they didn’t think that, they were this group of people who didn’t think that the Haganah, the official defence force in Palestine of the Jewish Agency, was taking enough of an aggressive stand, and they were followers of Jabotinsky. And so following the Arab riots of 1929, in 1931, he helped found the Irgun, and in 1936, he’s a commander of the Irgun and a member of the Irgun general staff. He becomes an international spokesman for the Revisionists. Can we go on, please? And he is going to walk into a bar in the 21 Club in New York, and he is going to meet up with Ben Hecht. Now, can we go back to his face, please, and then come on again? Okay, so he’s an international spokesman for the Revisionists. Now, the Revisionists are Jabotinsky’s vision of Zionism. Jabotinsky had fought with the British in Palestine, and he believed that after the British cut up the Mandate and created Transjordan, he believed that in the end, there would have to be an ingathering of all the exiles, and Jabotinsky wanted a Jewish state both sides of the Jordan. This is called Revisionism. And also after 1935, the Zionist Executive were playing soft, according to the Irgun, and they refused to state that the central aim of Zionism was the establishment of a Jewish state. They used the term homeland.

So he travels to Poland where he was involved in fundraising, establishing Irgun groups in Eastern Europe, and it’s there that he meets the great Ze'ev Jabotinsky and becomes close to him. At Jabotinsky’s request, he travelled with him to America. When Jabotinsky died, he became the head of the organisation in America. Now, he was so impressed by Ben Hecht’s articles, he tried to arrange a meeting and agreed finally. Hecht finally gives in, and he agrees to a meeting. Now, he said, Hecht later wrote, “I was buying drinks for a pair of strangers at the 21 Club when I bumped into history.” Now, can we see the next slide, please? With Hecht was a man called Jeremiah Halpern. These are the Irgun in America. He was born in Smolensk. He was the son of a wealthy rabbinic family, and his father was one of the first proponents of a Jewish Legion, which, of course, Jabotinsky was in to fight with the British in the First World War. The father helped found a Jewish defence force in 1906, in the Second Aliyah. In 1913, Jeremiah moves to Italy and to a naval academy. He then goes to the London School for Captains and Engineers. Back into Palestine, he is part of the defence of Jerusalem in the Arab riots, Betar. Now, I should explain. I know most of you know this. Jabotinsky, by 1922, Jabotinsky was disillusioned with the British. After the riots, the Arab riots of 1920, Jabotinsky created the Haganah in Jerusalem, and he was imprisoned by the British. He was sentenced to 15 years. It was commuted, and he was released when the first high commissioner arrived, but he realised the British would never do what the Jews wanted, and he becomes more and more alienated from the Jewish Agency, from Weizmann, and later on, from Ben-Gurion. They have a completely different way of looking at the world.

So at the express wish of some of his own followers, he established Betar for, of course, the last stronghold, but also as an acronym to Joseph Trumpeldor, who had worked with him on the Zion Mule Corps and died at the siege of Tel Hai in 1920. I’m sure many of you have visited Tel Hai. So Halpern is in America with the Bergson Group, and he had become aide-de-camp to Jabotinsky, and, of course, Jabotinsky dies in 1940. He stays in America, and he is with Bergson when they bump into Ben Hecht. Now, he goes back to Israel in 1948. He moves to Eilat, where he studies oceanography, and he founded the Eilat Naval Museum. So many of these characters are so extraordinary. Another part of the group, can we go on, please? There, of course, is the saintly Abraham Isaac Kook, the great Rav Kook. A whole lecture on him at another time. Not by me, but by a specialist. Can we go on, please? There you see the great Ze'ev Jabotinsky. I’ve already lectured on Jabotinsky many times. And if you’re interested in Israeli politics, a man who worked for him in America was, of course, Benzion Netanyahu, who was the father, of course, of the current prime minister of Israel. And his eldest son, when his eldest son was brit, we’re going to see a character called John Patterson, who he is named, Yoni, the great hero of Entebbe is named for him. Now, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the great hero of Zionist Revisionism, who died in 1940. That is the whole stream of Zionism that goes to Herut, to Begin, Shamir all the way through to today to Netanyahu. How Jabotinsky would be dealing with the current situation is another story, and I think it would be fabulous, fascinating.

I love to play the ifs and buts in history. If Jabotinsky was alive today, what would he say? Anyway, his son was also in America with the Bergson Group. Let’s have a look at Eri, Jabotinsky’s son. He was born in Odessa. His family actually made aliya to Palestine in 1919. Ze'ev was always on the move. He’d left them behind while he created the Zion Mule Corps in Alexandria with Trumpeldor. Then, he was in England, in London, creating the 37th and 38th Royal Fusiliers to fight with the British. He felt the British had betrayed him because he fought with them. He was the first Jew to cross the Jordan under Allenby when the British invaded Turkish, the Turkish manned. If you think about it, Turkey controlled all that area of land, and he was with the British when they invaded. So following the arrest of his father, after the 1920 riots, he moves to France. He studied electrical engineering. He returned to Palestine and helped coordinate illegal entry into Palestine, part of Betar. This is after Hitler comes to power, getting Jews out, running the gauntlet of the British who are cutting back on immigration. He was arrested by the British. They released him, and he went to America in 1940, the year his father died, so he stays with the Bergson Boys, and they found the Emergency Committee to Save the Jews. He returns to Palestine. He’s expelled by the British in 1944 and can’t return to Israel till '48 when he becomes a member of the Knesset under Herut. But along with Bergson, he and Bergson have a disagreement with Begin and they leave the party. When he left the party, he did his doctorate in mathematics and became a lecturer at Technion.

He died in 1969. So when they first went to Palestine, they had a different aim. Their committee, can we see it, please? They wanted a Committee for an Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews. This is before they realised the depth of the tragedy in Europe, and they switched their attention to fighting to save as many Jews as possible to make the Americans realise what’s going on. Now, the committee, they wanted a Jewish army under Allied command, and this is their manifesto, and I’ve paraphrased it, “100,000 could immediately be mobilised plus another 100,000 stateless Jews driven from their home. We could give the British 200,000 men to fight.” This is 1941 to '42. “The only population in the Near East that the Allies could rely on. The Arabs are easily moulded by the Axis fifth columnists, and Palestine, never forget, is the gateway to the Persian Gulf and oil.” How can we ever forget? All we have to do is look at the news at the moment. And they point to what Churchill had said, “The crisis of manpower and weapon power will dominate 1941.” Then, they say, “The Jews of Palestine are united in their love of their country and their hate for Hitlerism and their faith in democracy. They provide the unbreakable morale that is the absolute condition of victory.” This is what we can give the army. “The Jews of Palestine,” and I’m quoting from their manifesto, “The Jews of Palestine are determined to defend their land against Hitlerite aggression. They will fight with their bare hands if need be, and they will fight with a fanaticism and fervour unequalled in this struggle. If the Jews of the Middle East are slaughtered, it’ll be the greatest blow to Allied morale in this war because the aims of the Atlantic Charter will thus be suspect wherever free men still grieve.” Think about it.

They finish this way, “The issue is plain. 100,000 courageous Jews to fight and face Rommel’s 100,000 Nazis. It is therefore imperative to impose this on the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who is now in Washington.” And they had some very interesting people already on their committee. Let’s have a look at another one of them, next slide. This is Colonel John Henry Patterson. He is a great adventurer. I did a whole session on him a long time ago on Lockdown. He was an Anglo-Irish military officer. He was an adventurer. He’d written a book, “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.” He constructed a railway bridge in East Africa. He was a big game hunter. He was a bit of a womaniser. He joined the army. He becomes a lieutenant colonel. He fought in the Second Boer War. He commanded the Ulster Volunteers before the First World War. So he is a real daredevil adventurer, restless personality, reckless personality. He became acquainted with Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor when he was in charge of the Zion Mule Corps in 1915, and later the 38th Royal Fusiliers, the Jewish Legion close to Jabotinsky, and he began to understand the deep anti-Semitism of British officers. Now, some of you will know that one of the problems in Palestine was that after the British were ensconced there, many of the officers who came to Palestine were in fact straight from fighting with the White Russians against the communists, and they brought “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” with them in their knapsacks. He made as much fuss as possible.

He was a very good writer. He wrote “With the Zionists in Gallipoli,” that was his book in 1916, and “With the Judaeans in the Palestine Campaign” in 1922. He always stayed close to Jabotinsky. He was a member of the group, Bergson Group. He was in America fundraising, and he becomes a member of the second committee they’re going to form with Hecht, the Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. In fact, during World War II, the British, they cut his pension saying that they couldn’t transmit it to him in America. He still continued his full support in fundraising. He was a totally committed Zionist, and as I said, he was close to Benzion Netanyahu, and Yoni, the great hero of Entebbe, was named for him at his brit. According to his grandson, he wanted his and his wife’s remains to be interred in Israel, and in 2014, with Netanyahu’s support, this happened. Netanyahu called him the godfather of the Israeli army. So these are the characters who are now going to join up with Hecht. He meets these characters in the 21 Club. They tell Hecht what it’s all about, and he has found his cause. And another man who joins is a fascinating character called Arthur Szyk. Can we see him, please? One of the great Polish-born Jewish artists. He was primarily a book illustrator. He was a political artist. And from '21, he leaves Poland after the horror of the collapse of the Czarist Empire, and he works mainly in France. Again, he’s a man you could spend a whole session on because, as a great illustrator, he always was a Zionist. He becomes highly important in World War II through his political caricatures, which satirised the Axis leaders. Can we have a look, please? There you see some of his cartoons, and he and Hecht decide to support the Bergson Group in their campaign, and they begin to illustrate.

He begins to illustrate cartoons, and Hecht begins to write the most incredible adverts in papers because on the 9th of November, 1942, when Wise finally releases the news of the murders of the Jews of Europe. Remember, there’s a minute silence on December the 17th. Bergson is horrified to find that it’s only on page nine. Nobody makes it headline news, and they realise they’ve got to do something. So the marriage occurs between the Bergson Group, Hecht, Szyk, and he begins to write articles, and he says things like, “For sale,” huge articles, “70,000 Jews at 50 pounds a head.” This was an offer to save Romanian Jewry. Wise went absolutely crazy because Stephen Wise had a completely different approach that I’m going to talk about when I come onto him. And he hammered away, “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Hammering, hammering away at what is happening. And finally, they decide to pull it all together into a huge pageant called “We Will Never Die.” Can we go on, please? Now, this pageant, there is going to be some very, very serious characters involved in it. It’s going to be written by Ben Hecht, music by Kurt Weill. It’s going to be directed by Moss Hart, who was a playwright, a librettist, and theatre director. One of the most important of the American figures, he wrote screenplays, including the screenplay for “Gentleman’s Agreement,” one of the first films on the subject of anti-Semitism, which I’m going to do a session on. He won an Oscar nomination for “A Star Is Born.” His last big show was “Camelot.” So he is going to, so he is directing it. It’s going to be produced by Billy Rose. Ernst Lubitsch is also going to help, and it’s going to have a star-studded cast. So let’s have a look at the characters who were involved. There you see, there you see Ernst Lubitsch. All these characters need a session. Paul Muni is going to be the narrator. The great Paul Muni, we’ve already met him, go on. This is the pageant. Now, before I show it to you, I’m going to give you a little bit more information. It was absolutely huge.

It had 200 rabbis, 200 cantors, 400 actors, and 100 musicians, and it is for the murdered Jews of Europe, and it begins like this. “The mass killing of Europe’s Jews was not a Jewish problem. It is a problem that belongs to humanity. It is a problem of the soul of man.” One of the reasons they decided to put it on, in early 1943, there was a Gallup poll in America, and the question was, is it true that two million Jews have been killed? Is it true or is it just a rumour, even though it’s been confirmed by the Allied leadership? Only 47% of those polled believed it to be true. 29% said it was a rumour. The remaining 24% had no opinion. The American people did not take it seriously. The group did try to persuade major Jewish organisations to co-sponsor. 32 groups met. They were hosted by Hecht. Too much rivalry and discord. And the pageant, it starts in Madison Square Garden on the 9th to 10th of March, 1943, and it’s going to go from city to city. In some American cities, mainstream groups actually attempted to stop local performances because some of them were worried it would provoke more anti-Semitism. Some were politically opposed to the Revisionists. Some didn’t want their own leadership usurped. It was very much, think about it. You know, it still goes on. You get 10 Jews in a room, and you have 30 opinions. The White House wouldn’t help. Billy Rose, the producer, wrote to a senior official requesting a message from FDR. His advisors were against it. It raises a political question, increased pressure to admit more refugees. The British were furious about it because Hecht is going for huge publicity. They raised money to have ads from coast to coast actually advertising the murder of the Jews of Europe. So the British, there’s a memo from the embassy saying that he is implicitly anti-British. Now, so it is shown in Madison Square Garden, and it does go to some of the other cities, and it climaxes in the Hollywood Bowl.

Now, let’s have a look at the climax. I should say that I should, before we do it, sorry, I’d like to mention, when it was staged in Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt went and so did some Supreme Court justices and various international diplomats. And Mrs. Roosevelt, who devoted part of her next column to the pageant, and this is the phrase that Hecht used, “There are two million dead Jews in Europe today. The four million left to kill are being killed according to a plan. When the time comes to make the peace, they will have not been, they would have been done to death.” So the problem was the only answer they were getting from the Allies is rescue through victory. Bergson and Hecht both argue that there were options. They pointed out that empty supply ships could transport the refugees. They could put pressure on Hungary, on Romania, on Bulgaria to let Jews immigrate. Remember, the Jews of Hungary under Horthy are not being deported. He’s allied to Germany. It’s only when that alliance waivers in March, 1944 that the Nazis move in, and that’s when the Jews in Hungary are under threat. And in three months, Auschwitz murders nearly half a million people. It’s beyond imagination.

A lot of film stars helped. And when it was performed in Philadelphia, the guest narrator was Claude Rains and Edward Arnold, and that was the same week at the Bermuda Conference, when the Allies, there were 12 days of talking, but no plan to rescue the Jews, Bergson placed an ad in “The New York Times,” “To five million Jews in Nazi death trap, Bermuda was a cruel mockery.” That was written by Hecht. So, however, by this time, there were quite a few Orthodox Jews who were helping, and it has to be said, the Orthodox Jews did stage marches on Washington. So in the Chicago Stadium, where they also held it, this is in the summer of 1943, John Garfield and Burgess Meredith led the pageant in front of 20,000 people. So let’s have a look at the last one in the Hollywood Bowl where the moguls did sponsor it. The Hollywood Bowl was sponsored by the moguls. So, unfortunately, all you’re going to get is the sound, but you’ll see the picture. Remember, it’s huge. This is the Hollywood Bowl. So let’s have a look at the pageant.

• [Narrator] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We’re speaking to you from the Hollywood Bowl, which tonight is the scene of one of the nation’s most spectacular pageants, titled “We Will Never Die.” This mammoth memorial is dedicated to the two million civilian Jewish dead of Europe. This is the only performance to be given in Los Angeles. Written by Ben Hecht as a living testimonial of the suffering of the Jews and their hopes and achievements, the pageant has a special musical score by Kurt Weill, famous composer. The symphony orchestra is under the direction of Franz Waxman. The cast includes 1,000 volunteer actors and actresses headed by such stellar stars as Edward G Robinson, Edward Arnold, Joan Leslie, John Garfield, Blanche Yurka, Akim Tamiroff, Jacob Ben-Ami, Sam Levene, Paul Henreid, J Edward Bromberg, and many others. The show was staged originally by Moss Hart. This production is an exact replica of the one which drew such enthusiastic praise in its Madison Square Garden premier several months ago. Ben Hecht and Billy Rose are national chairmen of the pageant committee. Now, to the production “We Will Never Die.”

• Lauren, I think we cut it there. Lauren, thank you. So this is the first part of the Ben Hecht story, and, of course, when I return to talk about him as a screenwriter, I’m also going to be talking about his later career with the Zionists in Palestine, and, of course, the huge controversy that it’s going to lead to. But before we go too deeply into the controversy, let me just say that this was a time, a desperate time in Jewish history, and the way people responded is, it’s complex the way people respond, and how can any of us know how we would’ve responded to such a terrible tragedy? But it does also, you know, it really raised all sorts of levels in terms of Jewish consciousness, the whole notion of Zionism. When Golda Meir came to America on a huge fundraising drive for Israel, she actually said, before Israel was created, she said, “Six million of us died, and you stood by. There are 600,000 of us in Palestine, and we will die unless you help us, and they gave us no community has ever given.” Was her response a fair response? Because, in the end, I think what you’re really facing is the powerlessness of the Jew. If anyone ever talks to you about Jewish powerlessness, power, you think about this time in history, and I think that is what has so marked the State of Israel to this day. So let’s have a look at the questions. I hope I haven’t rushed too much. I’m sure the majority of you know a lot about Jabotinsky et al., and I really just wanted to concentrate on Hecht and the Bergson Group. So let’s have a look at the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Well, this is from Neil Scott, “I’ve just watched a YouTube speech by the chief rabbi of South Africa.” Oh, Dennis Davis will be lecturing next week on the decision, by the way.

Q: Susan, “I read 'Perfidy’ twice 25 years apart, and I saw it completely different. For sure it was the same book?”

A: Yeah, Jerome Kearns said that, “There’s no place in American music for Irving Berlin. Irving Berlin is American music,” yeah.

Q: “Are Zagat cartoons still in print?”

A: Yes, he’s wonderful.

“The world authority is Ivs Ungar, who currently is scheduled to mount his exhibition in the Jewish Museum, New York. I highly recommend you have Irv Ungar, who is also a rabbi as a guest speaker.” Are you listening, Lauren? Lauren, I hope you’re listening because can you look at that, please?

• Yep, absolutely.

• From the American angle, that would be a brilliant idea, Diane, and he would be a great addition to Lockdown. If we could sort that out, please, that would wonderful, thank you.

“Several years ago, I heard a Jewish academic criticise and mock the Israeli’s fundraising activities in the late 1940s.” Look, we’re a pugnacious quarrelsome people, aren’t we? We don’t all think the same way.

I think that’s all the questions, actually, which shocks me. I thought there’d be a lot of questions after this one. Are you sure that nobody’s got any other comments they want to make or… This is such a contentious one, it’s interesting. In the ones I think aren’t contentious, there are loads of questions. Oh, I’ve got maybe one.

David Raziel, yes, I know I’m very bad at pronouncing, Michael. What am I going to do about it? Have I held the balance, Michael? You’re good at this. I hope I’ve held the balance. It is so difficult, so difficult. Thank you, Michael, for your compliment.

Anyone else, no? All right, well, I will see you next week. And thank, oh, wait a minute.

Monty, “I was told that South African Jews’ contribution per head was the law.” Yes, per head. Yes, yes, that figures. Okay, and, of course, the relationship between Israel and South Africa, oh, so many issues. So, oh, yes, we have a few questions now.

Q: “Are you familiar with now showing ‘Zone of Interest?’”

A: Yes, I am.

All right, bye, everybody. Lauren, thank you very much, and I’ll see you all next week, God bless.