Dutch playwright Jan de Hartog (1914-2002) used the voyage of the refugee ship St. Louis to inspire some of his countrymen to hide Jewish children from the Nazis. The son of a Dutch Calvinist Minister, de Hartog always exhibited a love for the sea, and even ran away at age 11 to become a cabin boy on a Dutch...
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Media magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) strongly supported the campaign for U.S. action to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. In his early years, Hearst occasionally uttered the kind of antisemitic remarks typical of the late 19th century upper-crust Protestant society. By the 1890s,...
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Author, playwright and Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht (1894-1964) was a leading activist for the rescue of European Jews from the Holocaust and creation of a Jewish State. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Hecht grew up in Racine (Wisconsin) and Chicago in what he described as a "large, extended,...
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Rabbi Dr. Arthur Hertzberg (1921-2006), a prominent Jewish leader and civil rights activist who took part in the 1963 March on Washington with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also participated in the 1943 rabbis' march to the White House. Writing about that experience, in the introduction to an online...
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Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), the 31st president of the United States, spoke out for U.S. aid to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s. A mining engineer by profession, Hoover’s path to the 1928 Republican presidential nomination was paved by his leadership of food relief efforts that saved millions...
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Comedian Bob Hope (1903-2003) was one of a number of prominent entertainers who volunteered to take part in a fundraising event at Madison Square Garden for the Bergson Group's Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. The "Show of Shows," held on March 13, 1944, attracted a full house...
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Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Horowitz (1921-2009), better known as the Bostoner Rebbe, was one of the 400 rabbis who took part in the 1943 march to the White House to urge the rescue of European Jews. At the time of the march, Horowitz was a recently-married rabbinical student at the Mesivta Torah Vodaas...
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In late 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a Beirut-born U.S. army officer, Lt. Col. Harold Hoskins, to the Middle East to canvass Arab opinion. Hoskins's final report to the president, the following spring, predicted that "world-wide [Zionist] propaganda" and "Arab fear of American support for political...
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Laura Delano Houghteling, first cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and wife of the United States Commissioner of Immigration, strongly opposed the immigration of Jewish refugees to the United States. Houghteling's sentiments were immortalized by State Department official Pierrepont Moffat....
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Author and poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was one of a number of prominent African-American supporters of the Bergson Group. He served as one of the honorary "Sponsors" of the group's Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe, in 1943. Sources: Medoff, FDR and the Holocaust,...
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As secretary of state under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cordell Hull (1871-1955) faithfully implemented the Roosevelt administration's policy of refraining from any substantial action to aid Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis. Hull was a first-term Senator from Tennessee at the time of his appointment...
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Novelist Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was one of a number of prominent African-American supporters of the Bergson Group. She served as one of the honorary "Sponsors" of the group's Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe, in 1943. Sources: Medoff, FDR and the Holocaust, pp.63,...
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