Fiorello La Guardia, the feisty mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945, spoke out forcefully against Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews, despite political risks and the dangers faced by his own sister, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

La Guardia encouraged the boycotting of German goods, opposed U.S. participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, personally led anti-Nazi rallies, and promoted legislation to facilitate the U.S. rescue of Jewish refugees.

In the autumn of 1943, the Bergson Group’s allies in congress introduced a resolution urging the president to create a commission to rescue Jews. At a hearing on the resolution, La Guardia pointed to the creation of the monuments commission: “This very important problem…is not like the destruction of buildings or monuments, as terrible as that may be, because, after all, they may be rebuilt or even reproduced; but when a life is snuffed out, it is gone; it is gone forever.”