Wiesel seeks recognition for activists

Elie Wiesel urged the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to acknowledge the rescue efforts of the Bergson Group.In an address Sunday to the Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in New York, Wiesel said he was “disappointed” that the museum’s exhibits did not mention the Bergson Group, a cadre of American activists that lobbied the U.S. government and is credited with saving 200,000 Jews during the Holocaust.The group is mentioned only briefly in a film strip and in an article on the museum’s Web site. Wiesel’s call was seconded by Seymour Reich, president of the Israel Policy Forum and formerly the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, according to a press release.”I have come here today, as a veteran of the Jewish establishment, to say unequivocally: the Jewish leaders in the 1940s were wrong,” Reich said. “They should not have spent their time and energy attacking Bergson when they should have been focusing completely on how to bring about the rescue of Europe’s Jews.”