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Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz, lobbied
Congress for Holocaust rescue
Baruch Rabinowitz (Robbins), an American rabbi who lobbied on
Capitol Hill for
U.S.
action to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, died in
Jerusalem
Dec. 8, after a long illness.
He was 89.
One of the first full-time Jewish lobbyists in the nation's capitol,
Robbins -- then known as Rabinowitz
-- was the chief
Washington,
D.C.
, representative of the
Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, better known as
the Bergson group.
Rabinowitz was known for his ability to forge
relationships with members of Congress from both parties. That bipartisan
support proved crucial in the Bergson group's
crowning achievement, a November 1943 congressional resolution urging the
Roosevelt
administration to establish a government
agency to rescue Jews from Hitler.
The hearings and publicity surrounding the resolution played a major role
in convincing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to establish the War
Refugee Board. During the final 15 months of the war, the board helped
rescue an estimated 200,000 Jews, including current U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos
(D-Calif.). Part of its work involved
facilitating and financing the rescue activities of Raoul
Wallenberg.
After the Holocaust, Rabinowitz remained with the
Bergson group in
Washington
,
lobbying for
U.S.
support for the creation of a Jewish state. He also quietly raised funds
for the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Jewish militia battling the British in
Mandatory Palestine.
Rabinowitz successfully solicited support for the
Irgun from such diverse sources as the singer
Frank Sinatra, boxing champion Barney Ross and underworld figure Mickey
Cohen.
In 1947, Rabinowitz helped break down racial
barriers in
Baltimore
.
He and his colleagues forced the city's Maryland Theater to permit
unrestricted seating for African Americans at performances of the Bergson group's Zionist play, A Flag is Born, which was
authored by Ben Hecht and starred young Marlon Brando.
Rabinowitz also was sent by the Irgun to solicit backing from world leaders such as
Rafael Trujillo of the
Dominican
Republic
.
Trujillo
gave Rabinowitz
false passports that helped several future Israeli leaders escape British
imprisonment in
Eritrea
,
Africa
.
They included Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir,
Justice Minister Shmuel Tamir,
Finance Minister Yaacov Meridor
and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Arieh Ben-Eliezer.
Rabinowitz, who was born in
Brooklyn
in 1914, was a seventh-generation direct descendant of the founder of
Chasidism, the 18th-century rabbinical scholar known as the Baal Shem Tov.
He spent his childhood in Brooklyn's
Brownsville
section,
Canada
and
Bayonne, N.J.
The gregarious Rabinowitz was expected to take
the mantle of his father, Rabbi Samuel A. Rabinowitz,
who was known as the Brooklyner Rebbe. But in 1932, at age 17, Rabinowitz
boarded a ship and sailed to British Mandatory Palestine to study under its
first chief rabbi, Abraham Isaac Kook, from whom he received rabbinical
ordination.
Upon his return to the
United
States
, he became active in the
nationalist Revisionist Zionist movement, led by Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky.
He served briefly as the rabbi of a small congregation in
Frederick
,
before becoming rabbi of Congregation B'nai Abraham, in
Hagerstown
in 1937.
But following the death of his wife, Harriet, in an automobile accident in
1940, Rabinowitz left the pulpit and became a
full-time Jewish activist.
After the Six Day War in 1967, Rabinowitz -- by
then known as Baruch Robbins -- moved to
Israel
. In 1978, although 64
years old and legally blind, he left his home in
Caesarea
to settle in the fledgling frontier community of Elon
Moreh.
Survivors include his wife of 37 years, Malkah;
eight children; 25 grandchildren, including a former WJW editor, Jonathan
Stern of
Takoma
Park
; four great grandchildren; a brother and a
sister.
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