Rabbis' march (1943)

The Rabbis' March was a demonstration in support of American and allied action to stop the destruction of European Jewry. It took place in Washington, D.C., on October 6, 1943, three days before Yom Kippur. It was organized by Hillel Kook, nephew of the chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and head of the Bergson Group, and involved more than 400 rabbis, mostly members of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada,[1] from New York and cities throughout the Eastern United States. It was the only such protest in Washington during the Holocaust.

Part of a series on
The Holocaust
Jews on selection ramp at Auschwitz, May 1944
Responsibility Nazi Germany People Major perpetrators Adolf Hitler Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Müller Reinhard Heydrich Adolf Eichmann Odilo Globocnik Theodor Eicke Richard Glücks Ernst Kaltenbrunner Rudolf Höss Christian Wirth Joseph Goebbels Ion Antonescu László Ferenczy Philippe Pétain Organizations Nazi Party Gestapo Schutzstaffel (SS) Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) Einsatzgruppen Sturmabteilung (SA) Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT) Wehrmacht Trawniki men Collaborators during World War II Nazi ideologues
Early policies Racial policy Nazi eugenics Nuremberg Laws Haavara Agreement Madagascar Plan Forced euthanasia
Victims Jews Romani people (Gypsies) Poles Soviet POWs Slavs in Eastern Europe Homosexuals People with disabilities
Ghettos Białystok Budapest Kaunas Kraków Łódź Lublin Lwów Minsk Riga Warsaw Vilnius Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland List of selected ghettos
Camps Nazi extermination camps Auschwitz II-Birkenau Bełżec Chełmno Jasenovac Majdanek Sajmište Sobibor Treblinka Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz I Bergen-Belsen Bogdanovka Buchenwald Dachau Dora Gonars (Italy) Gross-Rosen Herzogenbusch Janowska Kaiserwald Mauthausen-Gusen Neuengamme Rab Ravensbrück Sachsenhausen Salaspils Stutthof Transnistria (Romania) Theresienstadt Uckermark Warsaw Transit and collection camps Belgium Breendonk Mechelen France Gurs Drancy Italy Bolzano Netherlands Amersfoort Westerbork Slovakia Sereď Divisions SS-Totenkopfverbände Concentration Camps Inspectorate Politische Abteilung Sanitätswesen Extermination methods Gas van Gas chamber Extermination through labour Einsatzgruppen Human medical experimentation
Atrocities Pogroms Kristallnacht Bucharest Dorohoi Iaşi Izieu Szczuczyn Jedwabne Plungė Kaunas Lviv (Lvov) Marseille Tykocin Vel' d'Hiv Wąsosz Einsatzgruppen Babi Yar Bydgoszcz Częstochowa Kamianets-Podilskyi Ninth Fort Odessa Piaśnica Ponary Rumbula Erntefest "Final Solution" Wannsee Conference Mogilev Conference Operation "Reinhard" Holocaust trains Extermination camps End of World War II Wola massacre Death marches
Resistance Auschwitz Protocols Vrba–Wetzler report Czesław Mordowicz Jerzy Tabeau Rudolf Vrba Alfréd Wetzler Bricha Jewish partisans Sonderkommando photographs Witold Pilecki Resistance movement in Auschwitz Związek Organizacji Wojskowej Witold's Report Ghetto uprisings Warsaw Białystok Łachwa Częstochowa
International response Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations Auschwitz bombing debate MS St. Louis Nuremberg trials Denazification
Aftermath Bricha Displaced persons Survivors Central Committee of the Liberated Jews Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany
Lists Holocaust survivors Deportations of French Jews to death camps Survivors of Sobibor Timeline of Treblinka extermination camp Victims of Nazism Rescuers of Jews Memorials and museums
Resources Bibliography List of books about Nazi Germany The Destruction of the European Jews Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos Functionalism versus intentionalism
Remembrance Days of remembrance Memorials and museums Righteous Among the Nations

The rabbis were received at steps of the Capitol by the Senate majority and minority leaders, and the Speaker of the House. After prayers for the war effort at the Lincoln Memorial the rabbis marched to the White House to plead with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They were informed that the President was busy all day and were instead received by Vice President Henry Wallace. It was later learned that Roosevelt had several free hours that afternoon, but had avoided meeting the delegation out of concern regarding diplomatic neutrality and on the advice of some of his Jewish aides and several prominent American Jews, many of whom thought the protest would stir up anti-Semitism. Both Stephen Wise (head of the World Jewish Congress) and Samuel Rosenman (the President's advisor, speech writer and head of the American Jewish Committee) claimed that the protesting rabbis, many of whom were both Orthodox as well as recent immigrants (or first-generation Americans), "were not representative of American Jewry" and not the kind of Jews he should meet. In the November 1943 issue of his journal Opinion, Wise referred to the march as a "painful and even lamentable exhibition", calling it "propaganda by stunts" and accused the rabbis of offending the dignity of the Jewish people.[2][3] Disappointed and angered by the President's failure to meet with them, the rabbis stood in front of the White House where they were met by Senator William Warren Barbour and others, and refused to read their petition aloud, instead handing it off to the Presidential secretary, Marvin McIntyre.

The march garnered much media attention, much of it focused on what was seen as the cold and insulting dismissal of many important community leaders, as well as the people in Europe they were fighting for. The headline in the Washington Times Herald read: "Rabbis Report 'Cold Welcome' at the White House." Editors of The Jewish Daily Forward commented, "Would a similar delegation of 500 Catholic priests have been thus treated?"