In early February 2025, The Jerusalem Post reviewed The Accomplices, a 2007 play by New York Times reporter Bernard Weinraub, staged at Jerusalem’s Khan Theatre. The play told the story of Peter Bergson, head of the Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry during the Holocaust, his efforts to save the Jews of Europe, and his conflicts with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and other leaders of the Jewish American establishment at the time.
The Post’s reviewer praised The Accomplices and recommended it to readers. This month, the play will begin a second run of three performances from December 13-15 at the Jerusalem High School for the Arts.
To mark the play’s return, In Jerusalem interviewed several of its principals – director and co-producer Yedidya Fraiman; co-producer and stage manager Barbara Frogel; and Rabbi David Golinkin, who brought the play to Israel in 2009 and who plays Rabbi Wise and playwright Ben Hecht – in order to gain a greater understanding of the events that took place, as well as the play’s contemporary significance.
New production dedicated to memory of previous director
At the outset of our discussion, Fraiman noted that the upcoming production of The Accomplices is dedicated in memory of Aryeh Weisberg, the play’s director and founder of Theatre Zion in Jerusalem. Weisberg directed and produced numerous Jewish-themed plays for English-speaking audiences. After nine sold-out performances of The Accomplices in February, Weisberg decided to add new performances in June 2025. Sadly, he passed away in May, and the revival was postponed.
“I’ve been so impressed and moved by the cast,” Fraiman said. “We were going to remount this in June, but Aryeh passed away. Six or seven months later, it’s remarkable to me that this collection of very diverse people, from people in their 20s to people in their 70s, from different communities and different outlooks, have come together and are willing to devote their time, not only because they believe the play is important to them but also because of their love and devotion for Aryeh.”
In addition to directing the play, Fraiman plays Breckenridge Long, an assistant secretary at the State Department who was notorious for his antisemitic views. Apart from his theater work, Fraiman, who has been living in Israel for the past 47 years, is an English teacher and leads kosher treks around the world in the summer.
Barbara Frogel, stage manager and co-producer of The Accomplices, is a self-described “Broadway junkie,” who said that her most difficult adjustment to life in the Holy Land was leaving the Great White Way behind, as well as assorted children and grandchildren.
Frogel pointed out that proceeds from the play will benefit the Michael Levin Base in Jerusalem, which supports lone soldiers and lone young men and women performing National Service. “We were looking for a charity that would speak to who Aryeh was,” she said.
“Aryeh was a devotee of the IDF and particularly of lone soldiers because he himself was an immigrant, and we knew that the Michael Levin base here in Jerusalem was near and dear to his heart. The base provides a home away from home for soldiers and those performing National Service, who are here out of love and devotion and love of Zion and the Jewish people.”
A member of the Michael Levin Base’s executive board, Frogel said that combining her two passions – theatre and the base – “is almost a dream come true.”
The Riegner Telegram and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise
In 1940, Peter Bergson, whose real name was Hillel Kook – and was a nephew of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the Land of Israel – arrived in the US from the underground resistance in Palestine. He tried to promote the rescue of European Jews from the Nazis but was shocked to find himself blocked by both the Roosevelt administration and the Jewish establishment. The Accomplices is the true story of his fight to counter the conspiracy of silence and inaction in the face of the Holocaust.
Rabbi David Golinkin, who plays Rabbi Stephen Wise, and who has been active in the Jerusalem theater scene for many years, traces his interest in the field to this play itself. “In a sense,” he explained, “it’s autobiographical. My late father, Rabbi Noah Golinkin, and two of his fellow students at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) set up a similar group as a reaction to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s news conference in November of 1942.
“Just as my father’s story was not known, the Bergson story was not known, either,” Golinkin said. “That’s the reason I got involved in acting in Jerusalem. Ironically, I play Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in this play, who was the nemesis of Bergson and of my father and his friends.”
Golinkin was referring to the events that took place in the summer and fall of 1942. In August of that year, the State Department received a report from Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, detailing the Nazis’ plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe. The report was cabled to Rabbi Wise, but the State Department asked him not to release the details to the public until the report could be corroborated.
In November 1942, Wise held a news conference, describing what the Nazis were doing, and confirming that over two million Jews had already been murdered in Europe. The article, buried in small print, overshadowed by a large advertisement for Seagram’s, appeared on page 10 of The New York Times on November 25.
“The minute they heard that two million Jews had already been killed,” said Golinkin of his father and his friends, “they set up an organization of students at JTS to try to save the Jews of Europe. The first thing they did was go to Stephen S. Wise on December 17, 1942, with a written proposal of how to save the Jews of Europe and how to publicize what was going on in the US.”
Wise treated them with the same disdain he had shown Bergson and his group. In response, the JTS students ran a campaign from Passover until Shavuot of 1943, throughout the US, in which hundreds of churches and synagogues conducted prayer services and rallies informing people about what was taking place in Europe, and attempting to arouse public opinion in favor of saving the Jews.
Apart from his thespian qualities, Golinkin, who is perhaps better known as an acclaimed Jewish scholar and president emeritus of the Schechter Institutes, Inc., wrote a book in 2010, together with Rafael Madoff. It was about the struggle to save the Jews of Europe from the perspective of Jewish students in the US, titled The Student Struggle Against the Holocaust.
Warming to the story of Bergson, Golinkin said, “It’s a very important story that needs to be told,” referring to the conflict between Bergson and Wise.
“There were only a few groups in the US during the Holocaust that tried to save the Jews of Europe,” he explained. “There was the Bergson Group, there was the group run by my father, which was called the European Committee of Students at JTS in New York, and there were a number of Orthodox groups.”
American Jewry’s silence
On the whole, American Jewry was silent during the Holocaust, said Golinkin, either because they didn’t know what was happening in Europe or because they were afraid to speak up. “As the play mentions, there was a lot of antisemitism in the US in the 1930s, and many Jews were simply afraid to speak up. They did not have self-confidence the way they did later on during the struggle for Soviet Jewry.”
There were Jews in the US during the Holocaust, he continued, who tried to save the Jews of Europe – and they partially succeeded. The best-known organization was the Peter Bergson Group, named after its leader.
Golinkin explained that Bergson and his compatriots, who had come to the US to raise money for the Irgun, decided instead to spend their time saving the Jews of Europe. He said that they tried to work with Wise and the Jewish establishment, “but the Jewish establishment was not interested. They thought that these young upstarts from Palestine didn’t know what they were talking about. They trusted president Roosevelt – which was, of course, a big mistake.”
Bergson and his group lobbied Congress members and senators to do whatever they could to save the Jews of Europe, and they tried to get the Roosevelt administration to admit more Jews into the US. Golinkin explained that under the existing quota system in place in the US at the time, the Roosevelt administration could have admitted hundreds of thousands of additional Jews without changing any laws at all. Tragically, the US State Department was largely antisemitic, and the mantra of Breckenridge Long, an assistant secretary in the State Department, to any request to grant visas to refugees during the war was “Postpone, postpone, postpone.”
“Bergson was fighting on the one hand with the Roosevelt administration,” said Golinkin, “and on the other hand with the Jewish establishment that was rabidly opposed to what he was doing. That’s why Elie Wiesel, in an article written in 1968, coined the phrase ‘the accomplices.’ He said the accomplices to the Nazis were the Roosevelt administration and the Jewish establishment. They both helped the Nazis do what they were doing and prevented the Jews from being saved. So, it’s a very important story to be told in and of itself. In terms of its relevance for today, the fight, infighting, and the politics between the Jewish groups is just very, very distressing – as it is today.”
Lessons of ‘The Accomplices’ for contemporary Jewry
In March 1943, the Bergson Group produced the pageant We Will Never Die about Hitler’s murder of the Jews of Europe, which was first shown in New York at a packed Madison Square Garden. It was written by Ben Hecht, a renowned author and playwright, featured a cast of over 1,000 performers, and was shown in other cities throughout the US.
Despite the pageant’s popularity, Hecht and Bergson were disappointed with the results. Kurt Weill, the renowned German Jewish composer who wrote the music for the performance, said, “The pageant has accomplished nothing. Actually, all we have done is make a lot of Jews cry, which is not a unique accomplishment.”
Golinkin read a section from Hecht’s diary, describing a meeting that was held in January 1943 with the heads of numerous Jewish organizations about the production of the pageant. The meeting resulted in a free-for-all, with voices raised, insults, and accusations. Wrote Hecht, “The spectacle of Jews comically belaboring each other in the worst hour of their history sickened.”
What is the overarching message of The Accomplices for today? Said Golinkin, “Stephen S. Wise and Nahum Goldman, who was another major Zionist leader at the time, spent much more effort trying to suppress the Bergson Group than trying to save the Jews of Europe. On the one hand, there’s a positive message, which is that if you speak up and make noise, you can help. In the end, the Bergson Group saved 200,000 Jews in Hungary, which was the only place left to save Jews when the FDR administration finally set up the War Refugee Board in January of 1944.
“That’s the positive message,” he said. “The negative message is that if we spend all of our time fighting with each other, it will lead to destruction and not salvation.”
Following each performance of The Accomplices, Golinkin leads a discussion with the audience about the historical events described, and when possible, invites guest lecturers who are experts in the field to participate.
Fraiman added that another significant message from The Accomplices for today is the fact that while there are always antisemites on the fringes of society who hate the Jewish people, there is a greater number of people who are undecided about them.
“There are some who hate us, and there’s nothing much you can do about that,” he said. “But I think there’s a broad swath of people in the middle, whose hearts and minds we have to appeal to. Bergson actually mentions this in the play.
“I think that message is also relevant for today,” the play’s director and co-producer said. “We have to make sure that we’re doing the right thing, that we are a moral example, and we need to appeal to like-minded and fair-minded people around the world.”