Daily Podcasts Video Research

Scribe | The Yom Kippur sermon Stephen Wise never gave

JL;DR SUMMARY Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a leading American Jewish figure in the 1930s and 1940s, is scrutinized for his silence during Yom Kippur 1942, despite having dire reports on the Holocaust's progress. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

HolocaustYom KippurJewish LeadershipJewish OrganizationsAmerican Jewish HistoryAtrocitiesU.S. State DepartmentStephen S. WiseGerhart RiegnerGerhart Riegner Telegram

Places mentioned

Geneva, Switzerland
"On August 25, 1942, Wise had received a stunning telegram from his trusted colleague in Geneva, World Jewish Congress representative Gerhart Riegner."
New York City, New York, United States
"Rabbi Wises annual High Holiday sermons at his Free Synagogue, in Manhattan, attracted the largest audiences of the year, as well as the possibility of coverage by the New York Times or other news media."
Warsaw, Mazovia, Poland
"On September 3, Wise and other Jewish leaders received a telegram from Switzerland-based Orthodox rescue activists that reported: German authorities have recently evacuated Warsaw Ghetto and bestially murdered about 100,000 Jews."
Kaunas, Kaunas County, Lithuania
"In Kovno, 800 Jews were herded into a fire station, where they were starved for eight days and then shot en masse."
Velizh, Smolensk, Russian Federation
"In Velizh, the JTA reported, 900 Jews had been confined to a pigsty, which the Germans locked and set ablaze."
Poland
"According to that days JTA Bulletin, massacres of Jews on an unprecedented scale are now taking place all over Nazi-occupied Poland, as part of Germans strategy of total extermination of the Jews in Poland."

Support this source

This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 74617
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-02-05 05:31:33 UTC
Curated 2026-02-05 08:31:35 UTC