When Nancy Peℓσѕι, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, stepped to the podium at a Knesset dinner during her visit to Israel earlier this month, she made history in more ways than one.
Not only was she the first woman House speaker to address Israel's lawmakers, Rep. Peℓσѕι (D-San Francisco) was also addressing the parliament of a country whose creation her own father championed at the risk of his career -- and perhaps her career, as well.
Peℓσѕι's father, the late Rep. Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. of Maryland, was known as a Roosevelt Democrat. What is not widely known is that D'Alesandro broke ranks with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the issues of rescuing Jews from Hitler and creating a Jєωιѕн state.
D'Alesandro was one of the congressional supporters of the Bergson Group, a maverick Jєωιѕн political action committee that challenged the Roosevelt administration's policies on the Jєωιѕн refugee issue during the h0Ɩ0cαųst and later lobbied against British control of Palestine.
The Bergson activists used unconventional tactics to draw attention to the plight of Europe's Jews, including staging theatrical pageants, organizing a march by 400 rabbis to the White House and placing more than 200 full-page advertisements in newspapers around the country.
Some of those ads featured lists of celebrities, prominent intellectuals and members of Congress who supported the group -- including D'Alesandro.
D'Alesandro's involvement with the Bergson Group was remarkable because he was a Democrat who was choosing to support a group that was publicly challenging a Democratic president.
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