Embracing the Legacies of Our Unsung Heroes

And the Delicious History Lesson We Need Right Now

Meyer Lansky and associates, circa 1930s

Most people have never heard of Peter Bergson.
They’ve never heard of Jan Karski either.
Or the story of Meyer Lansky and a group of Jewish gangsters who showed up — uninvited, unannounced, and unapologetic — to a Nazi rally in New York City in the 1930s and showed them why raining terror on innocent Jewish people wasn’t going to go unanswered in America.
And most people don't know much about Rabbi Stephen Wise, and the complicated legacy he left behind in the halls of the White House during World War II.

These four figures lived through the most dangerous moments in American history. Each responded differently, yet together — in their courage, their strategy, their failures, and their warnings — they left us everything we need to know about what they accomplished, and what we must revive at this moment, as history is being written again.

And make no mistake. This is our moment.

* * *

Meyer Lansky was not a hero in the conventional sense. He was an infamous gangster. When the German American Bund — America’s homegrown Nazi movement — began holding rallies in New York City in the late 1930s, Lansky didn’t write a letter to his congressman. He didn’t organize a peaceful protest. He showed up with a guy named Bugssy and a group of men who understood that some ideologies don’t respond to dialogue. So they broke it up by making these Nazis an offer they couldn’t refuse.

Lansky was quoted: “We didn’t start fights. We finished them.”

To be clear — this is not a call for violence. But there is something to learn from that statement. Sometimes waiting for institutions to act is a form of surrender. Sometimes you have to do what needs to be done.

Peter Bergson had a different method of teaching us a lesson. He was a Palestinian Jew who came to America in 1940 with one mission: to force the United States to act on what was happening to Jews in Europe. He took out full page ads in the New York Times, lobbied Congress, and organized rallies. His greatest feat was embarrassing the powerful and naming the silent.

The establishment Jewish organizations were threatened by him — accusing him of being too loud and too aggressive. Bergson was willing to make people uncomfortable. He understood that respectability, in that moment, was a luxury Jews could not afford.

Bergson helped create the War Refugee Board in 1944 — an act that saved tens of thousands of lives. Too late for the many millions — but he fought hard for every one of them.

[SIDEBAR] This is exactly what I have been screaming from the rooftops since October 7, 2023 — remembering what my sister Vivian has been saying: "We are on our own." I've been calling out the many groups "claiming" to fight antisemitism. Things have only gotten worse, for Jews and Christians alike. We've lost the communication war — and with it the hearts and minds of way too many people around the world.

Jan Karski was a Polish Catholic — a courier for the Polish resistance. In 1942, he smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto and a transit camp to witness firsthand what was happening as the hands of Nazis. Somehow, he escaped, went to London, then onto Washington, and managed to get into the Oval Office.

Karski told them everything. He carried microfilmed reports and detailed eyewitness accounts confirming the Nazi extermination of Jews.

Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court Justice — who was Jewish — listened to Karski’s account and said: “I don’t believe you.” Not that Karski was lying. Just how unimaginable and unfathomable the situation was. He couldn’t handle the truth.

FDR listened. Nodded. Changed the subject. Despite his warnings, the Allied leaders did not act immediately or forcefully enough to stop the systematic murder, leading Karski to feel his mission failed.

Karski spent the rest of his life haunted by a single question: I told them. Why didn’t they act?

Silence = Death.

Rabbi Stephen Wise was the leader of American Jewry during around the time of World War II. He had more access than anyone in the halls of government — and was a confidant of FDR. He suppressed information about the Final Solution for months in 1942, worried about State Department sensitivities. He chose institutional loyalty over urgent action.

History has judged — the not so — Wise harshly. His kiss of death was playing by the rules, trying to be accepted, not making too much noise — nonsensically hoping it would keep his people safe.

Wise’s story is a cautionary tale. And it may be the most important of all four — because what ultimately failed Rabbi Wise is something I’ve written about before — what I call ESC: the Emotional and Spiritual Cancer of Assimilated Jews.

Sadly, not everyone will survive the self-imposed blight.

This insidious mental illness causes you to minimize your voice, surrender to someone else’s narrative, and make unfortunate compromises. By assimilating, we keep our heads down, try not to make too much noise, hoping to be liked and accepted. The worst miscalculation of all time was Wise’s cross to bear.

[SIDEBAR] Trust me, I know this disease well — having suffered from it for decades. The fateful day in Charlottesville, the summer of 2017, watching Nazis march with torches chanting “Jews will not replace us,” was my turning point. October 7 shifted everything — making me the proud Zionist answering the clarion call for justice and peace, which will carry me through the rest of my days.

I survived. Will you?