Drawing on hitherto neglected archival materials Zohar Segev sheds new light on the policy of
the World Jewish Congress (WJC) during the Holocaust. Contrary to popular belief he can show
that there was an impressive system of previously unknown rescue efforts. Even more so there
is evidence for an alternative pattern for modern Jewish existence in the thinking and policy
of the World Jewish Congress. WJC leaders supported the establishment of a Jewish state in
Palestine but did not see it as an end in itself. They strove to establish a Jewish state and
to rehabilitate Diaspora Jewish life two goals they saw as mutually complementary. The efforts
of the WJC are put into the context of the serious difficulties facing the American Jewish
community and its representative institutions during and after the war as they tried to act as
an ethnic minority within American society.
