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By Root 2247 0

with questions. Was it true that he was opposed to saying Kaddish at the solemn closing session, that he now preached forgive and forget, that he had betrayed Jewish honor for pecuniary reasons, to please the Germans? Was it worthy of a Jewish leader to act this way? Goldmann, trying to maintain his calm, said he didn’t understand. How could anyone suspect him, a Jew of Galician origin, a friend and collaborator of Rabbi Stephen Wise, of wanting to forget the victims of Nazism or of sacrificing memory to a rapprochement with German leaders? The question of the Kaddish had never even come up in the Executive Committee. What about the story in Yedioth Ahronoth? It was utter fantasy, he said. There was not a word of truth in it, on his honor. Moreover, it had been a closed-door session, and all the participants had sworn they had not breathed a word to the press. In other words, the Yedioth Ahronoth correspondent had made the whole thing up. Goldmann, of course, didn’t realize I had been present. I could have, should have, stood up and set the record straight. But I was afraid to harm Teddy, who might have been reprimanded for having hired a journalist. And also I felt incapable of speaking in public. I left the press conference sick with shame.

I went back to the hotel and called Dov, who tried to console me. He suggested I go see Rabbi Nourok and ask him to testify, which I did. “Listen,” I said. “Dr. Goldmann is calling me a liar. My professional future is at stake. You were there. Tell them I wasn’t lying.” The rabbi gave me a fully satisfactory statement. But of course it got far less coverage than Goldmann’s denial.

Over the years Goldmann and I came to know one another well. Though I criticized him often—sometimes perhaps unfairly—he never held a grudge, and I learned to appreciate his true worth. He had the courage to shock. The ambiguity of his relations with Israel was such that he once allowed himself to express doubts about its very survival: “Perhaps Israel will turn out to be but an episode in Jewish history.” Ben-Gurion didn’t like him (calling him a Jewish Gypsy), and Golda Meir wasn’t too fond of him either, as she was suspicious of his overtures to the Soviets and the Arabs. He was an agitator ready to challenge received ideas and principles. And while he was not a good listener, he was a great speaker, able to place events in a historical context in a way that both exasperated and fascinated me. We often talked about the dark years of the war. I asked him why the American Jewish lobby hadn’t done more, acted more decisively to save European Judaism? At first he tried to convince me they hadn’t known what was happening in the countries occupied by the Nazis. Then he admitted that they had known and had remained silent. He claimed extenuating circumstances: Up until 1941 the American Jewish community itself feared anti-Semitism; it would have been dangerous to oppose Roosevelt; the Jews didn’t have the power they came to possess—or were believed to possess—in later years; and finally, Roosevelt had a gift for convincing Jewish visitors that he was the best advocate for and protector of their people.

One evening, as we dined at his favorite restaurant in New York, I recalled the incident in Geneva. “How could you lie like that?” I asked. “What did you think a young journalist like me would think of you?” He laughed. “First of all, I didn’t know you were in the room, so I thought I could say whatever I wanted with impunity. Second, the difference between us is that I’m a politician and you’re not.” He then gave me a piece of advice: “Write your novels, tell your Hasidic tales, but don’t ever get involved in politics. It’s not for you.” At another dinner, as if forgetting his own advice, he suggested that I succeed him as president of the Memorial Foundation and the Claims Conference, both financed by the Germans. I refused. (But I remained close to the World Jewish Congress, especially after Edgar Bronfman, seconded by his aides Israel Singer and Elan Steinberg, assumed the presidency.)

My friendship with