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by Randy CassinghamRandy Cassingham's Honorary Unsubscribe Recognizes the Unknown, the Forgotten and the Obscure People who Had an Impact on Our Lives
Gerhart Riegner
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A German Jew, Riegner had fled to France, then Switzerland, in 1933. In July 1942, Riegner, who manned a "listening post" in Switzerland, learned of Nazi plans for the Holocaust. On August 8, 1942, he sent a telegram through a friend at the U.S. consulate detailing Hitler's "final solution" -- a scheme to deport Jews to camps in Eastern Europe and exterminate them. The warning was ignored until January 1944, when President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board. That was too late: an estimated six million Jews were gassed or worked to death in the concentration camps. "Never did I feel so strongly the sense of abandonment, powerlessness and loneliness as when I sent messages of disaster and horror to the free world and no one believed me," Riegner wrote in his memoirs. As a lawyer after the war, he worked to improve relations between the Vatican and Israel, and was the secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress from 1965 to 1983. He also received the Legion of Honor from France in 1987. He died December 3 in Geneva at age 90.
From This is True for 2 December 2001
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