The World Jewish Congress 1936-2016
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About this book
The World Jewish Congress 1936-2016 details the dramatic diplomatic efforts and achievements of this preeminent international Jewish organization from its founding in Geneva 80 years ago through the present. In his foreword World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald S. Lauder writes that this book reminds us not only what the WJC did in the past but why the Jewish people need this vital organization now more than ever and will continue to need it in the future. Among the major chapters in the WJCs history detailed in the book are the organizations pioneering role in crafting a new Catholic-Jewish relationship; its diplomatic negotiations on behalf of Jews from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s; its exposure of Kurt Waldheims Nazi past; its leadership of the international efforts to force Swiss banks to disgorge more than one billion dollars they had wrongfully withheld from Jewish Holocaust victims and their heirs; its critical role in fighting the U.N.s resolution that equated Zionism and racism; its role in preserving the historical integrity of the site of the Auschwitz death camp; its effort on behalf of Soviet Jewry; and its work to bring the perpetrators of terrorist bombings in Buenos Aires to justice. In the books concluding chapters WJC CEO Robert R. Singer describes the activities of the World Jewish Congress today and WJC President Ronald S. Lauder lays out his vision of the Jewish future. Contributors include historians Michael Brenner Jonathan A. Bush Suzanne Rutland Zohar Segev and Gregory J. Wallance; Monsignor Pier Francesco Fumagalli vice prefect of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan; Natan Lerner professor of law emeritus at IDC Herzliya; Gregg J. Rickman who led the US Senate Banking Committees examination of Swiss banks and their treatment of Holocaust-era assets during and after World War II; Eli M. Rosenbaum longtime head of the US Justice Departments Office of Special Investigations; and Evelyn Sommer chairperson of the WJCs North American Section. The World Jewish Congress 1936-2016 is edited by WJC General Counsel Menachem Z. Rosensaft.
