A 4-minute excerpt from a 55-minute documentary.

Most Americans—even many American Jews—believe that we didn’t know. Many assume that we couldn’t have done anything even if we had known. Meet Peter Bergson!

A Palestinian Jew who had served with the nationalist Irgun organization in pre-Israel Palestine, Peter Bergson (born Hillel Kook, 1915-2001), had come to the U.S. in 1940.

In America, this firebrand led what came to be known as the Bergson Group, whose strenuous efforts from 1942 to 1945 underscore just how much was known—and how much was attempted during those difficult years.

Sometimes vilified at the time, Bergson remains a controversial yet relatively obscure figure in the history of America and the Holocaust.

"Not Idly By" at last provides the riveting first-hand testimony of the charismatic and eloquent Bergson, who comments on the response to the crisis by non-European Jews and describes his group's determined efforts to fight the Holocaust. This is a one-sided view of those times: Peter Bergson’s.

Sold-out recent screening: Center for Jewish History, NYC, in association with the American Jewish Historical Society.

For more information, please go to varianfry.org.