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80 Years Ago, Pageants at Madison Square Garden Sought to Halt Nazi Genocide Against European Jews
(Forward) Frederic J. Frommer - On March 9, 1943, a pair of sold-out pageants at Madison Square Garden sought to pressure the U.S. and its allies to halt the Nazi genocide against European Jews. The "We Will Never Die" pageant was repeated in several cities, including Washington, D.C., where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, 200 members of Congress, and seven Supreme Court justices attended. The cast of hundreds included 20 rabbis rescued from European ghettos and actors portraying Jewish soldiers fighting for the American military. The backdrop was an enormous display of the Ten Commandments, each tablet 40 feet high. The New York Times reported on the "dramatic mass memorial to the 2,000,000 Jews killed in Europe" by that date. "The memorial was staged to stir the Allied nations to stop the slaughter of a people by the Germans." The final scene depicts the end of the war, as a narrator predicts: "There will be no Jews left in Europe....The four million left to kill are being killed, according to plan....No voice is heard to cry halt to the slaughter, no government speaks to bid the murder of human millions end." The pageant ended with participants singing the Jewish prayer for the dead, the kaddish.