This man, whom some Yishuv newspapers in 1943–1944 held directly responsible for the Zionist Executive’s failure to effect rescue – thereby making him into a symbol of, or a “main culprit” for, this body’s tragic failure at the human and national levels – was Yitzhak Gruenbaum (1879–1970). Accordingly, it is proper to devote a special chapter to discussion of his special attitude toward this problem. Gruenbaum was named chair of the Committee for the Jews of Occupied Europe (hereinafter: the Rescue Committee) that had been established in late January 1943, immediately after confirmation of the rumors about the magnitude of the mass murders being committed in the Nazi-occupied areas of Poland and the USSR. The Committee, founded after tortuous political negotiations among the Zionist parties and institutions and those of the Yishuv, comprised twelve members: five from the Jewish Agency Executive, three from the executive board of the National Committee of Kenesset Yisrael, two from Agudath Israel, and two from the Revisionist Zionist Organization.

At first glance, no senior Zionist personality was worthier and more fitting for this role. Gruenbaum was unparalleled among Zionist leaders in his knowledge of Polish and Russian Jewry. While still in his twenties, he, together with Ze’ev Jabotinsky, was among the authors of the “Work in the Present” program that was adopted at the 1906 Helsingfors Conference – the program that demanded cultural autonomy for the Jews in Imperial Russia together with the establishment of a national home in Palestine. In the independent Polish Republic established in 1918, Gruenbaum was, until 1933, the great and indefatigable champion of the civil and national rights of Polish Jewry; the most important delegate to the Polish Sejm that this population group spawned; the initiator of the Minorities Bloc, which defended all national minorities in Poland (Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Germans); and one of the most prominent personalities in the Congress of National Minorities in Europe – not to mention one of the most important leaders of the Zionist Organization in the 1920s.