August 18, 2005
Maurice Rosenblatt, a lobbyist for the rescue of Holocaust refugees and the creation of the State of Israel, has died in Washington at the age of 90. During the 1930s and 1940s, Rosenblatt became a union activist, civil rights organizer and leader of Friends of Democracy, a grass-roots political action group that fought against local fascist and racist organizations. He later served in the US Army and was stationed in the South Pacific. Upon his return to the United States, he joined the American League for a Free Palestine, better known as the Bergson Group after its leader, Peter Bergson, also known as Hillel Kook. Rosenblatt soon relocated to Washington to become the League’s chief lobbyist. In 1953, at the height of Senator McCarthy’s anti-Communist campaign, Rosenblatt established what he called the Anti-McCarthy Clearing House, which played a key role in exposing false statements by McCarthy and mobilized members of Congress to oppose him.
