Sol Bloom

Sol Bloom (March 9, 1870March 7, 1949) was an American song-writer and politician from New York City who began his career as an entertainment impresario and sheet music publisher in Chicago. He served fourteen terms in the United States House of Representatives from the West Side of Manhattan, from 1923 until his death in 1949.

Bloom was the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 1939 to 1947 and again in 1949, during a critical period of American foreign policy. In the run-up to World War II, he took charge of high-priority foreign-policy legislation for the Roosevelt Administration, including authorization for Lend Lease in 1940. He oversaw Congressional approval of the United Nations and of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) which worked to assist millions of displaced people in Europe. He was a member of the American delegation at the creation of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945 and at the Rio Conference of 1947.

In October 1943 Bloom tried to dissuade a group of about 400 rabbis not to march on Washington and try meeting President Roosevelt in order to ask him to help Jews in Europe. He felt he rabbis looked too unamerican and their march would be an unseemly spectacle. He opposed efforts by the Hillel Kook lead "Bergson Group" to convince the Roosevelt administration to help save the remnants of European Jews. Blum adopted the mainstream Zionist position that the only way to save the doomed Jews of Europe is that Mandatory Palestine should become the refuge for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In therory that may have served Zionist goals, but condemned Jews to death since Britain was unwilling to increase Jewish immigration to Plaestine. He urgently lobbied President Harry Truman in 1948 to immediately recognize the Jewish state of Israel, which Truman did. When the Republicans took control of the Foreign Affairs Committee after the 1946 election, Bloom worked closely with the new chairman, Charles Eaton. They secured approval for the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Provided by Wikipedia