Shmuel Merlin ^People

Samuel Merlin, author of Millions of Jews to Rescue, was a member of theIrgun Zvai Leumi (the National Military Organization or Irgun) - the right-wing Revisio- nist underground associated with Zeev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin.Merlin labored for decades on what, as an actual Bergson Group participant,must have been an emotionally difficult task. Although he succeeded in writing oneother book for publication in 1969 (The Search for Peace in the Middle East), thissecond book was not published until 2011, fifteen years after his death. Ably editedand annotated by Dr. Rafael Medoff, ti is the author's account of the Bergson Boysled by Hillel Kook - better known by his alias, Peter Bergson. Bergson and his com-rades, all veterans of the Irgun in their twenties and thirties, first came to the US fromPalestine to agitate for a Jewish army, but later achieved fame rallying Americanopinion for the rescue of Europe's Jews from Hitler's genocide. The initial objective ofthe Bergson Boys - Bergson, Merlin, Eri Jabotinsky (son of the founder of RevisionistZionism), Alex Rafaeli, and Yitzhak Ben-Ami (father of JStreet's president, JeremyBen-Ami) - the creation of an army of Palestinian and stateless Jews to fight Hitler, merits further exploration. Merlin states that 133,000 to 135,000 Palestinian Jews hadvolunteered to fight, but the service ofmost was refused because of the British insis- tence that Palestinian Arabs ion on the basis ofone-to-one parity.