Quiet diplomacy rarely makes headlines, but one example of the art received public recognition this month when France bestowed one of its highest honors on Rabbi Gary Greenebaum.
As a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher of world issues for seniors in Los Angeles, I began yesterday\’s class by playing a taped interview of Michael Moore talking about his movie, \”Fahrenheit 9/11.\” I had suggested that the class go see the film, so we could discuss it.
Consul General — now Ambassador — Yuval Rotem arrived as a 39-year-old career diplomat in Los Angeles in September 1999, with his wife, Miri, and their three children. He will return to Jerusalem Aug. 16, leaving behind hundreds of friends who consider him one of the most popular and effective envoys to have represented his country in Southern California, the Southwestern United States and Hawaii.
During the darkest days of the Holocaust, 63 diplomats from 24 countries risked their careers, in some cases their lives, by issuing unauthorized visas and protective letters to save an estimated 200,000 Jews.The deeds of four of these brave envoys are honored in the documentary film \”Diplomats for the Damned,\” to air Sun., Nov. 26, on the History Channel.
\”Sugihara\” tells of the diplomat who defied his government by issuing thousands of visas to help Jews flee Kovno, Lithuania, on the cusp of the Shoah.
\”You can\’t confront evil on its own ground without becoming part of it,\” muses diplomat Heinrich Zwygart in \”The Envoy,\” and his self-recognition clearly applies to Switzerland, the country he represented faithfully in Berlin during the six years of World War II.
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