Jewish hero

Rose loved publicity, but the fame-hungry songwriter, nightclub owner, theatrical producer, and showman kept one bit of praise secret.

"Dearest Mr. Rose, If ever in your life you have a special inner wish that calls for fulfillment, think of the mother who prayed for her beloved son every day and included in this prayer the one who saved her child." 

That is from a 1939 letter written by the mother of a Jewish refugee Rose rescued from Nazi Europe.

He never told anyone about the rescue. Being good was bad for his image. 

"I'm in a racket," Billy Rose boasted to columnist Mark Hellinger. "I'm not supposed to have any friends." 

We Will Never Die premiered on March 9, 1943, at New York's Madison Square Garden. The goal was to pressure Washington to save Jews marked for death in the Holocaust. Billy Rose produced the event and with screenwriter Ben Hecht served as national co-chairman of the WWND Committee. 

Tough guy

That quote captures the public face he liked to show. Rose flaunted his contempt for anything that did not contribute to the bottom line. 

"He was cruel and cold," said his secretary Helen Schrank. "If you said anything sentimental, he would say, 'What are we, back on Second Avenue.'" That was where Yiddish theaters, with their often maudlin plays, once thrived. 

But the Jewish catastrophe posed by the Nazis forced Rose to make an exception to his hardboiled outlook. Ruthless individualism had its limits. The mutual assistance of peoplehood turned out to be as crucial as ever. 

What started with saving one refugee continued and grew, and during the war Rose produced We Will Never Die, a spectacular theatrical pageant that urged the American government to save European Jews marked for death. 

After the war he visited Jews stranded in Europe's displaced persons camps, worked behind the scenes to secure them better conditions, and hatched a plan to adopt twenty-five refugee children. 

The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) that operated the DP camps was outraged by Rose's "wild scheme" and was ready to marshal troops to stop him (see below).

Courtesy of the UNRRA Archives, New York.

After his adoption plan failed Rose funded an American orphanage for survivors. 

No category could hold him. He took on important fundraising for the mainstream United Jewish Appeal and at the same time worked with the militant Zionists known as The Bergson Boys and financed the drama A Flag Is Born, which funded efforts to break the British blockade and bring Holocaust survivors to Palestine. 

In 1949, he became a public supporter of the new state of Israel and received letters of introduction to President Chaim Weizmann and Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who during a personal meeting practically ordered Rose to help Israel.  

Rose with Ben Gurion in about 1964. Courtesy of Government Press Office, Israel

Rose was the first to publicize the idea that Israel should raise money by issuing bonds, played murky roles in an Israeli arms deal and a plan to free Jews imprisoned in Romania, and in 1961 volunteered to head worldwide fundraising—and the solicitation of gifts of art—for Jerusalem's planned Israel Museum. 

David Reshef Pikiwiki Israel [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

He had already promised to fund the design and construction there of a sculpture garden and donate his art collection to fill it. It is still known today as the Billy Rose Art Garden.