Hillel Kook
Revisionist Zionist activist and politician (1915-2001)
Hillel Kook (Hebrew: הלל קוק; 24 July 1915 –18 August 2001), also known as Peter Bergson (Hebrew: פיטר ברגסון), was a Revisionist Zionist activist and politician.
Kook led the Irgun's efforts in the United States during World War II and the Holocaust in order to promote Zionism, attempting thereby to save the abandoned Jews of Europe. His rescue group's activism was a factor leading to President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishing the War Refugee Board, which rescued as many as 200,000 European Jews, partly via the Wallenberg mission. He later served in Israel's first Knesset, but resigned in 1951 after becoming disillusioned with Israeli politics.
Early life
Hillel Kook was born in Kriukai in the Russian Empire (today in Lithuania) in 1915, the son of Rabbi Dov Kook, the younger brother of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine. In 1924, his family immigrated to Palestine, where his father became the first Chief Rabbi of Afula. Hillel Kook received a religious education in Afula and attended his uncle's Religious Zionist yeshiva, Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem. He also attended classes in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University, where he became a member of Sohba ("Comradeship"), a group of students who would later become prominent in the Revisionist movement, including David Raziel and Avraham Stern.
Military career
Kook joined the pre-state Haganah militia in 1930 following widespread Arab riots. In 1931, Kook helped found the Irgun (Etzel), a group of militant Haganah dissidents, and fought with them in Palestine through most of the 1930s.
“Hillel Kook” enters the record as revisionist Zionist activist and politician (1915-2001). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hillel, Kook and Revisionist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q438286. VIAF identifies the subject as 47621193. The Library of Congress control number is n88005778. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 2001, 1951 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hillel Kook” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.