Allied leaders were aware of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt while it was going on but refrained from aiding the Jewish fighters, according to a former senior Israeli official who has authored a new book about the revolt.

Prof. Moshe Arens, a former defense minister and Israeli ambassador to the United States, described the Allies' abandonment of the Warsaw Ghetto rebels at a recent symposium organized by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. It was held at the Orthodox Union's Israel Center, in Jerusalem.

Arens's book, Flags Over the Ghetto, was recently published by Yediot books, a division of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. An English-language edition is due to be released early next year.

In his remarks at the Wyman event, Arens pointed out that "the Warsaw Ghetto revolt was no secret - it was reported in The New York Times and other media while it was still in progress." He said the Allies could have provided significant assistance to the rebels by sending money for them to purchase weapons from the Polish underground.

Instead, the Roosevelt and Churchill administrations adhered strictly to their policy of prohibiting the sending of any funds into Axis territory because of the chance that the Germans might intercept it.

Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff, who also spoke at the meeting, noted that when the Polish Home Army launched its own revolt against the Germans in Warsaw, in 1944, the Allies air-dropped food and supplies to them. He said President Roosevelt's support for the 1944 air-drops was motivated in part by his fear of losing Polish-American votes in that year's presidential election.

Arens noted that when Zionist emissaries in Geneva began smuggling money and food packages into Warsaw, some American Jewish leaders pressed them to stop. He quoted a letter sent by Rabbi Stephen Wise, leader of the American Zionist movement and American Jewish Congress, telling the Geneva office of the World Jewish Congress that "not one more package" should be sent to Warsaw, because it violated Allied policy.

James Blum, a member of the Wyman Institute's board of directors, chaired the meeting.