The document reached two of the leading Jewish institutions, the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) and the World Jewish Congress (WJC), who decided to invite Professor Norman Bentwich to visit Ethiopia and report. Bentwich, then a spry seventy-eight, paid his first visit to the Falasha villages in 1961. He came from a well-known Anglo-Jewish family which followed a tradition of combining the best in English and Jewish culture, and, in his words, devoting themselves to public service and humanity. A lifelong Zionist, with a fine record in the First World War, he had been Attorney-General in Palestine in the Mandatory Government and subsequently became Professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His home was in England though he travelled frequently to Israel, 'a wanderer', as he called himself, 'between two worlds'. During the Second World War, after a short spell in the Royal Air Force, he had acted as consultant on international relations to Haile Selassie and, in 1943, on a visit to Addis Ababa, he had met Tamrat Emanuel, who was then working in the Ministry of Education. All his life Bentwich had been a fearless champion of the oppressed and a tireless seeker after peace. During and after the war, among his multifarious activities, he had worked ceaselessly on behalf of the victims of the Nazis and was no less indefatigable in his quest for reconciliation between Jews and Arabs, while, in Israel, he had fought the orthodox rabbis for the rights of the dark-skinned Jews from India. He was well suited to become an advocate for the Falashas but, after nine years of endeavour and three more visits to Ethiopia, in 1963, 1966 and 1970, he was appalled by the continuing Jewish neglect of the community. He was still struggling on their behalf when he died, in London, in April 1971 - at the age of eighty-eight.

Bentwich recognised that the great danger to the continued