Washington – Newly Uncovered Documents: FDR Pushed To Get Jews To Safety In 1930s

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    Washington – Newly uncovered documents reveal that President Franklin D. Roosevelt worked quietly in the late 1930s to find havens for European Jews, contradicting the view that he ignored their plight in the years leading up to the Holocaust.

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    Roosevelt was “a master politician who tried to carry out some humanitarian steps while juggling political and military considerations,” writes historian Richard Breitman, co-editor of Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald (1935-1945) released today. The book draws on papers at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.

    McDonald was chairman of Roosevelt’s advisory committee on refugees. He met Adolf Hitler in 1933 and was convinced the Nazi planned to exterminate Europe’s Jews, prompting him to sound warnings. He later was the first U.S. ambassador to Israel.

    Despite FDR’s popularity with Jewish Americans, the influential 1984 book The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust argued that he did little to save their European brethren.

    Breitman says McDonald’s papers soften that view, showing that in 1938, Roosevelt:

    • Cut red tape that kept immigration quotas from being filled, allowing entry for 27,370 Germans — most of them Jews.

    • Hoped to resettle millions of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe to other countries, mostly in Latin America. He called an international conference to line up money and support.

    • Promised to ask Congress for $150 million to help resettle refugees if Britain allowed more Jews into Palestine and private funds could be raised.

    Roosevelt’s efforts, including the conference in Évian, France, failed. Most countries refused to admit Jews amid a depression and anti-Semitism, Breitman says. Opposition also was strong at the State Department and in Congress, which voted in 1939 not to let in 20,000 German Jewish children.

    Breitman says Roosevelt is unfairly criticized for not supporting the bill and refusing to admit 900 Jewish refugees on the St. Louis, which sailed from Germany 70 years ago this month. Cuba, the U.S. and Canada turned away those on the “voyage of the damned,” and the ship returned to Europe. Hundreds of passengers died in the Holocaust.

    Roosevelt “made a decision to go for big results,” Breitman says, adding that the president viewed letting in small numbers of Jews as “a gesture, not a solution” to the larger refugee problem.

    In 1940, after the start of World War II in Europe, Roosevelt’s priorities turned to national security, Breitman writes.

    Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute, which studies America’s response to the Holocaust, says the book won’t absolve Roosevelt. He says FDR failed to take “concrete steps” such as giving Jewish refugees temporary haven in U.S. territories such as the Virgin Islands.

    “Instead, sadly, the president who claimed to be a humanitarian and champion of the little man refrained from taking such lifesaving steps,” he says.

    Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta, says the book will force historians to rethink their conclusions. “This is consensus-changing,” she says. “He may deserve a lot more credit than he is getting.”


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    24 Comments
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    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Revisionist History!

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    FDR obviously didn’t do enough and this will not sway my opinion. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_St._Louis

    NYCESQ
    NYCESQ
    14 years ago

    The Rabbonim at the time begged him to bomb the tracks. He refused that request eventhough the resources to bomb said tracks were readily available and would have had a minimal if any effect on the war effort. Draw your own conclusion about this “great” man.

    BALONEY
    BALONEY
    14 years ago

    Roosevelt was a sonei yisroel and did NOTHING to help European Jewry.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    isent he the guy that dident let a ship full of jews enter america and thay had to go back and get killed

    Daniel
    Daniel
    14 years ago

    It’s sad that we can’t accept that some people are just antisemetic.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    He just tried to foist the issue onto others; even if this new information is true his so called attempts were not practical. The only thing he could have done was to admit refugees himself and this he did not do. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was as morally crippled as he was physically paralyzed. Ymach shmo veyeabed zichro.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Read while 6 million died by henrey morse and u will see exactly how that mamzer sonei yisroel acted,we know that he looked for OTHER places for the yiden to go,and the evian conference was a sham and a way of passing the buck and nothing came out of it

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    For everyone criticizing FDR (myself included) , don’t we also have to ask ourselves what we have done to bring victims of the genocides in Rwanda, Darfur and elsewhere to safety?

    Moe
    Moe
    14 years ago

    “Roosevelt “made a decision to go for big results,” Breitman says, adding that the president viewed letting in small numbers of Jews as “a gesture, not a solution” to the larger refugee problem. “

    .. and therefore you send 900 Jews to the gas chambers? That’s sick! How is this supposed to change our view him??

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    next book to come out the Holocaust didn’t happen

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    What was done before ’39 (or thought of being done) is totally irrelevant.
    What was NOT done in the war years counts.
    FDR is in Gehinnom now by any account.

    Moshe
    Moshe
    14 years ago

    Why does it seem to me that Orthodox Jews have a knee-jerk allergic reaction to hearing any possibility that FDR tried to help the Jews? Is it possible at all that he tried to help the Jews? Have we read the books and arguments on both sides of the issue? This book is being published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Do we have no respect for the museum’s opinion? Is it possible that we’ve overstepped the bounds on our expertise?

    Charlie Hall
    Charlie Hall
    14 years ago

    An important issue not mentioned: Roosevelt had NO authority to admit Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States because of the racist immigration law that had been passed in the 1920s. The annual quota for all immigrants from Poland, including non-Jews was under 6,000, from Lithuania and Hungary under five hundred each.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    please don’t use wiki as a source of information. I can write on that site that the sun is green and it will b put on the site as acceptable

    Jewish mother
    Jewish mother
    14 years ago

    Rabbi Stephen S. Wise convinced Roosevelt not to help European Jewry. Let us not forget!

    Toras Moshe Emess
    Toras Moshe Emess
    14 years ago

    In 1938, “Rabbi” Stephen Wise, President of the CCAR (the Reform movemets “rabbinical” board), leader of the American Jewish Congress and the principal American spokesperson for Zionism wrote a letter in which he OPPOSED any change in U.S. immigration laws which would enable Jews to find refuge. He stated: “It may interest you to know that some weeks ago the representatives of all the leading Jewish organizations met in conference … It was decided that no Jewish organization would, at this time, sponsor a bill which would in any way alter the immigration laws.”

    Could this have, at the very least, been a contributing factor to the defeat of legislation that would have opened US borders to Jewish refugees?

    Also in 1938 Chaim Weizman declared “We don’t want them either.” He said: “Palestine cannot absorb the Jews of Europe. We want only the best of Jewish youth to come to us. We want only the educated to enter Palestine for the purpose of increasing its culture. The other Jews will have to stay where they are and face whatever fate awaits them. These millions of Jews are dust on the wheels of history and they may have to be blown away. We don’t want them pouring into Palestine. We don’t want Tel Aviv to become another low-grade ghetto.”

    Could this, at the very least, been a contributing factor to why the infamous Evian conference failed?

    It is easy to excoriate Roosevelt for not doing enough during the Holocaust. After all, he is a goy. But we have to entertain the possibility that he and other goyim didn’t do enough to help the Jews of Europe becuase liberal and Zionist JEWS urged them not to.

    Why do we constantly blame the goyim for their indifference to the fate of the Jews of Europe when WE were NO LESS indifferent? Answer: because it’s easier than admitting our own complicity. It’s high time that we stopped pointer the finger at THEM and point it at ourselves.