A New York
Times feature story, “FDR and Jews: Book Tries for
Balanced View on Roosevelt and Jews” March 9, 2013, took up a subject I
addressed some seven years ago. As suggested by the Times headline, the new book attempts
to revise the widely held
understanding of FDR as unwilling
to do much to help save Europe’s threatened Jews. According to the article, FDR and the Jews contends that while FDR might have done more, he saved, by means of “little known initiatives…several hundred
thousand Jews” a total which “exceeds that of any subsequent president in responding to genocide in the
midst of fierce political opposition.”
As it
happens I had a slight personal
connection with the subject in that as an infant I was one of about 1,000 (mostly Jewish) refugees that FDR
managed to bring to the U.S., by ship from Italy, in the summer of 1944, on
condition that we be repatriated to Europe at the end of hostilities. (In the aftermath, under the Truman
administration, a law was passed that allowed us to remain in the U.S.)
Two
books were written about our little group. One of those books, Haven, (and an undistinguished TV movie based on the book), was by noted journalist and author, Ruth Gruber, whom I and my family met around
1990.
My understanding (backed up in part by the March
NYT article) is that the view of FDR as unwilling to help European Jews is
still widely held. In a typical instance, I recall happening to catch Madeline
Albright on CSPAN II Book TV last year discussing
her memoir where the subject came up. As a young Czech girl, her family – one
of the fortunate ones -- had to relocate more than once during the Hitler years. Although I don’t’ recall that she actually
used the word reprehensible, she didn’t hide her indignation at what seemed to
her to be FDR’s lack of compassion behalf of the wartime refugees.
Ruth
Gruber’s book repeated the same theme of FDR’s indifference (at best) to the
fate of the Jews with the added twist of
her research findings in State
Department files in preparation for her indispensable
and much appreciated mission as liaison
to our little group.
(Here
I copy from my 2006 article on the subject,” FDR, Gruber and me: Zionists
stymie WWII rescue plan.” (available on the internet)
According
to Gruber (Haven, Ch.2),President
Roosevelt was forced into making some kind of demonstration on behalf of
European, especially Jewish, refugees because of the embarrassing publication
of war time cables from the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland to Washington. In these documents, the State Department revealed
its disinterest if not outright anti-Semitic hostility toward the mostly Jewish
victims of Nazi persecution by ordering their colleagues in Switzerland to
discontinue sending Washington such news.
In
Gruber’s version, the shocking disclosure of these communications empowered
members of the Jewish community to apply to a reluctant President Roosevelt,
with a proposal to save hundreds of thousands of European Jews. In Gruber’s
version, FDR finally agreed that the U.S. provide temporary haven for 1,000
refugees.
I
believed Gruber’s story and repeated it often to friends. Only later did I
learn that the very opposite was the truth. The real FDR was very much aware of
and troubled by the plight of the wartime refugees and he proposed a plan to
save half a million or more. He envisioned an agreement with such countries as
the UK, Canada, Australia, and others, with the U.S. and the U.K. leading the
way. Both countries would shelter some 150,000 “displaced persons” as they were
then called. FDR’s emissary for this plan managed to get agreement in principle
from the British but in the end the plan was vetoed by the Zionists. The Jewish
leadership were afraid that providing haven for European Jewish refugees
anywhere but Palestine would be at cross purposes with their plan for a Jewish
state.
Lilienthal rebuts popular view of FDR –- Points to Zionists
Noted
anti-Zionist author Alfred Lilienthal tells this story in his important and
effectively buried book What Price Israel. www.alfredlilienthal.com/what_price_israel_2.htm
President
Roosevelt was deeply concerned with the plight of the European refugees and
thought that all the free nations of the world ought to accept a certain number
of immigrants, irrespective of race, creed, color or political belief. The
President hoped that the rescue of 500,000 Displaced Persons could be achieved
by such a generous grant of a worldwide political asylum. In line with this
humanitarian idea, Morris Ernst, New York attorney and close friend of the
President went to London in the middle of the war to see if the British would
take in 100,000 or 200,000 uprooted people. The President had reasons to assume
that Canada, Australia and the South American countries would gladly open their
doors. And if such good examples were set by other nations, Mr. Roosevelt felt
that the American Congress could be "educated to go back to our
traditional position of asylum." The key was in London. Would Morris Ernst
succeed there? Mr. Ernst came home to report, and this is what took place in
the White House (as related by Mr. Ernst to a Cincinnati audience in 1950):
Ernst:
"We are at home plate. That little island [and it was during the second
Blitz that he visited England] on a properly representative program of a World
Immigration Budget, will match the United States up to 150,000.
Roosevelt:
"150,000 to England—150,000 to match that in the United States—pick up
200,000 or 300,000 elsewhere, and we can start with half a million of these
oppressed people."
A week
later, or so, Mr. Ernst and his wife again visited the President.
Roosevelt
(turning to Mrs. Ernst): "Margaret, can't you get me a Jewish Pope? I
cannot stand it any more. I have got to be careful that when Stevie Wise leaves
the White House he doesn't see Joe Proskauer on the way in." Then, to Mr.
Ernst: "Nothing doing on the program. We can't put it over because the
dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won't stand for it."
"It's
impossible! Why?" asked Ernst.
Roosevelt:
"They are right from their point of view. The Zionist movement knows that
Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that
they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors, 'There is no other
place this poor Jew can go.' But if there is a world political asylum for all
people irrespective of race, creed or color, they cannot raise their money.
Then the people who do not want to give the money will have an excuse to say
'What do you mean, there is no place they can go but Palestine? They are the
preferred wards of the world."
Morris
Ernst, shocked, first refused to believe his leader and friend. He began to
lobby among his influential Jewish friends for this world program of rescue,
without mentioning the President's or the British reaction. As he himself has
put it: "I was thrown out of the parlors of friends of mine who very
frankly said 'Morris, this is treason. You are undermining the Zionist
movement.' " He ran into the same reaction amongst all Jewish groups and
their leaders. Everywhere he found "a deep, genuine, often fanatically
emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement" in men
"who are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own."
This
response of Zionism ended the remarkable Roosevelt effort to rescue Europe's
Displaced Persons.
