FDR and The Holocaust: A Breach of Faith Kindle Edition

Remarkably considered accurately reported and described approach to the status of FDR within the country and the enormous pressures applied and evident and existent in the world regarding Anti-Semitism and the unwillingness of almost al parties and countries to open their doors to the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people facing the growing power and annihilation promoted by the Nazi regime.Clarifies so many complex situations and challenging decisions that occurred or couldnt be implemented . Required reading ot understand the developments leading into WWII and the aftermath with the statehood of Israel.

FDR's share of the responsibility of the West, and the US in particular, for the failure to help rescue the Jewish victims of Naziism, has long been controversial. There is no doubt that FDR refused to help Jewish refugees enter the US or, for that matter, any of the territories. Even when the Philippines, then a US territory, offered to take thousands of refugees, it was blocked from doing so by the US Government.The problem with trying to evaluate and assign blame is that FDR had valid excuses for refusing to appear to be helping save Jews. He argued that if it seemed that he was steering the US into the war and risking the lives of American boys just to save Jews, he would not be able to get Congress to approve rearmament in 1940, or to help England in its battle with Germany before December 7, 1941. Another recent book, Breitman and Lichtman, "FDR and the Jews", (one of the authors is the official historian at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC), makes this argument very forcibly, and should be read together with the Medoff book. In retrospect, it is hard to believe the extent of anti-semitism in the US during those years. Congress was even worse, and Jewish leaders were afraid to ask Congress to liberalize the immigration laws to help the refugees because of the likelihood that Congress would make the laws more restrictive, not less restrictive. Much of the blame is also placed on the State Department (on this point, another recent book, Larson, "In the Garden of the Beasts", is devastating).Both FDR and even Eleanor when she was very young, uttered and wrote some pretty vicious anti-semitic comments (so did HST). But Eleanor became a champion for all minorities, and when he became president, HST overcame his own biases to do what was right for both Jews and Blacks. FDR did nothing for either minority.So why did FDR fail to act to help the refugees? Was it strictly because of the political exigencies of the time, or was it because of his own private but clear anti-semitism? Were the political problems the real reason, or just a cover for his inaction? That is the question that is difficult to answer.In the end, there are too many open questions about FDR's reticence, which the Medoff book covers. Most of the available immigration quotas were deliberately left unfilled and the FDR rationale for not helping Jews does not explain why these quotas were kept unavailable. Nor can one just blame the State Department--those officials were all FDR appointees and he has to be assigned responsibility for their policies. More, the Medoff book shows that in too many cases FDR signed off or approved those State Department actions in writing.The one fault with the Medoff book is that it sometimes overstates or simplifies issues. An example is the offer of the Dominican Republic to accept 100,000 refugees. Medoff asserts that the US arbitrarily blocked that country from helping. The Breitman/Lichtman book offers a much fuller explanation of what happened and why the US was fully justified in refusing to cooperate with the Dominican Republic. The island's dictator, Truijilo, was persona non grata, having just murdered about 18,000 people on the island (a forerunner of one Idi Amin).He wanted trade concessions from the US and financial payments for accepting the refugees, while the land being offered for settlement of the refugees was close to uninhabitable). Hard to blame the US for refusing to go along with that.On balance, the Breitman/Lichtman book is very well written and offers an insight into the US community that many of us have conveniently forgotten, but the Medoff book is more convincing on the ultimate question of FDR's responsibility for the complete inaction of the US.

When I was growing up, my parents thought F.D.R. was the greatest thing ever in this country. I changed my opinion of him from reading history books (that they would never have in public schools) which informed that he knew that a great percentage of our Pacific fleet was at Pearl Harbor and that the Japanese were on their way to attack. He did nothing to scatter the fleet because he wanted so much to get into the war that he let many of our sailors and marines die in the attack. I had read that he was "indifferent" toward the Jewish plight but this book further points out what F.D.R. was all about. How can history paint him as a great man? He was born into privilege and it wasn't until the first lady prodded him that he did what little he did do for the Jewish people. Oh yes, the book was enlightening and pushed F.D.R. further down my list of good presidents.

Medoff spares the great FDR no punches with this stunning catalogue of his seeming indifference towards the fate of the millions of Jews marked for murder as the Nazis conquered Europe, invaded Soviet Russia, and made plans for the exploitation of the Chosen People's confiscated wealth and their pitiless mass extermination. By 1944, it was well-known in both the British and American governments at the highest levels that several million human beings (both Jews and non-Jews alike, but mostly Jews) had been gassed at the extermination camps at Auschwitz, Poland.It is interesting to note that some of the survivors, among them Elie Wiesel, would just as soon have perished from Allied bombings made on the camps if bombers had ever been sent in great numbers. Only one Allied plane ever flew over Auschwitz, one which haphazardly hit what was probably a fuel refinery, killing some innocent prisoners, who might have survived the war, and more than two dozen S.S. personnel, who thereby suffered a death worse than hanging. As the plane flew over the compound, its crew took pictures of what were later ascertained to be pictures of prisoners waiting in line to be gassed at Birkenau.The author documents clearly that FDR knew of these atrocities and refused to utilize any of the necessary military hardware or manpower to spare Jewish lives. Reading this is riveting, but it does not give one peace of mind.

It gave me a lot of information about the refusal of FDR and the State Dept.and their complete indifference and unwillingness to lift a finger to help save even a small amount of European Jewry. Even when quota numbers were available , consulates were instructed not to issue them.Every charge that the author makes, is well documented. Truly a great book of history, regarding that period.Bernard RothFair Lawn, NJ

FDR has always been one of my heroes. I have maintained that he towered over every president in the 20th century. When I read a review of this book, I couldn't believe the accusations! Upon reading it, based on the many citations and actual photos of documents to back up the author's premise that FDR was as antisemetic as all his contemporaries in the affluent class of the thirties, I must agree that FDR was antisemetic, as well as anti-immigrant and anti-Japanese & Chinese. The saying, "All heroes have clay feet" is apt here. A fascinating read.