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PREFACE
This book has been
difficult to research and to write. One does not
wish to believe the facts revealed by the documents on which it is
based.
America, the land of refuge, offered little succor. American Christians
forgot about the Good Samaritan. Even American Jews lacked the
unquenchable sense of urgency the crisis demanded. The Nazis were
the murderers, but we were the all too passive accomplices.
Between June 1941
and May 1945, five to six million Jews perished
at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Germany's control
over most of Europe meant that even a determined Allied rescue campaign
probably could not have saved as many as a third of those who
died. But a substantial commitment to rescue almost certainly could
have saved several hundred thousand of them, and done so without
compromising the war effort. The record clearly shows, though, that
such a campaign would have taken place only if the United States had
seized the initiative for it. But America did not act at all until late
in the
war, and even then, though it had some success, the effort was a very
limited one.
This book is a
report on America's response to the Nazi assault on
the European Jews. It is not a new subject; others have written on it
already, as have I, in my earlier book Paper Walls: America and the
Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941. What is new about the present volume is
that it brings out much information not previously published; and it
offers several new answers to the key question: Why did America fail
to carry out the kind of rescue effort that it could have?
In summary form,
these are the findings that I regard as most significant:
1. The American
State Department and the British Foreign Office
had no intention of rescuing large numbers of European Jews. On the
contrary, they continually feared that Germany or other Axis nations
might release tens of thousands of Jews into Allied hands. Any such
exodus would have placed intense pressure on Britain to open Palestine
and on the United States to take in more Jewish refugees, a situation
the two great powers did not want to face. Consequently, their policies
aimed at obstructing rescue possibilities and dampening public pressures
for government action,
2, Authenticated
information that the Nazis were systematically ex
terminating European Jewry was made public in the United States in
November 1942. President Roosevelt did nothing about the mass murder
for fourteen months, then moved only because he was confronted
with political pressures he could not avoid and because his
administration
stood on the brink of a nasty scandal over its rescue policies.
3. The War Refugee
Board, which the President then established to
save Jews and other victims of the Nazis, received little power, almost
no cooperation from Roosevelt or his administration, and grossly inad·
equate government funding. (Contributions from Jewish organizations,
which were necessarily limited, covered 90 percent of the WRB's costs.)
Through dedicated work by a relatively small number of people, the
WRB managed to help save approximately 200,000 Jews and at least
20,000 non-Jews.
4. Because of
State Department administrative policies, only 21,000
refugees were allowed to enter the United States during the three and
one-half years the nation was at war with Germany. That amounted to
10 percent of the number who could have been legally admitted under
the immigration quotas during that period.
5. Strong popular
pressure for action would have brought a much
fuller government commitment to rescue and would have produced
it sooner. Several factors hampered the growth of public pressure.
Among them were anti-Semitism and anti-immigration attitudes, both
widespread in American society in that era and both entrenched in
Congress; the mass media's failure to publicize Holocaust news, even
though the wire services and other news sources made most of the
information available to them; the near silence of the Christian
churches
and almost all of their leadership; the indifference of most of the
nation's
political and intellectual leaders; and the President's failure to
speak out on the issue.
6. American Jewish
leaders worked to publicize the European Jewish
situation and pressed for government rescue steps. But their
effectiveness
was importantly diminished by their inability to mount a sustained
or unified drive for government action, by diversion of energies into
fighting among the several organizations, and by failure to assign top
priority to the rescue issue.
7. In 1944 the
United States War Department rejected several appeals
to bomb the Auschwitz gas chambers and the railroads leading to
Auschwitz, claiming that such actions would divert essential airpower
from decisive operations elsewhere. Yet in the very months that it was
turning down the pleas, numerous massive American bombing raids
were taking place within fifty miles of Auschwitz. Twice during that
time large fleets of American heavy bombers struck industrial targets in
the Auschwitz complex itself, not five miles from the gas chambers.
8. Analysis of the
main rescue proposals put forward at the time, but
brushed aside by government officials, yields convincing evidence that
much more could have been done to rescue Jews, if a real effort had
been made. The record also reveals that the reasons repeatedly invoked
by government officials for not being able to rescue Jews could be put
aside when it came to other Europeans who needed help.
9. Franklin
Roosevelt's indifference to so momentous an historical
event as the systematic annihilation of European Jewry emerges as the
worst failure of his presidency.
10. Poor though it
was, the American rescue record was better than
that of Great Britain, Russia, or the other Allied nations. This was the
case because of the work of the War Refugee Board, the fact that
American Jewish organizations were willing to provide most of the
WRB's funding, and the overseas rescue operations of several Jewish
organizations.
***
Parts of this book
are critical of the American Jewish leadership in the
Holocaust era. The policies of Zionist leaders are particularly
questioned,
in part because their movement held the greatest potential for
effective Jewish action. This criticism is made reluctantly. Yet it must
be included if the report is to be honest and objective. Several of
those
leaders have since criticized their own failures in the face of the
catastrophe. [1]
I have written not
as an insider. I am a Christian, a Protestant of
Yankee and Swedish descent. But I have advocated a Jewish state for a
very long time, and I would undoubtedly have backed the Zionist movement
during the World War II era had I been old enough to be involved
in political affairs. Today I remain strongly pro-Zionist and I am a
resolute supporter of the state of Israel. My commitment to Zionism
and to Israel has been confirmed and increased by years of study of the
Holocaust. I look upon Israel as the most important line of defense
against anti-Semitism in the world. Had there been a Jewish state in the
1933 to 1945 era, it would be much less painful today for all of us to
confront the history of European Jewry during World War II.
A final comment;
then a question. The Holocaust was certainly a
Jewish tragedy. But it was not only a Jewish tragedy. It was also
a
Christian tragedy, a tragedy for Western civilization, and a tragedy for
all humankind. The killing was done by people, to other people, while
still other people stood by. The perpetrators, where they were not
actually Christians, arose from a Christian culture. The bystanders most
capable of helping were Christians. The point should have been obvious.
Yet comparatively few American non-Jews recognized that the
plight of the European Jews was their plight too. Most were either
unaware, did not care, or saw the European Jewish catastrophe as a
Jewish problem, one for Jews to deal with. That explains, in part, why
the United States did so little to help.
Would the reaction
be different today? Would Americans be more
sensitive, less self-centered, more willing to make sacrifices, less
afraid
of differences now than they were then?
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