New book says FDR tried to save Jewish refugees

[sabra]

Source: AP

NEW YORK (AP) — A new book disputes widely held assumptions that President Franklin D. Roosevelt ignored the plight of Jews under the Nazis.

The book claims that he instead tried to arrange resettlement for thousands of refugees in the late 1930s, only to be thwarted by his own State Department.

The New York-based Center for Jewish History is holding a news conference Friday to publicize the book titled "Refugees and Rescue."

The book will be released later this month. It is being published by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hchuIzkPKvPkZSiliU7yGsAka8yQD97TGHHO0

[Deep13]

1. Doesn't FDR seem cartoonishly good?

He's like a comic book hero who always did the right thing.

[YOY]

2. Except that Japanese Inernment....I'd say so.

And some here seem to think that stinking rotten turd floating is a sea of punch has ruined the whole of the punch.

[Deep13]

4. Yeah, except for that. nt

[izquierdista]

16. Except

There were no race riots where angry mobs of whites killed the nearest Japanese they could find. Perhaps his abuse of their civil rights wasn't so off base after all, considering that some people wearing turbans on 9/12/01 were shot and killed for "looking Arab".

[superconnected]

19. Actually crap like that did happen. Many people here turned against the Japanese just like they did

with the Muslims. I'm in the Pacific Northwest. One book that mentions this is Snow Falling on Cedars. Read what the people were writing to the news papers - canceling their subscriptions etc. if the paper sounded like it was against the Japanese being interned.

[LeftyMom]

20. There sure were. Read a history book sometime.

Plus people used the evacuation order as an excuse to steal from Japanese families by either buying what they owned for pennies on the dollar (they knew they couldn't take much with them to the camps) or just plain stealing it outright after they were removed.

The whole episode was shameful.

My first grade teacher spent her childhood in a converted horse stall with tar paper walls. In the summers it was over a hundred degrees. In the winter it snowed. It's a wonder she didn't die of exposure in conditions like those, with inadequate food and barely enough of anything else.

She was a small child when they were taken, somehow a threat to national security even as her older brothers were off fighting and dying in the US Army. Even as an old woman, she still couldn't talk about it without tearing up. The strange part was that she could barely bring herself to complain about it, her words were very measured and cautious. I suspect that after all of those years, some part of her still was afraid to seem disloyal by complaining too much.

[Thothmes]

18. Don't forget authorizing

assassinations.

[Infinite Hope]

25. He did a lot of good, but I think he's also overrated.

He's given too much credit for the things he did as if he created the economic plan himself. It was created in its entirety by an economist and he merely signed onto it out of desperation after a period of hesitation.

[Baby Snooks]

3. If so then damn his silence...

Who needs a president who cowers in the corner? Which is what FDR did if this is true. He should have stood up to his State Department. He should have stood up for what was right. Instead of remaining silent.

[baldguy]

5. It seems out of character for him.

His State Dept was HIS State Dept. As an aristocratic patrician Northeasterner, he would have expected his wishes to be carried out. And, contrary to the public's perception, when FDR wanted something he could be a real bastard when it came to getting it.

[atreides1]

7. Wasn't only the State Department

I would suggest that a read of the book "While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy", would give you a better concept of what and who FDR was up against.


'In 1939, Hull advised President Roosevelt to reject the SS St. Louis carrying 936 Jews seeking asylum. Hull's decision sent these people back to Europe on the heels of the Nazi Holocaust. There is some controversy over Hull's role in the affair. These Jews fled Europe to escape from the Nazis and after being denied entry into Cuba and the U.S. were granted refuge in England and in continental European nations. Many of the latter group became victims of the Holocaust after the Nazis invaded Western Europe in the following years.

To wit, there were two conversations on the subject between (Secretary of the Treasury) Morgenthau and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In the first, 3:17 PM on 5 June 1939, Hull made it clear to Morgenthau that the passengers could not legally be issued U.S. tourist visas as they had no return addresses. Furthermore, Hull made it clear to Morgenthau that the issue at hand was between the Cuban government and the passengers. The U.S., in effect, had no role. In the second conversation at 3:54 PM on June 6, 1939, Morgenthau said they did not know where the ship was and he inquired whether it was “proper to have the Coast Guard look for it.” Hull responded by saying that he didn’t see any reason why it could not. Hull then informed him that he did not think that Morgenthau would want the search for the ship to get into the newspapers. Morgenthau said. “Oh no. No, no. They would just—oh, they might send a plane to do patrol work. There would be nothing in the papers.” Hull responded, “Oh, that would be all right.”

[No Elephants]

21. America was by far not the only country to allow the St. Louis to discharge its passengers.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sabra]

8. "You know, the holocaust is over, get over it!" - is your post for real?

[Nye Bevan]

9. "The Jews should have been repatriated to from where they came, Poland, where ever."

I would suggest that you read up on this subject before making such ignorant and embarrassing posts. May I suggest:

http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Germany-Jews-Persecution-1933-1939/dp/0060928786/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241195623&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Years-Extermination-Nazi-Germany-1939-1945/dp/0060930489/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241195623&sr=8-1

[inthebrain]

10. The Jews were blamed for the loss of WWII

They were still victimized in Europe after the liberation from concentration camps. Many of them did not leave the camps afterwards for fear of retribution from local town folks.

Even their liberators (Patton) sought to continue Hitlers final solution.

[question everything]

11. And, of course, the Jews from Poland, or whataever

attacked our country and killed many of our soldiers. And Germany, or would it be Russia? killed six million Japanese in concentration camps.

You don't need to be a history major, but a simple google search should help.

I know that there are many DUers who would like to squeeze Israel to the size of, say, Des Moines, but to express such ignorance?

[LeftishBrit]

13. What a vile post

Do you also demand that African Americans and Afro-Caribbaeans should just 'get over' slavery and that Native Americans should just 'get over' genocide?

'The Jews should have been repatriated to from where they came, Poland, where ever.'

Repatriated from where? Do you mean Israel or America? And what if they got fucking murdered along the way? Is that your attitude to refugees in general?

And are you implying that all Jews came from Poland?

[madamesilverspurs]

14. Just goes to show ya

that unmitigated ignorance - and bigotry - happens, even at DU.

Your comment is one of the crassest I've seen on these boards. It belongs in the same category as that comment by Rep. Foxx about Matthew Shepard.

[I Have A Dream]

15. Are you sure that you belong here?

:wtf:

[question everything]

12. Letting the St. Louis docked on these shores and open the gates for the

few hundred Jews there would have been a good sign of goodwill.

[Vidar]

17. He probably did make some effort, but not nearly enough.

[No Elephants]

22. Like most Presidents, FDR was human, a product of his times and a politician. Idolatry is not

healthy, whether the object of your idolatry is a golden cow or a Preident. Lincoln, Washington, FDR--all were great men with great faults.

[MicaelS]

23. Michael Beschloss on Roosevelt and the Jews

At George Mason University History News Network (interview in 2002) http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=5395

ANGLE: One of the other interesting things about this was the failure of Roosevelt to really confront the issue of what was happening to the Jews in Germany.

BESCHLOSS: That disappointed me most of all. Beginning in '42, Roosevelt began learning a lot about the murder of the Jews by Hitler and Jewish leaders went to him and pleaded and said, "Please give a speech in public, tell the world what's going on," because Hitler was trying to keep it a secret. For 18 months, Roosevelt refused. People would beg him to help get Jewish refugees out of Europe, relax the immigration quotas. Roosevelt wouldn't do it. And I found that early in the war, Roosevelt had had lunch with Henry Morganthal, his treasury secretary, who was Jewish; and a Catholic official, Leo Crawley. And he said, "You Jews and Catholics have to understand that you Jews and Catholics are in America only under sufferance because this is a Protestant country. And, therefore, you have to go along with everything I ask you to." And Morganthal went back to his office and said, "What am I working 24 hours a day for if America is not for me?

ANGLE: One of the most difficult and most agonizing issues was a proposal that Auschwitz be bombed by Allied planes.

BESCHLOSS: And Roosevelt flatly refused. We had thought before my book that the decision did not even get up to Roosevelt. Turns out it did from research I found. And you know, when you look at presidents, I mean, you study them for a living; you know, you always want to make sure that if a big decision comes up to a president he deals with it seriously, convenes his advisers even if in the end he doesn't make the right decision. This was one of the big decisions to face a president, which was if you bomb the death camps, is that going to save more Jews and others than it will kill? As it turns out, this went to Roosevelt and he dispensed with this almost like a fly on his lapel. He said, "I just don't want to do that. Next question."

I think Roosevelt was unfortunately a product of the times. Antisemitism was widespread and he reflected that.

[MadHound]

24. I'll be interested in seeing the evidence in this book

Because virtually every other serious historical scholar contradicts this author. If he's come up with some great new stash of papers or some such, fine. But if he's just trying to re-spin the same old stuff, then he's a hack who needs to be laughed off the bookshelf.