President Roosevelt Assisted in Murdering Millions of Jews

[muman613]

As we learn more about those dark years it appears America was complicit in the destruction of world Jewry, whether by intention or through negligence. This story should wake us all up to how much America loves the Jewish people. The American president would rather bring in British puppy dogs than Jewish children.

Shame on all those who fought against the Wagner-Rogers bill which sought to bring in 20,000 refugee (Jewish) chilren but was shot down by American Jew haters of a variety of stripes...


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13103#.UWNjYpBDsVQ

Anne Frank Was Barred, But Her Tree Made it to the U.S.

America did not actually kill Jews, it just kept them out, causing them to be trapped and killed. British purebred puppies were allowed into the US.

From Dr. Rafael Medoff

Saplings from the tree outside the home where Holocaust diarist Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis are being planted at eleven schools and other sites in the United States in the days ahead, in a poignant gesture that will help promote Holocaust and tolerance education.

But the gesture is also a sad reminder of the little-known fact that Anne's family sought refuge in the United States before the war, and were stymied by the obstacles that the Roosevelt administration set up to discourage and disqualify would-be immigrants.

The Frank family, like many Jewish families, fled their native Germany shortly after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. They settled in neighboring Holland. In 1939, with world war looming on the horizion and Hitler’s persecution of Jews intensifying, the Franks began thinking about moving to America.

But America was in no mood to take them in.

After World War One, Congress had enacted restrictive immigration quotas. The quota for Germany and Austria was 27,370 annually--far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian Jews seeeking haven from Hitler.

But the Roosevelt administration went above and beyond the law, to ensure that even those meager quota allotments were almost always under-filled. American consular officials abroad made sure to “postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas” to refugees, as one senior State Department official put it. They created a bureaucratic maze to keep refugees like the Franks far from America’s shores.

Otto Frank, Anne's father, filled out the small mountain of required application forms and obtained supporting affidavits from the family's relatives in Massachusetts.

But that was not enough for those who zealously guarded America's gates against refugees. In fact, in 1941, the Roosevelt administration even added a new restriction: no refugee with close relatives in Europe could come to the U.S., on the grounds that the Nazis might hold their relatives hostage in order to force the refugee to undertake espionage for Hitler. That's right: Anne Frank, Nazi spy.

During the period of the Nazi genocide, from late 1941 until early 1945, only ten percent of the quotas from Axis-controlled European countries were actually be used. A total of nearly 190,000 quota places remained unused--representing almost 190,000 lives that could have been saved, even under the restrictive quotas.

Anne’s mother, Edith, wrote to a friend in 1939: "I believe that all Germany's Jews are looking around the world, but can find nowhere to go."

That same year, refugee advocates in Congress introduced the Wagner-Rogers bill, which would have admitted 20,000 refugee children from Germany outside the quota system. Anne Frank and her sister Margot, as German citizens, could have been among those children.

Supporters of the bill assembled a broad, ecumenical coalition--including His Eminence George Cardinal Mundelein, one of the country’s most important Catholic leaders; New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia; Smith College president William Allen Neilson; actress Helen Hayes; and 1936 Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon and his running mate, Frank Knox. Former First Lady Grace Coolidge announced that she and others in her hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, would personally care for twenty-five of the children.

Even though there was no danger that the children would take jobs away from American citizens, nativists and isolationists lobbied hard against the bill. President Franklin Roosevelt’s cousin, Laura Delano Houghteling, who was the wife of the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration, articulated the sentiment of many opponents of the bill when she remarked at a dinner party that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.” FDR himself refused to support the bill. By the spring of 1939, Wagner-Rogers was dead.

Anne and Margot Frank, and thousands of other German Jewish refugee children, were kept out because there were too many people like Laura Delano Houghteling, who considered Jewish refugees undesirable. One year later, however, President Roosevelt opened our country’s doors to British (Christian) children to keep them safe from the German blitz. And an appeal by "Pets" magazine in 1940 resulted in several thousand offers to take in British purebred puppies endangered by the war. But there was no room for Jewish children.

From the cramped attic where she hid from the Nazis, Anne Frank lovingly wrote in her diary of the chestnut tree in the courtyard outside that she could occasionally glimpse. Hopefully, the saplings from that tree, which will take root at schools and other sites from Indiana to Arkansas, will also serve as reminders--both of the bigots who helped keep Anne and other German Jewish children out of America, and those of generous spirit who tried, but sadly failed, to change their government's harsh policy.



(Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, D.C. His latest book is FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith.)

[Dan193]

Without question, Laura Delano Houghteling was one of the main reasons why Roosevelt didn't help the Jews or give them refuge in the U.S.
Laura Delano Houghteling was Roosevelt's cousin.
20,000 Jewish children were made homeless by the Krystalnacht pogrom.

The Wagner–Rogers Bill in 1939 was proposed US legislation which would have had the effect of admitting 20,000 Jewish children under the age of 14 to the United States from Nazi Germany.
The bill sponsored by Senator Robert F. Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Edith Rogers (R-Mass.

Laura Delano Houghteling wife of the U.S. commissioner of immigration, made no effort to conceal her hatred of Jews. "20,000 charming children,” she wrote, “would all too soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults." The bill never reached the floor.

[briann]

As we learn more about those dark years it appears America was complicit in the destruction of world Jewry, whether by intention or through negligence. This story should wake us all up to how much America loves the Jewish people. The American president would rather bring in British puppy dogs than Jewish children.

Shame on all those who fought against the Wagner-Rogers bill which sought to bring in 20,000 refugee (Jewish) chilren but was shot down by American Jew haters of a variety of stripes...


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13103#.UWNjYpBDsVQ

Anne Frank Was Barred, But Her Tree Made it to the U.S.

America did not actually kill Jews, it just kept them out, causing them to be trapped and killed. British purebred puppies were allowed into the US.

From Dr. Rafael Medoff

Saplings from the tree outside the home where Holocaust diarist Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis are being planted at eleven schools and other sites in the United States in the days ahead, in a poignant gesture that will help promote Holocaust and tolerance education.

But the gesture is also a sad reminder of the little-known fact that Anne's family sought refuge in the United States before the war, and were stymied by the obstacles that the Roosevelt administration set up to discourage and disqualify would-be immigrants.

The Frank family, like many Jewish families, fled their native Germany shortly after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. They settled in neighboring Holland. In 1939, with world war looming on the horizion and Hitler’s persecution of Jews intensifying, the Franks began thinking about moving to America.

But America was in no mood to take them in.

After World War One, Congress had enacted restrictive immigration quotas. The quota for Germany and Austria was 27,370 annually--far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian Jews seeeking haven from Hitler.

But the Roosevelt administration went above and beyond the law, to ensure that even those meager quota allotments were almost always under-filled. American consular officials abroad made sure to “postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas” to refugees, as one senior State Department official put it. They created a bureaucratic maze to keep refugees like the Franks far from America’s shores.

Otto Frank, Anne's father, filled out the small mountain of required application forms and obtained supporting affidavits from the family's relatives in Massachusetts.

But that was not enough for those who zealously guarded America's gates against refugees. In fact, in 1941, the Roosevelt administration even added a new restriction: no refugee with close relatives in Europe could come to the U.S., on the grounds that the Nazis might hold their relatives hostage in order to force the refugee to undertake espionage for Hitler. That's right: Anne Frank, Nazi spy.

During the period of the Nazi genocide, from late 1941 until early 1945, only ten percent of the quotas from Axis-controlled European countries were actually be used. A total of nearly 190,000 quota places remained unused--representing almost 190,000 lives that could have been saved, even under the restrictive quotas.

Anne’s mother, Edith, wrote to a friend in 1939: "I believe that all Germany's Jews are looking around the world, but can find nowhere to go."

That same year, refugee advocates in Congress introduced the Wagner-Rogers bill, which would have admitted 20,000 refugee children from Germany outside the quota system. Anne Frank and her sister Margot, as German citizens, could have been among those children.

Supporters of the bill assembled a broad, ecumenical coalition--including His Eminence George Cardinal Mundelein, one of the country’s most important Catholic leaders; New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia; Smith College president William Allen Neilson; actress Helen Hayes; and 1936 Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon and his running mate, Frank Knox. Former First Lady Grace Coolidge announced that she and others in her hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, would personally care for twenty-five of the children.

Even though there was no danger that the children would take jobs away from American citizens, nativists and isolationists lobbied hard against the bill. President Franklin Roosevelt’s cousin, Laura Delano Houghteling, who was the wife of the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration, articulated the sentiment of many opponents of the bill when she remarked at a dinner party that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.” FDR himself refused to support the bill. By the spring of 1939, Wagner-Rogers was dead.

Anne and Margot Frank, and thousands of other German Jewish refugee children, were kept out because there were too many people like Laura Delano Houghteling, who considered Jewish refugees undesirable. One year later, however, President Roosevelt opened our country’s doors to British (Christian) children to keep them safe from the German blitz. And an appeal by "Pets" magazine in 1940 resulted in several thousand offers to take in British purebred puppies endangered by the war. But there was no room for Jewish children.

From the cramped attic where she hid from the Nazis, Anne Frank lovingly wrote in her diary of the chestnut tree in the courtyard outside that she could occasionally glimpse. Hopefully, the saplings from that tree, which will take root at schools and other sites from Indiana to Arkansas, will also serve as reminders--both of the bigots who helped keep Anne and other German Jewish children out of America, and those of generous spirit who tried, but sadly failed, to change their government's harsh policy.



(Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Washington, D.C. His latest book is FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith.)

Roosevelt was a horrible evil president... but don't generalize America as a just another country that hated Jews.   That vast majority of Americans hated the Nazis... and sympathized with the Jewish cause... and many were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice... while other countries did absolutely nothing.

There is a reason why many religious Jews.. including my grandparents loved this country.... because of the sacrifices that Americans made... and that's in spite of the horrific leadership. 

[muman613]

briann,

America, until recently, had a certain amount of accepted antisemitism. I don't know if your family experienced it, but my grandparents lived in a time when Jews were not allowed to join gentile country clubs. Even when I was a child, as I related several times, my boyhood Catholic friend told me and my brother that our family was going to Hell for not believing what they believed (in the 1970s this happened).

I have heard one reason the Jews in America could not do very much to help our brothers in Europe was because they were fearful of causing more antisemitism in our country.

I don't believe that the leadership of the country was the cause of this Jew hatred. You don't have to tell me that the Jews in the country at that time were patriots. I am currently putting together an interview video with a friend of mine from my minyan who is 95 years old and served in the USA army for almost 40 years, having deployments in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam... This man is a genuine Jewish war hero who should be honored...

[muman613]

http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/the_holocaust/

CLOSED DOORS

The first explosion of major Nazi violence against the Jews was Kristallnacht—“the night of broken glass.” It happened on November 9, 1938. That night 191 synagogues were destroyed and 91 Jews were killed, many beaten to death.

Afterwards some 30,000 Jews were arrested and fined a billion marks (equal to about 400 million dollars) for the damage that was caused by the Germans.

This was really the writing on the wall for the Jews. At this time many tried to get out of Germany. Unfortunately, very few places in the world would accept them. For example, when the Foreign Minister of Canada was asked how many Jews Canada should take, his response was “None is too many.”

America took in only 200,000 Jews due to the anti-Semitism that we discussed in Part 59.

Even when it was clear the Germans were persecuting the Jews, the American State Department had such strict criteria for allowing Jews into the country that 75% of the spaces that were allotted to Jews technically, by American law, were never even taken. Amazingly, so many Jews who in theory could go to America couldn’t make the requirements. (Canada was by far worst of all the Western countries allowing only 5,000 Jewish refugees into the country.)

All told, about 800,000 Jews actually found refuge in various places in the world. But the majority couldn’t get out.

(For more on this subject read While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy by Arthur D. Morse. It is a stinging indictment.)

[muman613]

Remember that during this period of American History people like Henry Ford were spreading libels against the Jewish people. He was a firm believer in the Jewish conspiracy and the protocols of the elders of zion...


http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/the_face_of_anti-semitism/

AMERICAN ANTI-SEMITISM

Thus far, we have covered the open murderous anti-Semitism of the Russians and the insidious “intellectual” anti-Semitism of the French. But what about the land of tolerance—America?

In 1913, in Atlanta, Georgia, a Jew named Leo Frank was falsely accused of the murder of a 13-year-old Christian girl. So strong was the anti-Semitism in the American South that the testimony of a black man—a unique event in this racist region—was permitted against a white man. But, of course, the white man was a Jew.

Ironically, the black “witness” was the murderer—a fact that he had confessed to his own attorney, but this was kept secret. There had also been a real witness but he did not come forward until many years later.

Frank was convicted and sentenced to death, but the governor of Georgia, John Slaton, convinced that Frank was innocent, commuted his sentence.

Then a horrible thing happened.

A Georgia mob kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him. The lynching was photographed and made into postcards which sold briskly.

Not until 1986—73 years later!—was Frank awarded posthumous pardon by the state of Georgia.

The Frank case led to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League by the B’nai B’rith. It became the leading Jewish group fighting anti-Semitism in America, and it had a lot of work on its hands, especially after 1918, the end of World War I, and in 1929 when the stock market crashed, and things heated up for the Jews in America.

As we mentioned in our discussion of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (see Part 57), one of the big promulgators of anti-Semitism in America was Henry Ford, who spent a lot of his own money to get the Protocols translated into English and distributed in America as widely as possible.

The Protocols became the second biggest selling book in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s (after the Bible).

The Ford Motor Company’s plant in Dearborn, Michigan, had a sign posted in its parking lot:

“JEWS ARE TRAITORS TO AMERICA AND SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED BY GENTILES. JEWS TEACH COMMUNISM, JEWS TEACH ATHEISM, JEWS DESTROY CHRISTIANITY, JEWS CONTROL THE PRESS, JEWS PRODUCE FILTHY MOVIES, JEWS CONTROL MONEY.”

Henry Ford was not the only one. There were others.

There were several conservative Christian political parties which were strongly anti-Semitic for example, William Pelley’s “Silver Shirts.” An anti-Semitic newspaper, Gerald B. Winrod’s The Defender had 110,000 subscribers.

These American anti-Semites were fledgling fascists. Under the guise of patriotism, they championed the idea that Jews were the underlying cause of the economic woes of America—such as the stock market crash of 1929—because it was the Jews who controlled business and banking. This kind of anti-Semitism rivaled that of Europe in the same period, but unlike Europe never took hold with the same fatal consequences.

But all this Jew-hatred did set the stage for the appeasement of Hitler when he took hold of power in Germany. It also was one of the primary reasons why America did not do more to save the Jews once they began to flee the Holocaust, as we shall see next.

[1] The one member of the French army who was truly interested in the truth, and who discovered that Esterhazy was the spy was Lieutenant General George Picquart. He was consistently ignored and hounded by the French army. When Esterhazy was finally brought to trial he was acquitted and sadly it was Picquart who sent to prison for sixty days.
[2] Ironically, today the number one excuse for hating Jews in the world is Zionism and the State of Israel. Even though it is merely an excuse, accusations against Israel and the supposed occupation of Palestinian lands are the fuel used to keep anti-Semitism alive and have lead to attacks against both Jews and Jewish targets around the world.
[3] Allan Gould ed., What Did They Think of the Jews? (Jason Aronson Inc., 1997), p.337.
[4] Paul Mendes-Flohr & Yehuda Reinharz ed., The Jew in the Modern World, (Oxford University Press, 1995), p.431-432.
[5]This event, known as the “The Doctors’ plot,” was an alleged conspiracy to eliminate the leadership of the Soviet Union by means of Jewish doctors poisoning top leadership. After the death of Stalin in March 1953, the new Soviet leaders declared that the case was fabricated. It was just a more modern variation on the more ancient blood libels common in medieval Europe.

[angryChineseKahanist]

That's right! America is scum!
No, that was Roosevelt. He was a hard core communist.
Not America.
America is the victim!

Aren't Jews supposed to "dream of returning to Israel"?

[muman613]

That's right! America is scum!
No, that was Roosevelt. He was a hard core communist.
Not America.
America is the victim!

Aren't Jews supposed to "dream of returning to Israel"?

Yes indeed we are supposed to return to Israel.

ACK, my intention for this post is not to insult America, rather it is to awaken us to realize that the Holocaust was terrible because of the exposure of the level of Jew hatred which existed in the 20th century.

We must remember the facts of the past in order to help ensure that they will not happen again. Of course everything is in the hands of Hashem, whether we like it or not.

[briann]

briann,

America, until recently, had a certain amount of accepted antisemitism. I don't know if your family experienced it, but my grandparents lived in a time when Jews were not allowed to join gentile country clubs. Even when I was a child, as I related several times, my boyhood Catholic friend told me and my brother that our family was going to Hell for not believing what they believed (in the 1970s this happened).

I have heard one reason the Jews in America could not do very much to help our brothers in Europe was because they were fearful of causing more antisemitism in our country.

I don't believe that the leadership of the country was the cause of this Jew hatred. You don't have to tell me that the Jews in the country at that time were patriots. I am currently putting together an interview video with a friend of mine from my minyan who is 95 years old and served in the USA army for almost 40 years, having deployments in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam... This man is a genuine Jewish war hero who should be honored...

Of course there were antisemites here....   we've talked about this countless times...  and I am glad when Chaim and others point out the many evil people...  both here and abroad.

I am not trying to argue against that... what I am arguing is that evil people like Ford and Linbergh were not typical Americans like you think they were.

And many of the American gentiles that paid the ultimate price in WW2 hated the persecution of the Jews.  And if American gentiles had not paid this price... half of the people in this forum would be lampshades... and the other half would be speaking German.

And yes.... I know all about the Christian only clubs.  Even my mother, who went to UCLA was not allowed to join a Sorority when they found out she wasn't Christian (Her Chinese friend was also kicked out.)

By the way... isn't it curious that my grandparents loved America so much... and waved the American flag at their house... and now... none of the younger generation shares this pride.   They all love Obama and Moveon.Org...  but would never have a US flag bumper sticker.   I feel like I am the only one in my family who still recognizes what this country has meant.

[briann]

Yes indeed we are supposed to return to Israel.

ACK, my intention for this post is not to insult America, rather it is to awaken us to realize that the Holocaust was terrible because of the exposure of the level of Jew hatred which existed in the 20th century.

We must remember the facts of the past in order to help ensure that they will not happen again. Of course everything is in the hands of Hashem, whether we like it or not.

I welcome holocaust awareness... I think its important for every member to be aware of.  I also welcome pointing out evil... especially politicians.   If you look at previous posts about Roosevelt, Ford, Lindbergh... on this forum... you will see I have nothing but hatred for them.  But saying 'America' helped Kill 6 million Jews is very offensive to the many Americans.. both Jews and Gentiles who hated and fought against Naziism.

I forgot to mention... I remember a post by Brenanfan where he said "Israel' is evil... and many of the members got very offended (and rightfully so)...  so he had no problem changing the post title to 'Israeli politicians' are evil...  It was just a word...  but it made a world of difference.

[Nachus]

                                                                                                                                                  


 Roosevelt and his evil collaberators are no doubt rotting in gehennom!

[muman613]

I am not condemning the American people so much as providing a thing to think about. Could more have been done to prevent the destruction of European Jewry in the 20th century?

This online book contains a wealth of historical information. Here is a part of the document which I consider related to our discussion:

http://www.jpi.org/holocaust/hlchp5a.htm#book1

.
.
.
The third convention of the American Agudath Israel took place in August of 1941 in Baltimore. The personalities present, made clear the passing of the Torah centers of intense Jewish learning from Europe to America. Leading European roshei yeshivah who succeeded in reaching the United States were present: Rabbis Aharon Kotler of the Kletsk Yeshivah, Reuven Grozovsky of the Kaminetz Yeshivah, Mendel Zaks of the Radun Yeshivah, Elijah Meyer Bloch and Hayyim Mordechai Katz of the Telz Yeshivah, as well as Jacob Rosenheim, president of Agudath Israel. Silver summed up the state of affairs when he declared:

The leading geonim and disseminators of Torah knowledge in the world are now in the United States. We must build centers of Torah and fear of God in this country.

. . . We shall succeed in turning America into a holy place due to the merit of the Torah. In the past, great saints and sages were called upon to establish Torah life in new countries. Today this task falls upon us, although we are spiritually weak and inadequate. Nevertheless, we shall succeed due to the virtues of Torah observance. We must cease to despair of progress, Instead, we should organize, build and achieve our purpose. 11

In August of 1942 Silver organized a "Special Conference for the Strengthening of the Jewish Religion" at Belmar, New Jersey. He declared in somewhat ironical terms:

In opening this special conference of the Agudat Israel we are fully conscious of the frightful Holocaust that has enveloped the world and realize the special grave danger that threatens the whole of our people at the hand of the demon loosened upon the earth. In this fateful and most crucial hour we turn to the Creator in supplication for succor.

Our approach to the Almighty is similar to the manner which we appealed to the State Department, when about two years ago a delegation of venerable Talmudists and patriarchal hassidic rabbis came to Washington to secure special visas for our great leaders and teachers whom we were anxious to rescue from the hell of Eastern Europe. At that time we addressed the heads of our State Department as follows: "We come to you not as great orators nor as astute politicians; not as leaders of wordly influence nor as great lawyers with shrewd arguments. We come to you with millions of bleeding Jewish hearts, with the totality of Israel's great catastrophe, with hands outstretched in silent appeal from hundreds and thousands of our great Talmudic scholars and present day sages, representing the very flower and nobility of traditional Jewish learning and wisdom, who plead for rescue. Our own limited power of speech prevents us from putting this plea in words, nor are we able to put it in writing on paper. We beseech you to receive this silent plea as if it were uttered in words coming from your own hearts. 12

Obviously, the cause of Jewish education in America would have been strengthened even more had those thousands of European scholars and laymen steeped in Judaism been brought over in time. However, pleading with the State Department on their behalf was a matter of great consternation. This was part of a world-wide problem, for as Walter Laqueur has stated: "Neither the United States Government, nor Britain, nor Stalin showed any pronounced interest in the fate of the Jews", even though they were kept informed through Jewish organizations and through their own channels. In the work: The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler's "Final Solution" (1980), Laqueur writes that: How, during all the war years, "the Allied intelligence services should have not known (or ignored) the truth about the Hitlerite extermination camps which extended over many square kilometers and in which millions of people had been incarcerated", is a "legitimate question". 13

Part of the reply is that "too much publicity about the mass murder seemed undesirable, for it was bound to generate demands to help the Jews and this was thought to be detrimental to the war effort. Even in later years when victory was already assured there was little willingness to help. . . The statistics of murder were either disbelieved or dismissed from consciousness." Indeed, concludes Laqueur, many Jews could have been saved in 1944 by bombing the railway lines leading to the extermination centers as well as the centers themselves. This could have been done without deflecting any major resources from the general war effort. "In short, hundreds of thousands could have been saved. . . . There was not one reason for this overall failure but many different ones . . . . In some cases the motives were creditable, in others damnable." 14

There were a variety of people, some even of Jewish origin, who could have done more to save at least a large segment of Europe's Jews. In The Failure To Rescue (1977), Herbert Druks documents that Lawrence Steinhardt, as U.S. ambassador to Moscow, was accused of being responsible for the misfortunes of hundreds of Jews and had inspired the ruthless policy of the State Department. Steinhardt had sent reports to Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long in 1941 "that it was not in the interest of the United States to admit East European Jews." When American Jewish leaders approached President Roosevelt in 1941 asking him to let more refugees into the United States, he confronted them with Steinhardt's report. Druks observes that the President said he sympathized with the plight of the Jews, but he opposed the admission of Jews to America. Only "extremely needy individuals" would be admitted, and then only if they passed rigorous admissions tests, and if they would not in any way endanger United States security. That, maintains Druks, was Roosevelt's policy and that was the essence of America's diplomacy of rescue. 15

Thus Roosevelt managed to generate an impression of dedicated concern, but the reality was quite different. Whilst Roosevelt declared in a presidential statement on March 22, 1944, that:

In one of the blackest crimes of all history--begun by the Nazis in the day-of peace and multiplied by them a hundred times in time of war--the wholesale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour . . . That these innocent people, who have already survived a decade of Hitler's fury, should perish on the very eve of triumph over the barbarism which their persecution symbolizes, would be a major tragedy. 16

Nevertheless, as Morse records., when on April 5, 1944, New York Post columnist Samuel Grafton suggested the designation of "free ports for refugees" within the United States: . . . We do it, in commercial free ports, for cases of beans, so that we can make some storage and processing profit; it should not be impossible to do it for people." The President responded to this suggestion at a press conference, that it would not be necessary to establish havens in the United States because there were many countries to which the refugees could go. To a real suggestion for rescue "'the real hurdle' was the White House." 17

In June 1940, the President signed the Alien Registration Act which required all aliens over fourteen to be registered and fingerprinted. The State Department issued a special care" circular advising all consular and diplomatic officers to re-evaluate all visas and extirpate the so-called subversive elements. No visa was to be granted if there was "any doubt whatsoever concerning the alien". The best interests of the United States had to be considered even if it meant a drastic reduction of quotas. Druks observes that the reinforced controls may have kept some spies out of the country, but it enabled unsympathetic consuls to reject Jews who held legitimate visas and tickets. 18

When-the S. S. Quanza docked in Norfolk in September, 1941, en route to South America, the President's Advisory Committee suggested that the passengers be permitted to disembark until private organizations could make arrangements for them to reach their final destination. The State Department at first refused, and after some screening, it was discovered that five of the eighty passengers were qualified to receive emergency visas to the U.S. The State Department was pressured to admit them. Druks reports that Breckinridge Long, as Assistant Secretary of State in charge of the Visa Division, was so incensed and galled that he brought his complaint directly to the President.

Long wrote in a memo of September 5, 1940, that "the list of Rabbis has been closed and now it remains for the President's Committee to be curbed." Druks adds that Long was the fellow who had been so impressed with Mussolini because the Duce made the Italian trains run on time, and on April 7, 1936, had written to William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany:" From a purely objective point of view, I think the suggestions made by Hitler--if they are sincere, afford the biggest, broadest base for discussion made by any European statesman since the World War." 19

It was Long who came armed with reports from Steinhardt, when he wished to convince Roosevelt to impose even stricter visa regulations to protect America from "undesirables". Jews were "lawless, scheming, defiant" and "the same kind of criminal Jews who crowd our police dockets in New York." In this respect Steinhardt reflected the same mentality of New York's "up-town" wealthy European Jews who resented the arrival of East European Jews on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s. In America they attempted to undermine the traditional and educational values of the newcomers. outside of America, Steinhardt evidently feared such new migrations to New York, bearing in mind the difficulties inherent in assimilating such "lawless, scheming, defiant" elements. Fatefully, it was the same Steinhardt who was U.S. Ambassador to Turkey at the time that Joel Brand arrived there with his mission on behalf of Hungarian Jewry. Brand thought Steinhardt to be "a good Jew. And besides that, a good man". 20 He hoped that Steinhardt would be "the best man to contact on the Allied side, if any approach to the Allies was to be made at all by me". 21 But the Ambassador was "incommunicado" from the cause that Brand represented. How bitter the irony that the man who was thought of by some East Europeans as a "good man", saw them as "criminal Jews".

Thus, the State Department found a valuable ally in the assimilated Jew Steinhardt, and it is no surprise when we are informed that Long subscribed to his views and went a step further. Long was of the feeling that Steinhardt was not only right with respect to Russian and Polish Jews, but that his observations could be applied to "the lower level of all Slav population". When American Jewish leaders approached Roosevelt to admit more refugees, he confronted them with Steinhardt's reports. Roosevelt would continue to maintain that he sympathized with the plight of the refugees, but that he rejected "any plan which would allow any organization whether it be Rabbi Wise or MacDonald or William Green to recommend finally that any person abroad whom they had not seen be admitted to this country." Thus concludes Druks, because of such diplomacy, because of the Nazi’s terror, and because of the division and sluggishness of Jewish leadership, some six million Jews were exterminated in Europe. 22

In The Holocaust Victims Accuse (1977), there is a section dealing with "Stephen Wise: The Chief Saboteur" which describes the activities of Wise and Congressman Sol Bloom, to prevent legislation in both houses of Congress leading to the formation of the War Refugee Board in 1944. American Orthodoxy led by the Agudas HaRabonim kept up a continuous battle for such a board. Two days before Yom Kippur in 1943, four hundred rabbis staged a mass demonstration in Washington calling for the rescue of the European Jews. They brought their petitions before the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House. Their appeals saw fruition when their measure passed both houses, forcing Roosevelt on January 22, 1944, to create the War Refugee Board. 23

In an article in The New York Times Magazine of April 18, 1982, Lucy S. Davidovicz maintained that the "five hundred" Orthodox rabbis who came to Washington on Oct. 6, 1943 were brought by the "Irgunists" to "dramatize" their case, implying a belittlement of the "Irgunists" and their "Orthodox" cohorts. "They had no appointment with the President, for he had been told by a confidant, Judge Samuel Rosenman, that the group behind this petition was not representative of the most thoughtful elements in Jewry." 24 Rothkoff in The Silver Era (1981) has a different version of what Rosenman told Roosevelt. They were, he said, "a group of rabbis who just recently left the darkest period of the medieval world. I unsuccessfully tried to stop their coming since they really represent no one." 25 Davidowicz overlooks not so much this comment,but the mentality that underlies it.

Who were the rabbis that were fancifully thought to represent no one"? Their leading figures were Rabbis Eliezer Silver of Cincinnati, and Avrohom Kalmanowitz whose Mirrer Yeshivah had found refuge in Shanghai. Rabbi Silver supported the Emergency Committee to save the Jewish People of Europe organized by the Revisionist group, who as the Irgun, opposed Britain's restrictive immigration and anti-Jewish policies in Palestine. Silver declared that:

The Agudat Harabanim supported this committee, despite the fact that it was sponsored by the Revisionist party and was, therefore, opposed by the other Zionist parties for partisan reasons. But we supported any serious rescue plan, regardless of-its source. 26

Furthermore, Rothkoff records that Silver once declared t"Orthodoxy has empathy with the Revisionists because they share a common fate. Both are pushed around by the Establishment." 27

Davidowicz is almost patronizing towards this group of rabbis, calling them "venerable and impressive--. . The incident did not create much of a stir." What did these rabbis ask for that it "did not create much of a stir"? Rabbi Silver's appeal to the President cut to the bone of the issues:

To the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, God protect him:

In the name of God, Almighty Creator of the Universe, Who commanded us in the Holy Torah, "Do not let the blood of your friend be spilled, I am the Lord," we cry out in our misery to the Lord, God of Heaven and Earth. A voice is heard aloft, the voice of the blood of our brethren, pure souls in the hundreds of thousands; children, infants, and elders, men and women crying out to us: Save us!

How will we be able to stand and pray on the Holy Day, the Day of Atonement, knowing that we had not fulfilled our duty? . . . Millions have already fallen, put to the fire and the sword. Tens of thousands, have perished of starvation, and of the most horrible manners of death--let the earth not cover their blood!

In view of this emergency situation, it is a sacred duty to take urgent measures for saving the Jewish people and especially:
. . .

d) to intervene with the neutral countries and influence them to allow the Jewish fugitives from the sword to take refuge, and to assure them haven and sustenance in these lands;

e) to open the gates of the democratic countries for refuge, and to open more widely the gates of our own country and to expedite the entrance of these refugees into the United States;

f) to open immediately the gates of the Land of Israel . . . ;

g) to establish a special agency for rescuing the remnants of the Jewish people in Europe. 28

These efforts finally contributed to the formation of the War Refugee Board. It was to be a special agency for rescue and aid to the war's victims. Contrary to what we might garner from Davidowicz, Rothkoff maintained that its representatives, stationed in neutral countries, devoted themselves with zeal and daring to rescue work despite the lateness of the hour. "They succeeded in saving some thousands of Jews in Romania and Hungary." 29

Even though Davidowicz portrays Stephen Wise as earnestly active on behalf of Jews trapped in Europe, the impression she leaves is far from accurate. Furthermore, she makes the remarkable conclusion:

But rescuing the European Jews was an unachievable task. Most European Jews were inaccessible, beyond the reach not only of the American Jews, but even of the Allied armed forces. They were in Hitler's vise. The most dramatic illustration of their remoteness from rescue was the case of the Rumanian Jews. 30

The comment fits into a discerned pattern amongst Davidowicz's writings. J. Elias, in reviewing Davidowicz’s "Blaming the Jews: The Charge of Perfidy" in The Jewish Presence (1977), notes that Davidowicz has for some reason or other taken it upon herself to clear the Jewish leadership of charges that they were guilty of betraying their Eastern European brethren. Unfortunately:

Faint as her defense is, it is still too kind to these leaders. Stephen Wise and others knew relatively early what was going on and acceded to a cover-up; they failed to put public pressure on the governments, tried to silence those who did, and at crucial moments actually opposed rescue projects. It is strange for a historian, in belittling the work of the Irgunists, to write that "its one accomplishment . . . was that it . . . brought about the creation of The War Refugee Board", as if this had been a small thing. 31

Arthur D. Morse has observed in the concluding paragraphs of his work While Six Million Died (1967) that:

The War Refugee Board represented a small gesture of atonement by a nation whose apathy and inaction were exploited by Adolf Hitler. As he moved systematically toward the total destruction of the Jews, the government and the people of the United States remained bystanders. Oblivious to the evidence which poured from official and unofficial sources, Americans went about their business unmoved and unconcerned. Those who tried to awaken the nation were dismissed as alarmists, cranks or Zionists. Many Jews were as disinterested as their Christian countrymen. The bystanders to cruelty became bystanders to genocide. 32

The proof cited by Davidowicz that the fate of Romanian Jewry exemplified that "rescuing the European Jews was an unachievable task" is presented differently in other sources. Davidowicz maintains that:

Now we know that Hitler's war against the Allies gave him the opportunity to pursue the war against the Jews. He would not willingly have surrendered them. He would not have sold them even for a price which the Allies could never have paid or offered. 33

True, that Hitler's war against the Allies was his "golden opportunity" to destroy the Jews. But that all Nazis would not have responded to bribes or threats is not so certain. Certainly when it came to even the upper echelons of the Nazi regime, there was a marked response to bribery, let alone military action. The Jews of America were in a position to undertake various overt and covert actions on behalf of their European brethren. Sadly, leading figures worked in the opposite direction.

The "co-operation" between Stephen Wise and the State Department in the failure to rescue the Jews of Romania is corroborated in various works. When Ben Hecht placed an advertisement in New York's newspapers:

FOR SALE
70,000 JEWS
AT
$50 APIECE
GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS

explaining that three and a half million dollars would rescue the seventy thousand Romanian Jews--Stephen Wise made a public statement in the name of the American Jewish Congress denying the "confirmation" of the offer from the Romanian government. 34

Nora Levin in The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933-1945, (1968), states that the State Department blocked the possible rescue of Jews from Romania. Though it is in keeping with the rest of the work, Levin chooses to ignore the role of Wise in obstructing rescue efforts. Levin, like Davidowicz, seeks to put the entire blame on the State Department only. They both overlook the negative role of the President and those Jews who had access to him. Levin records that even though money had already been collected to be deposited in blocked bank accounts in Switzerland, the State Department maintained that the transaction would benefit the enemy. This was in spite of Treasury Secretary Morgenthaul's observation that the State Department scoffed at economic warfare in other connections. 35

Quoting from Cordell Hull's Memoirs, Levin shows that whilst noting the State Department's reluctance to deposit money abroad, Hull admitted that the Nazis were susceptible to them. Hull notes, in an attempt to justify his actions for lack of money and staff, that "the Germans permitted Jews to leave only when they were amply paid to do so. We were reluctant to deposit sums of money to the credit of the Nazis, even though the deposits were to be made in Switzerland, were to be liquidated only after the end of the war, and apparently could not be used by the Nazi leaders." 36

Rabbi Eliezer Silver, writing in 1941, summed up the consternation of Orthodox Jewry with the President and State Department:

It is now the time to demonstrate in our capital. we must knock on the doors of the White House to demand that the State Department fulfill its promise to bring over the roshei yeshivah and their students. . . . We gave their names to the State Department and looked forward to prompt results . . . . The overseas representatives of the United States have hardened their hearts and placed obstacles in the path of the refugees . . . .How can our president be so cruel to Torah luminaries and scholars who wander in despair from city to city? 37

At the height of the war American Orthodoxy found itself to be the heir of the European legacy. In order to rebuild, it had to rescue as many who were able to transmit a refined and dynamic brand of Orthodox life and learning. As we have shown, this was an almost impossible task in the face of internal American opposition.

[Dan193]

The bottom line is this, as long as Roosevelt was the President, the Jews had no hope Roosevelt would help them.
Someone brought up the perfect example to me.
If Roosevelt was the President in 1973, he would have never sent that airlift of weapons to Israel in that war when they needed the weapons.

[angryChineseKahanist]

The Roosevelt Dynasty was an evil one. Emperor senior served four times.
The Roosevelt Dynasty did something to America's rear (you translate).

[serbian army]

Wasn't he half Jewish? He was a disaster for economy and its recovery.

[muman613]

Wasn't he half Jewish? He was a disaster for economy and its recovery.

Never heard of that (Roosevelt being Jewish)...

Actually it is anti-semites who argue that he was Jewish...

http://wais.stanford.edu/Individuals/wasfranklinroosevelt.htm

[JTFenthusiast2]

Of course there were antisemites here....   we've talked about this countless times...  and I am glad when Chaim and others point out the many evil people...  both here and abroad.

I am not trying to argue against that... what I am arguing is that evil people like Ford and Linbergh were not typical Americans like you think they were.

And many of the American gentiles that paid the ultimate price in WW2 hated the persecution of the Jews.  And if American gentiles had not paid this price... half of the people in this forum would be lampshades... and the other half would be speaking German.

And yes.... I know all about the Christian only clubs.  Even my mother, who went to UCLA was not allowed to join a Sorority when they found out she wasn't Christian (Her Chinese friend was also kicked out.)

By the way... isn't it curious that my grandparents loved America so much... and waved the American flag at their house... and now... none of the younger generation shares this pride.   They all love Obama and Moveon.Org...  but would never have a US flag bumper sticker.   I feel like I am the only one in my family who still recognizes what this country has meant.

Briann,

What kind of comment is this, "And if American gentiles had not paid this price... half of the people in this forum would be lampshades... and the other half would be speaking German???"

[JTFenthusiast2]

Never heard of that (Roosevelt being Jewish)...

Actually it is anti-semites who argue that he was Jewish...

http://wais.stanford.edu/Individuals/wasfranklinroosevelt.htm

This is propagated all over the net by anti-Semites. I'm not talking about Serbian Army, but I have seen this nonsense everywhere.

[angryChineseKahanist]

This is propagated all over the net by anti-Semites. I'm not talking about Serbian Army, but I have seen this nonsense everywhere.

everybody is jewish, I'm jewish.

[JTFenthusiast2]

everybody is jewish, I'm jewish.

I know you is son

[angryChineseKahanist]

I know you is son

be glad you didn't call me 'boy'.
dat be racist! ah hav to call jesse or al

[serbian army]

We have several articles about Jewish history on this topic and I want to add. Many
Jews who joined to Serb freedom fighters survived the war and went to live in newly created Israel.
I will name few here: Dr. Tibor Goldfahn and Ana Goldfahn, personal doctors of Serb general Dragoljub Mihailovic, Dr. Djordje Atlas, Gavra Boker Franjo Krishaber (died fighting communists), Oto Levenberg, Dragutin Presburger. After the war around 70 Jews were jailed for being anti-communist freedom fighters or belonging to chetniks.
Rudi Klopfer was personal driver of Duke Dobrosav Jevdjevic. Nazi commander Harald Turner wrote " With General Mihailovic are some Jews who he protects".
Jews from Czech-Slovakian Republic, Romania, Hungary joined together in special Jewish units that operated under Serb command.
Name of their leaders are following: Jandrih Hegel from Vrhov-Czech/Slovakian Jewish leader, Dr Ferenc May from Segedin leader of Hungarian Jews, Emil Lauber leader of Romanian Jews, and Manojlo Iric from Novi Sad leader of Jews from Yugoslavia.
While saving their own lives those Jews protected citizens of Serbia from being killed. It is just sad that more Jews could not join or were unwilling to fight.