FDR didn't give a damn about the Jews — nor did the NYTimes

It's a given that The New York Times ignored the Holocaust, a sin of omission confessed by the paper itself.

Now we have a book that says it ain't so — that from the beginning to the end of World War II, The Times published 1,186 stories about the extermination of the European Jews. It just buried the stories inside.

"Buried by The Times" is the title of the book, and it's more damning by far than anything the critics ever said about the paper's coverage of the worst mass murder in history.

This book proves that The Times not only knew about the Holocaust but printed many of the horrific details. In the six years of the war, just 26 pieces made the front page, half of them in 1944, when most of the Jews were dead. And only a half-dozen mentioned that Jews were the victims.

The author, Laurel Leff, a professor of journalism and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has done a fine job of research in the archives of the paper of record. Others could have done that, but nobody has. More important, she has brilliantly analyzed the reasons Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the German-Jewish publisher of The Times, brought Jewish self-hatred to a head long before the rubric gained popularity.

In 1939, when the Nazis began to destroy the Jews of Poland, what bothered Sulzberger was Franklin Roosevelt's casual remark that Jews were a "race." He got FDR to call them a "faith," which settled the issue of the Warsaw Ghetto for him.

This explains why my dad spit on me for buying the NYT so many years ago when I was a teenager. He was a WW2 Vet and was in all the countries up to Germany and Poland. He faced the absolute HORROR and died without telling me in the 1980's. Those Army guys knew the truth and the press created an illusion for stupid people here at the time with the aid of the NYT.

Now I understand it all. Years and years passed as I grew up and became useful. What my mother, who was a war bride from from Bamberg area which was never hit by a single bomb, told me about. Now I know what wasn't explained before. Military men like my dad never talked much about their missions. Now I'm getting a few answers.

One of my uncles is running around Western and Eastern Europe collecting facts for the family. 1/3 of my uncles died there. The Orthodox Churches kept records. The Catholic ones and Protestant ones had mostly been destroyed.

FDR is reported to have said at the time, "We have enough Jews of our own." He is also reported to have once said that "Catholics and Jews are here on sufferance. This is a Protestant nation."

I have never figured out why so many older Jewish Americans venerate FDR. It makes no sense to me. His own words and writings make it clear he was anti-Semitic.

To the bigger (and tangental) issue you raise:

Many Democrats, whatever you may think of the rest of their politics, are very pro-Israel and vote consistently that way. If you want to win Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party you won't succeed by raising anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism as an issue. That charge simply won't stick to the majority of Democrats. Fritz Hollings and Cynthia McKinney are the exceptions, not the rule. There are also a few Republicans who are consistently anti-Israel in their votes.

The big reason most American Jews won't vote Republican is a well justified fear of the Christian right. There is an element among conservative Christians (not the majority view by any stretch) who would want the U.S. to be a Christian country to the extent of seeing non-Christians and "nominal Christians" as an enemy and wanting to pretty much end the separation of church and state in the U.S. I realize that many evangelical Christians disagree with that view but that certainly is the fear that will keep Jews away from the Republican Party. Seeing Bill Frist at the anti-fillibuster

In the States I often feel like a foreigner in my own country (as in the country of my birth) as a somewhat traditional, observant Jew.

Many Democrats, whatever you may think of the rest of their politics, are very pro-Israel and vote consistently that way. If you want to win Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party you won't succeed by raising anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism as an issue. That charge simply won't stick to the majority of Democrats. Fritz Hollings and Cynthia McKinney are the exceptions, not the rule. There are also a few Republicans who are consistently anti-Israel in their votes.
Intellectual leftists are anti-Israel. The core activists of the future are anti-Israel. American Jews don't pay attention and all too many of their leaders care more aboutbeing securing their position in the leftist Juderaat than in leading Jews.

he big reason most American Jews won't vote Republican is a well justified fear of the Christian right. There is an element among conservative Christians (not the majority view by any stretch) who would want the U.S. to be a Christian country to the extent of seeing non-Christians and "nominal Christians" as an enemy and wanting to pretty much end the separation of church and state in the U.S. I realize that many evangelical Christians disagree with that view but that certainly is the fear that will keep Jews away from the Republican Party. Seeing Bill Frist at the anti-fillibuster
This is hysteria.
1. America before 1950 did not discriminate on Jews based on religion, but on ethnicity. This was no different than anti-Irish or anti-German practices.
2. Non-Christians are not the enemy of Evangelical and conservative Christians.
3. American Jews confuse American Protestants and Christians with 19th Century Europeans. this is not just anachrinistic, but stupid. It alienates groups that constantly reach out to Jews. Worse, it pushes Jews into alliances with the left who wish to destroy or redefine Judaism. Seriously, what is a bigger threat to Jews today, SEcularists and Reconstructionists or dead Cossacks?

3. American Jews confuse American Protestants and Christians with 19th Century Europeans. this is not just anachrinistic, but stupid. It alienates groups that constantly reach out to Jews. Worse, it pushes Jews into alliances with the left who wish to destroy or redefine Judaism. Seriously, what is a bigger threat to Jews today, SEcularists and Reconstructionists or dead Cossacks?

Agreed.

I made that same point a while ago on an old thread:

********************

Although I don't go searching for an individual's religious roots, I do believe that their particular ancestral background can have a profound effect on their thinking.

I am not a Protestant but, by flipping through the cable channels, I have seen that the most fervently pro-Israel media in America today is the "Christian" cable station. They may have their religious reasons but they truly belive that the Jewish people are God's special people and that an enemy of the Jews is an enemy of God.

That may be totally at odds with the experience that an Ashkenazi's grandfather may have had back in Eastern Europe where pogroms were the national sport but that is the reality of Bible Belt Protestant America.

For that reason, it is my belief that Left-wing Ashkenazi Jews have done America and the Jewish people as a whole absolutely no good by bringing and nurturing their Eastern European political baggage to America.

It is my belief that Left-wing Ashkenzi Jews romanticize Communism because Communism was the political force that was going to overthrow the hated Czar and grandpa emmigrated to America before the family could actually experience Communism's evils like we Catholic and "Jewban" Cuban Americans did.

It is my belief that Left-wing Ashkenzi Jews see a Republican and they never get past the superficial labels of "Left" vs. "Right" as if European political labels coined during the French Revolution meant the same things across centuries and across the Old and New Worlds. So therefore, a Republican is "Right", as the Nazis allegedly were "Right", so voting Republican is is like voting to send Anne Frank to the gas chamber.

It is my belief that Left-wing Ashkenzi Jews see American Protestant Bible Belt Christians who takes their religion very seriously and they automatically see a mob of Eastern European peasants ready to get out their pitchforks and torches for the monthly pogrom.

It is my belief that Left-wing Ashkenzi Jews see America as if it were Czarist Russia or Czarist Poland or as if it were Nazi Germany and reflexive attack anything labeled "Right", "Christian" or "Conservative"......in short, they attack the traditional values of Old America when it was precisely those values that created the America that saved then from the revages of the Old World.

If Left-wing Ashkenzi Jews ever see the day that the values of Old America have been destroyed, they may be shocked to find an America much like the Eastern and Central Europe that great-grandfather escaped from. They may find that Politically Incorrect no longer means "practicing Christian" but maybe now means "Jew, either practicing or secular" as Political Correctness changes to be in harmony with "sophisticated" Europe and with militant Blacks and MEChA types.

If Left-wing Ashkenzi Jews ever see the day that the values of Old America have been destroyed, they will miss those American Bible Belt Protestants that believed those silly, superstitious ideas that God had made the Jews a special people and that an enemy of the Jewish people was an enemy of God.

82 posted on 03/06/2004 11:21:44 AM PST by Polybius

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.