Posted on 07/07/2005 7:11:04 PM PDT by wagglebee
Historians who specialize in the question of America's response to the Holocaust are urging the Franklin D. Roosevelt Museum to correct a panel in its exhibit that claims there was nothing President Roosevelt could have done to save many more Jews from the Holocaust.
Twenty-four historians who are experts in this field have signed a non-partisan petition, organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which was sent to the Museum's curator, Herman Eberhardt, on July 6, 2005.
The signatories include Prof. David Wyman, author of the best seller "The Abandonment of the Jews"; Prof. Samantha Power of Harvard University, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "'A Problem from Hell': America and the Age of Genocide"; and Prof. Greg Robinson of the University of Quebec, author of "By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans."
The text in the museum's panel states that "even Roosevelt's bitterest critics concede that nothing he could have done - including bombing the rails leading to Auschwitz in 1944 - would have saved significant numbers from annihilation, let alone dissuaded the Nazis from [murdering Jews]."
Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff, commented: "The Roosevelt Museum is wrong to suggest that historians believe nothing could have been done by FDR to rescue Jews from Hitler. In fact, the opposite is true. Among scholars who specialize in this subject, there is an overwhelming consensus that Roosevelt could have taken many steps to save Jewish lives – as this non-partisan petition, signed by Jewish and non-Jewish historians alike, demonstrates."
The historians' petition describes the museum's text as "misleading and inaccurate," explaining: "There are numerous steps that the Roosevelt administration could have taken to save lives, such as granting refugees temporary haven in America or in Allied-controlled regions; pressuring the British to open Palestine to refugees; ordering the bombing of the gas chambers at Auschwitz or the railways leading to them; and giving broader funding and power to the U.S. War Refugee Board."
In an e-mail reply today, Eberhardt wrote that the museum's director, Dr. Cynthia Koch, "is considering the matter and will be responding to the petition as soon as possible."
The museum, a federally funded institution, is part of the official Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. It is located in Hyde Park, N.Y., where the Roosevelts lived.
Prof. Michael Berenbaum, former research director for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., described the Roosevelt museum's panel as "unbearable. It lacks all shame," and Marvin Kalb, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, noted that "even a less-than-serious review of World War II history would show that the Allies could have disrupted rail lines into Auschwitz and thereby damaged Hitler's killing machine."
No, many of the Jews on the boat that was turned back were sent back to concentration camps.
It is a terrible blight on Roosevelt's record that he didn't get it.
We lost 500,000 dead in WWII and whatever we do it's never enough. It's bad enough to get this crap from our enemies, it stinks to get it from our supposed friends.
Look, I am as about as far away from an FDR fan as one could get, but the 1940s were different in that information was not transfered as quickly as it is nowadays.
FDR I am sure could have done more but one must ask how sure were we(USA) what exactly was going on inside the German war machine.
I think we all know now what happened to the Jews now. However put it in the context of today's info capabilities and I am still not sure we could get a 100% consensus on what America should do about such. There are many on the left right now who believe Saddam was just a misunderstood leader of a poor nation and got steamrolled by President Bush so we could steal Iraq's Oil.
Face it the Holocaust was just too barbaric for rational people to comprehend without hard evidence and that kind of info was almost impossible to get in the early 40s.
I look at those pictures today and it still boggles my mind people could be so evil towards someone because of their religious beliefs and heritage.
Franky, these liberal intellectual sophisticates are not worth a pot of piss.
Years ago there was an interview on pbs or historychannel of one of FDR's cabinet members. He said that FDR had told his cabinet "We are a Protestant nation...you Jews and Catholics are here by suffrage"
check out some of the articles at
http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/articles.php
Hitler got his Eugenics from America
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