Posted on 04/07/2013 8:00:57 PM PDT by Nachum
In May 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the White House. It was 17 months after Pearl Harbor and a little more than a year before D-Day. The two Allied leaders reviewed the war effort to date and exchanged thoughts on their plans for the postwar era. At one point in the discussion, FDR offered what he called "the best way to settle the Jewish question."
Vice President Henry Wallace, who noted the conversation in his diary, said Roosevelt spoke approvingly of a plan (recommended by geographer and Johns Hopkins University President Isaiah Bowman) "to spread the Jews thin all over the world." The diary entry adds: "The president said he had tried this out in [Meriwether] County, Georgia [where Roosevelt lived in the 1920s] and at Hyde Park on the basis of adding four or five Jewish families at each place. He claimed that the local population would have no objection if there were no more than that."
Roosevelt's "best way" remark is condescending and distasteful, and coming from anyone else it would probably be regarded as anti-Semitism. But more than that, FDR's support for "spreading the Jews thin" may hold the key to understanding a subject that has been at the center of controversy for decades: the American government's tepid response to the Holocaust.
(Excerpt) Read more at touch.latimes.com ...
And now "diversity" requires exactly that.
In other words, if a Repub says it, it is anti-Semitic.
The Nazis and the Muslims were working together. Look it up.
That's not what I'm saying at all. Someone not in one of the ethnic groups targeted for extermination was clearly better off in Nazi Germany - it was a capitalist dictatorship with all of the economic benefits that capitalism provides. If he had only one of two choices, a rich Jewish landowner was infinitely better off in Soviet Russia, given that with the Soviets, landowners had the choice* of converting to Marxism-Leninism along with all of its shibboleths (including Party leaders being Marx-anointed high priests of a kind), whereas being a Jew in Nazi Germany meant a one way ticket to a death camp.
* Of course, too many landowners did not understand that the Communists were sociopathic stone killers and complained instead of giving up their land while bowing and scraping and making an escape plan or simply keeping their heads down. They paid the ultimate price. However, many who correctly read the Communists for the pitiless predators they were lived to see the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Obummer and his spendthrift wife have probably squandered almost that much on an unprecedented series of lavish vacations in exotic locations plus Obummer's luxurious golf outings all around the globe. All this travel and recreation has of course been supported by a large fleet of military planes and a huge retinue of assorted attendants and camp followers in general ever since his gaggle of America-hating far-left wingers took over the White House.
Some of the Obummer family's spending habits must have rubbed off on the harebrained clown who claims to be Obummer's VP. He recently managed to somehow blow a cool half million of the US taxpayers' frogskins on one night's room and board in Paris. That has to be a record of some kind, although his boss probably thinks he's just a small time piker in comparison to his own family's profligate spending habits.
Not to worry though, the Fed is no doubt warming up the presses to print another 2 or 3 trillion frogskins backed by nothing less than the US treasury department's endless supply of paper and ink. Who needs heavy gold bullion when ink and paper is so much easier to handle?
Actually, I'd say we are Israel's best friend in all the world, whereas Israel hasn't been any kind of friend to us. Friends provide direct economic subsidies or troops in wartime. Subsidies obviously flow in the opposite direction, and Israel hasn't provided troops in any war that anyone knows of, and certainly not in the quantities of our ABCA allies like Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia. In practice, Israel is an economic and military dependent further down on the scale than most of our allies, meaning it isn't much of an ally, let alone a friend. And I say this as someone who's an Israel supporter and have no problem with the annual subsidy, because the alternative is the murderous Muslim troglodytes populating the region.
None of which applies to this particular comment or the article. The US at the time was supplying war material to the Brits and others fighting the Germans.. Roosevelt sent a ship load (over a thousand) German Jews back to their certain death because of his dislike of Jews AND his general uselessness as a president.
We are talking about roosevelt’s anti-semitic bent which was ( and probably still is) prevalent in the US.
Be sure and tell us all abut how kind the Chinese Communists are to their citizens
2) Even politicians with no prejudices and the best of intentions would have had to cater somewhat to the prejudices of others if they wanted to bring in refugees at a time of high unemployment.
3) Different times: everybody was more (what we would call) racist back then.
That doesn't excuse away his attitudes, but it's not terribly surprising to find someone in power back then who had those attitudes. More credit to anyone who didn't.
I would have been happy to have Germany wiped out as soon as they started invading countries (with and without gunfire) instead of having that quisling Chamberlain go to Berlin and wave his crappy little piece of paper around declaring ‘peace in our time....’ But obviously what I want and what happened are two different things....just ask Patton
As a member of the Board of Overseers (not directors), Roosevelt presumably did he did have a hand in approving the policy -- to his discredit -- but it wasn't an idea he came up with. It came from the administration of President Lowell.
Roosevelt's own boastfulness may have given Medoff the impression that it was FDR's own idea, but it's sloppy on Medoff's part not to examine further. FWIW, FDR did oppose Lowell's plan to create a segregated "Jim Crow" dorm for African-American students (this at at a time when some colleges like Princeton weren't even admitting Black students).
I'm not Chinese, but that's actually a relevant point, but not necessarily in the way you've stated. Where was the outcry from Jews for millions of Chinese to be admitted to these shores when China's Great Leap Forward killed tens of millions? How many Chinese did Israel take in during that period? The same point can be repeated by filling in the names of any number of other nationalities facing mass death.
Again, every nationality in the world thinks we owe it a refuge, but nowhere has this special pleading been twisted into some kind of moral principle as has the fate of Jewish refugees during WWII. There were plenty of refugees everywhere, and the US had no more of an obligation to admit them than any of the Latin American countries or European-ruled African colonies.
Weirdly enough, they would probably have been accepted with open arms in Latin America or the European-ruled African colonies, but they had to pick the Ritz Carlton of destinations, these United States. Instead of settling in Latin America, South Africa or Rhodesia, they opted to stay in Europe, which became one vast hunting preserve for the Nazis when they overran the Low Countries and France. They bet it all on one roll of the dice and lost. It wasn't neither FDR's fault nor theirs (although their bad judgment turned what would have been a descent into penury abroad into a death sentence) - it was Hitler's.
In fact, your orthogonal point brings to mind an interesting factoid - Jews who made it to China survived WWII - in the midst of great wartime-induced privation on both sides, both Imperial Japan and Nationalist China not only admitted them into their respective regions of China, they did so against the express wishes of the Nazis who, in a weird twist of history, were allied with both Imperial Japan and the Chinese Nationalists, the latter of which the Nazis were arming against the Chinese Communists. And when the Chinese went through the famine of the Great Leap Forward during the late 1950's, was there any call from Israel to admit refugees from China, out of sheer gratitude? Not that anyone knows of...
In the memoir I remember best, by a woman interned as a little girl in Idaho, there weren't any great-greats. She described a lot of grandparents and parents who were born in Japan, and kids who were born stateside, mostly in California. A lot of the old men and many of the young men talked about fighting for the Empire of Japan, because America was vulnerable and undisciplined.
I read that Israel has been accepting Chinese Jews in recent years. Their settlements in China date from Persian caravans on the Silk Road. . .
But in the run-up to the Holocaust, South Africa and Franco's Spain saved a lot of Jews.
Again, you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. The Jews tried to go any and everywhere. No one would take them.
South Africa, one of your examples where Jews supposedly declined to go, passed a series of laws to strictly prevent Jewish immigration - the Quota Act in 1930 and the Alien’s Act in 1937.
Why do you keep claiming that no should have taken in Jewish refugees, that Jews had all kinds of places to go but opted to stay, and that they are somehow deserving of their fate because at a later point in time you don’t think Israel accommodated enough Chinese refugees?
Why don’t you just shut up and stop pushing your agenda.
and that was because China was NOT communist at that time.....so at least get the fact that I refer to the horrors that are Communist China
Fascinating. Has anything been written on this similarity?
Of course, from a Christian perspective I might say that the same warlike demonic spirits may be behind both religions. But even apart from metaphysical speculation which can't be proven on this side of eternity, I would be interested in seeing more about the similarities in the pantheons from a comparative religion perspective.
See #41 and click on the link.
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.