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 ...
Gee...Liberals are anti-semites?
Who knew?
/s
I have heard that “tepid response” bit before. We bombed the major cities of Germany almost out of existance, smashed the Nazis and the allies freed the camps and we tried the war criminals that were left. What exactly was the response susposed to be beyond that...
FDR and other Presidents recognized that some cultures historically did not assimilate into Western Civilizations. He saw these cultures as a pollution and the old solution to pollution was dilution.
He did it for their own good. Beware of of those in power who act for “your own good”.
I’ve always despised FDR.
The creation of modern Israel was also part of the “response”.
A great deal of my family was killed in these camps and many survivors relocated to Israel. I don't think a single one was upset at the allied response.
I have heard that “tepid response” bit before. We bombed the major cities of Germany almost out of existance, smashed the Nazis and the allies freed the camps and we tried the war criminals that were left. What exactly was the response susposed to be beyond that...
............
We didn’t kill them fast enough. We didn’t take the refugees in soon enough. Also, the American civilization at the time was probably a little too anglo saxon. that’s vanished of course.
Israel too has changed the very meaning of what it is to be Jewish and even Christian. So a lot of this talk doesn’t really translate very well into the era that came before the creation of the state of Israel.
Basically, we’ve entered the end times.
Bottom line is that FDR is far from the man the Left has always portrayed. You know what makes me sick? Take a trip to DC and see what president has by far the most extensive memorial.
This might explain his ‘cerebral hemorrhage’. There is some evidence that it was caused by a small caliber bullet to his forehead...some have attributed it to the Mossad. It happened at Warm Springs, GA. Some have variously attributed it to his mistress, who is known to have been in Warm Springs at the time (after swearing to Eleanor that she would never see FDR again.
No, I am not a conspiracy theorist. One other thing...His casket was closed...no one allowed to see his body. Stalin sent Gromyko to view the body (Stalin suspected foul play), but Gromyko was denied the viewing.
Washington has a state...
“The allies also extensively documented the death camps with photos and films so they would not be forgotten.”
Eisenhower ordered that. For that reason...so that there would be evidence when the deniers would come forth (Today!)
There’s also a significant element of special pleading here. Where were the calls, Jewish or otherwise, for admitting large numbers of Cambodian and Rwandan refugees during their notorious genocides?
“He saw these cultures as a pollution...”
And so did Hitler...
God help me, but there are times when I think, why couldn’t they have directed their fury towards the Muslims instead?
If FDR’s response really was motivated by some overt prejudice against Jews, then that is what I would fault him for. But, I had not heard before that FDR had such a prejudice, and I wonder if the author is fair and accurate in his characterization of the private remarks which he uses to build his case. I am not ready to be convinced one way or another on this without more details.
No one has to be prejudiced to be against admitting large numbers of foreign refugees, potential genocide victims or not, whether they are Jews, South West African Hereros, Cambodians, Rwandan Tutsis, Iraqi Christians, Egyptian Copts or Burmese Rohingyans. Was FDR less prejudiced against Japanese Americans, the Chinese, the Gypsies, the Slavs and so on? Tens of millions of Chinese were killed by Imperial Japan without any suggestion that FDR should have imported millions of them in to keep them safe. Ditto with Gypsies and Slavs who were slaughtered like sheep by Nazi Germany.
I think part of it is the sense that Jews for the most part are productive people who make contributions in all areas...however, some of the hesitation may have been based on the perception that many were adherents of socialism.
In other words, George Orwell's immortal quip in Animal Farm that all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others? On purely humanitarian grounds, I'd say there was no reason to privilege Jewish refugees over the many victims of genocide that include the Armenian and Ukrainian ones over the course of the 20th century. An Armenian or a Ukrainian might say "there are so many non-Armenians and non-Ukrainians in the world - you could kill hundreds of millions of them and still have plenty left over - why not save us first", but that, like this author's view, would represent a purely parochial argument.
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