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 ...
FDR lived during the pre-multi-culti time when the elites thought the best things in America are and will forever be reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race, and if you or your parents, grandparents weren’t English or German, you were tolerated, yes, but there were special names of dissing (which wasn’t yet an English word) reserved for your kind, just as pederasts during that period were called... pederasts, abortion was called... abortion, no one had ever heard of social justice, chicks in porno pictures were still dressed however skimpily, and women stayed in the kitchen where they belonged (and where they should of stayed, if you axe me!) We have become so enlightened now, haven’t we!
and that came AFTER the axis powers attacked Pearl Harbor......there was NO response prior even when news (though limited) was leaking out about the final solution
Genocide has been part of the human experience since at least records started being kept. Our consignment of Indians to the most barren lands wasn't precisely genocide, but it wasn't a walk in the park for them, with many dying from malnutrition-induced diseases, starvation and exposure. There were also other genocides during the 20th century in response to which we did even less than we did for the Holocaust. We did not go to war over either the Armenian or Ukrainian genocides, and we certainly did not hold war crimes trials for the perpetrators of those atrocities.
Democrats authorize, year after year, the $3b in grants we've handed to Israel since the Camp David Accords. And that's not counting the weapon systems that we sell to Israel that almost no other non-treaty ally gets, but are routinely authorized by Democratic legislators. How anti-Israel can they be? Supporters of Israel have few reasons to be disappointed in the Democratic party, apart from occasional pro-Arab rhetoric that's almost never backed up with action.
Well, they should have been, because our anti-semitic state dept refused entry to hundreds of refugees who had relatives here - lives lost in the death camos that could have been saved.
Many of them had relatives here. These were business people, professionals, who could have contributed to our society and to our war effort. Even that quasi-illiterate tinpot dictator Trujillo welcomed Jews from Europe into the DR.
I think they, unlike the author of this piece, understood that nobody is their keeper. FDR was no more to blame for their travails than any other US president was to blame for fate of the genocide victims of any other ethnic or religious group during his watch. The blame lies squarely on the perpetrators of those genocides. Neither Israel nor the US is responsible for taking in large numbers of potential genocide victims and no amount of rationalization or parochial argument will foist that responsibility upon them.
Indeed...
Trujillo had a thing about white immigration - he massacred a lot of blacks in an effort to cleanse the Dominican gene pool. Compared to Trujillo, FDR was the soul of moderation.
Yes, that is when it came, when else was it supposed to?
There were many Jews on ships off the coast of the USA that weren’t permitted in. That may be part of it.
I would think that would all the more reason for FDR to help them.
The author himself did not argue that FDR’s policies alone were sufficient to make the case that he was prejudiced against Jews. Rather the arguments he made rested heavily on some supposed private statements FDR made. As for myself, as I said before, I would fault FDR on being overtly prejudice if he really was so, but do not know if the author is being fair and accurate in his representation of FDR’s quotes.
Yeah, that hindsight kicks in for some. The allies were on the run in Europe until we jumped in, so exactly how fast could something have been done. As one who studied the war for years I am amazed it went a quick as it did. Luck and stupidity in Germany played in as well. And yes saving the Jews would never have played that well in the US. Then the photos came out and the issue became real.
Could be a lot of politics in play then.
That's true, no one has to. But FDR was, and he and the (Arabist) British foreign service wouldn't let them into Palestine, either. So their boats foundered, or they were turned back to Europe and were killed by the Germans.
At the same time, liberals (who may not know they got their talking points from the KGB) are all over Pope Pius XII for "not doing enough" to help Italian Jews, when in fact he personally set in motion a campaign to hide Jews in Italian convents and seminaries and get Italian passports for tens of thousands of them. Between one measure and another, it's estimated Pius XII saved 490,000 Jews. The Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism after the War, and took the baptismal name "Eugenio" (the Pope's given name) in his honor.
I actually don't fault Roosevelt for sequestering the Nisei, a percentage of whom really were security risks—or rather, their Japanese-born parents and grandparents were (according to memoirs I've read by Nisei). But he really was a maniac who acted as if he had no fear of God.
I did read the article, but this “tepid response” bit has been used in other context as well. FDR was no saint that’s for damn sure, but the left loves the SOB don’t they.
You hit on it, I believe the main reason why the Shoah stands out from the other Holocausts, besides the sheer numbers, are the images that have been seered into our collective consciousness. The Nazis were so proud of what they were doing, they had the audacity to film the atrocities, and they, being Germans, documented everything.
The Soviet crimes were for the most part committed out of sight.
And the Brits were not particularly at fault for denying them entry. British imperial rule rested on the most tenuous of threads - the belief among the local populace that London's rule was preferable to the alternative. Introducing large numbers of Jews into the Palestine Mandate had the potential of making British rule not just there, but everywhere a large Muslim population existed untenable, on the eve of a potential shooting war with the biggest economic and military power in Europe, Nazi Germany. Again, like FDR, British leaders had no obligation to let large numbers of Jewish or other refugees into their territory, whether Britain proper or British holdings around the world.
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.