The gap between politicians' rhetoric and their actions is notorious, and it was nowhere more evident than in the Allies' first public statement concerning the Holocaust, which was issued sixty years ago this week. The Allies' declaration strongly condemned the Nazis' "bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination" and warned that the perpetrators would face postwar punishment ? but it proposed no practical steps to rescue Jews from Hitler.
The initiative for the statement of December 17, 1942, came from the British government. Members of Parliament and British Jewish organizations were up in arms over the flood of reports about the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry, and the British government sought to deflect their protests by proposing to the Roosevelt administration that the Allies issue a statement condemning the genocide. The first draft prepared by the British referred to "reports from Europe which leave no room for doubt" (that genocide was underway). The State Department objected to that phrase, on the grounds that it would "expose [the Allies] to increased pressure from all sides to do something more specific in order to aid these people." The wording in the final draft was watered down to "numerous reports from Europe."
Most significant about the statement was the failure of the Allies to pledge any actual steps to aid the Jews. The Roosevelt administration was not willing to admit more refugees to the United States, even though the existing immigration quotas were far from filled. The British were not willing to open the gates of Palestine, which they had shut in order to placate the Arabs. The Allies were not prepared even to press neutral countries such as Turkey or Switzerland to temporarily shelter refugees.
A delegation of American Jewish leaders who met with FDR at the White House earlier in December had come face to face with the gap between Roosevelt's rhetoric and his actions. The leader of the delegation, American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Stephen Wise, presented Roosevelt with a 20-page memorandum detailing the mass murder and asked him "to do all in your power to make an effort to stop it." The president replied that he was already "very well acquainted" with the Nazi annihilation of European Jewry. He condemned Hitler as "insane," and joked about appointing New York Governor Herbert Lehman, a Jew, as postwar administrator of Germany in order to "see some 'Junkers' on their knees, asking Lehman for bread." But when it came to practical measures to save Jewish refugees, FDR would go no further than to threaten postwar punishment for Nazi war criminals.
For some American Jewish leaders, Roosevelt's verbal denunciation of the genocide was sufficient. The day after the meeting at the White House, Rabbi Wise wrote in a private letter: "We ought to distribute cards throughout the country bearing just four letters, TGFR (Thank God For Roosevelt), and as the Psalmist would have said, thank Him every day and every hour." Some other Jewish leaders may have had misgivings about Roosevelt's policy on refugees, but hesitated to express disagreement with a popular president, especially in wartime.
In some quarters, however, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction over the Jewish leadership's response to the Nazi slaughter. When the major Jewish groups sponsored a community-wide day of fasting and prayer in December 1942, the Jewish magazine The Reconstructionist published an editorial headlined "Fasting is Not Enough." It charged: "We raise a question as to the desirability of fasting and prayer when unaccompanied by any suggestion of an outlet to action for the emotions evoked... In the future, it would be well if our leaders, before calling us to prayer and 'affliction of soul,' would suggest a course of action to which our ritualistic expression of mass emotion might stimulate us."
The following month, another magazine, The Jewish Spectator, called on Jewish organizations to change their priorities to meet the crisis: "It is shocking and ? why mince words? ? revolting that at a time like this our organizations, large and small, national and local, continue 'business as usual' and sponsor gala affairs, such as sumptuous banquets, luncheons, fancy teas, and what not. The usual excuse offered is that these occasions serve the noble purpose of raising funds for charity. Again we shall not mince our words: it is disgusting and nauseating that there are still men and women in our midst who have to be enticed with dinner or luncheon to do their duty as Jews and human beings.... [W]ho can bring themselves to sit down at banquet tables, resplendent in evening clothes, while at the very same evening hundreds of Jews expire in the agonies of hunger, gas poisoning, mass electrocution ? and what other forms of death fiendish sadists can invent."
These were strong words, especially in a community where it had long been accepted that Roosevelt was Jewry's reliable friend and that Rabbi Wise knew best how to defend Jewish interests. But as more details of the Nazi genocide reached the West during 1943, and as the refusal of the Roosevelt administration to aid Jewish refugees became painfully clear, the sentiments expressed in The Reconstructionist and The Jewish Spectator attracted growing sympathy among grassroots American Jews. They were finally realizing that the gap between FDR's rhetoric and actions had become a matter of life and death for millions of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
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Dr. Medoff is Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY-Purchase. He is co-author, along with David S. Wyman, of the new book A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust (The New Press).
The initiative for the statement of December 17, 1942, came from the British government. Members of Parliament and British Jewish organizations were up in arms over the flood of reports about the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry, and the British government sought to deflect their protests by proposing to the Roosevelt administration that the Allies issue a statement condemning the genocide. The first draft prepared by the British referred to "reports from Europe which leave no room for doubt" (that genocide was underway). The State Department objected to that phrase, on the grounds that it would "expose [the Allies] to increased pressure from all sides to do something more specific in order to aid these people." The wording in the final draft was watered down to "numerous reports from Europe."
Most significant about the statement was the failure of the Allies to pledge any actual steps to aid the Jews. The Roosevelt administration was not willing to admit more refugees to the United States, even though the existing immigration quotas were far from filled. The British were not willing to open the gates of Palestine, which they had shut in order to placate the Arabs. The Allies were not prepared even to press neutral countries such as Turkey or Switzerland to temporarily shelter refugees.
A delegation of American Jewish leaders who met with FDR at the White House earlier in December had come face to face with the gap between Roosevelt's rhetoric and his actions. The leader of the delegation, American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Stephen Wise, presented Roosevelt with a 20-page memorandum detailing the mass murder and asked him "to do all in your power to make an effort to stop it." The president replied that he was already "very well acquainted" with the Nazi annihilation of European Jewry. He condemned Hitler as "insane," and joked about appointing New York Governor Herbert Lehman, a Jew, as postwar administrator of Germany in order to "see some 'Junkers' on their knees, asking Lehman for bread." But when it came to practical measures to save Jewish refugees, FDR would go no further than to threaten postwar punishment for Nazi war criminals.
For some American Jewish leaders, Roosevelt's verbal denunciation of the genocide was sufficient. The day after the meeting at the White House, Rabbi Wise wrote in a private letter: "We ought to distribute cards throughout the country bearing just four letters, TGFR (Thank God For Roosevelt), and as the Psalmist would have said, thank Him every day and every hour." Some other Jewish leaders may have had misgivings about Roosevelt's policy on refugees, but hesitated to express disagreement with a popular president, especially in wartime.
In some quarters, however, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction over the Jewish leadership's response to the Nazi slaughter. When the major Jewish groups sponsored a community-wide day of fasting and prayer in December 1942, the Jewish magazine The Reconstructionist published an editorial headlined "Fasting is Not Enough." It charged: "We raise a question as to the desirability of fasting and prayer when unaccompanied by any suggestion of an outlet to action for the emotions evoked... In the future, it would be well if our leaders, before calling us to prayer and 'affliction of soul,' would suggest a course of action to which our ritualistic expression of mass emotion might stimulate us."
The following month, another magazine, The Jewish Spectator, called on Jewish organizations to change their priorities to meet the crisis: "It is shocking and ? why mince words? ? revolting that at a time like this our organizations, large and small, national and local, continue 'business as usual' and sponsor gala affairs, such as sumptuous banquets, luncheons, fancy teas, and what not. The usual excuse offered is that these occasions serve the noble purpose of raising funds for charity. Again we shall not mince our words: it is disgusting and nauseating that there are still men and women in our midst who have to be enticed with dinner or luncheon to do their duty as Jews and human beings.... [W]ho can bring themselves to sit down at banquet tables, resplendent in evening clothes, while at the very same evening hundreds of Jews expire in the agonies of hunger, gas poisoning, mass electrocution ? and what other forms of death fiendish sadists can invent."
These were strong words, especially in a community where it had long been accepted that Roosevelt was Jewry's reliable friend and that Rabbi Wise knew best how to defend Jewish interests. But as more details of the Nazi genocide reached the West during 1943, and as the refusal of the Roosevelt administration to aid Jewish refugees became painfully clear, the sentiments expressed in The Reconstructionist and The Jewish Spectator attracted growing sympathy among grassroots American Jews. They were finally realizing that the gap between FDR's rhetoric and actions had become a matter of life and death for millions of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
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Dr. Medoff is Visiting Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY-Purchase. He is co-author, along with David S. Wyman, of the new book A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust (The New Press).