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The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust
Based on recently discovered documents, The Jews Should Keep Quiet reassesses the hows and whys behind the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s fateful policies during the Holocaust. Rafael Medoff delves into difficult With FDR’s consent, the administration deliberately suppressed European immigration far below the limits set by U.S. law. His administration also refused to admit Jewish refugees to the U.S. Virgin Islands, dismissed proposals to use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees, and rejected pleas to drop bombs on the railways leading to Auschwitz, even while American planes were bombing targets only a few miles away—actions that would not have conflicted with the larger goal of winning the war.
What motivated FDR? Medoff explores the sensitive question of the president’s private sentiments toward Jews. Unmasking strong parallels between Roosevelt’s statements regarding Jews and Asians, he connects the administration’s policies of excluding Jewish refugees and interning Japanese Americans.
The Jews Should Keep Quiet further reveals how FDR’s personal relationship with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewry’s foremost leader in the 1930s and 1940s, swayed the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Documenting how Roosevelt and others pressured Wise to stifle American Jewish criticism of FDR’s policies, Medoff chronicles how and why the American Jewish community largely fell in line with Wise. Ultimately Medoff weighs the administration’s realistic options for rescue action, which, if taken, would have saved many lives.
What motivated FDR? Medoff explores the sensitive question of the president’s private sentiments toward Jews. Unmasking strong parallels between Roosevelt’s statements regarding Jews and Asians, he connects the administration’s policies of excluding Jewish refugees and interning Japanese Americans.
The Jews Should Keep Quiet further reveals how FDR’s personal relationship with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewry’s foremost leader in the 1930s and 1940s, swayed the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Documenting how Roosevelt and others pressured Wise to stifle American Jewish criticism of FDR’s policies, Medoff chronicles how and why the American Jewish community largely fell in line with Wise. Ultimately Medoff weighs the administration’s realistic options for rescue action, which, if taken, would have saved many lives.
405 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 1, 2019
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September 24, 2019
One of the questions that has been foremost in the minds of Holocaust historians and the Jewish community since World War II centers around the actions and policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Nazi agenda became clear resulting in millions of Jews perishing in the death camps. In his latest book, THE JEWS SHOULD KEEP QUIET: FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE, AND THE HOLOCAUST, Rafael Medoff, the founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies augments traditional documentation of the Holocaust with recently discovered materials that fosters a reassessment of Roosevelt’s actions. Building on Wyman’s work, particularly his PAPER WALLS: AMERICA AND THE REFUGEE CRISIS 1938-1941, THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS: AMERICA AND THE HLOCAUST, 1941-1945 , and his documentary, THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, Medoff paints a very unflattering portrait of Roosevelt’s handling of the Jewish question during World War II along with his duplicitous treatment of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Jewish leadership during the war.
This chapter in American immigration history is hard to ignore and Medoff’s work does a better job chronicling and analyzing US policy than previous historians in terms of Roosevelt’s private attitude toward Jews that motivated him to close America’s doors and shut down Jewish access to Ellis Island in the face of Nazi extermination. The reader will be exposed to Roosevelt’s convictions as early as 1931 and it is obvious that Jewish leadership should have tempered expectations once the New York governor assumed the presidency.
Medoff’s focus centers around Roosevelt’s relationship with the Jewish community in particular their titular leader Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, in addition to how the president’s State Department implemented an immigration policy that he totally supported. What is clear is that Roosevelt played Wise like a fiddle. The president described by numerous biographers and scholars as a “master manipulator” knew just what string to play upon in dealing with Wise in order to keep his true feelings about Roosevelt’s non-existent refugee policy out of the public eye. The president would use dinner engagements, personal notes, oval office visits and other gestures to keep criticism to a minimum. Medoff effectively argues that Roosevelt’s practice of “glad-handing” and making policy-related promises he had no intention of keeping was especially effective with Wise and Jewish leaders who were profoundly reluctant to press Roosevelt to follow through on his unfulfilled pledges. The dilemma for Jewish leadership was should they criticize a president whose domestic agenda they totally embraced.
Jews themselves realized their precarious position in American society. High levels of anti-Semitism, accusations they were trying to drag the United States into war in Europe, and hardships from economic depression exacerbated Jewish concerns. The publicity afforded Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist views and the anti-Semitic diatribes of Father Charles Coughlin who had over 3.5 million radio listeners unnerved the Jewish community.
The examples of Roosevelt’s vague promises, lack of interest, political calculations, and outright apathy presented by Medoff are many. Each is based on sound research, mostly appearing in other monographs, but there is a new element of seriousness and commitment in the author’s arguments. This is not to say that Wise and his cohorts should not share some of the blame for the lack of an American response. Wise’s “tendency to embrace the likeminded and exclude those whom he felt politically and religiously uncomfortable ultimately weakened his hand as a national Jewish leader.” However, no matter Wise’s faults it was Roosevelt who must accept the blame for America’s lack of empathy and his own political calculations when confronted by the Nazi horrors.
Examples of Roosevelt’s actions are many. His support of Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long who was in charge of the visa section of the State Department whose policy was to create as many obstructions as possible to thwart any attempt to lift barriers to Jewish immigration is clear in the documents. Long’s strategy was clear, “put every obstacle in the way and require additional evidence to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone the grinding of the visas.” In case after case the two men were on the same page to prevent any opportunity to allow numbers of Jews to enter the United States. The possible use of the Virgin Islands as a haven for small numbers of Jews was rejected. The ship, “The St. Louis” with 907 passengers was denied admission to the United States and turned back to Europe. The Evian Conference in 1937 and the later Bermuda Conference of 1943 were farces to make it appear that something might be done when in fact nothing was offered.
When evidence of the extermination of Jews was being disseminated to London and Washington, Roosevelt administration policy was to delay and delay in not confronting Germany for its atrocities until the United States entered World War II. Even after Kristallnacht in 1938 any American comments left out any criticism of Germany as well as references to Hitler, Goebbels, and others by name. When Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Switzerland cabled allied leaders in August 1942 providing evidence of the depth of Nazi atrocities, which was followed by a second telegram from Yitzchak and Recha Sternbuch rescue activists in Europe, in addition to reports from the Jewish Agency in Palestine the following month saw the State Department try and keep the information from Wise to prevent what the Roosevelt administration was learning from reaching the public. In fact, it took eighty-one days for Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Wells to get back to Wise that confirmed his greatest fears. This was part of a pattern pursued by the Roosevelt administration who took advantage of Wise’s fear that if he pushed too hard it would create an anti-Semitic backlash that Jews were trying to push their own wartime agenda. More and more Wise feared he was seen as Roosevelt’s “court Jew,” and Medoff points out that the Rabbi had a habit of embellishing Roosevelt’s responses of support in saving the Jews and the tragedy that befell them.
Medoff leaves no stone unturned in delineating Roosevelt’s deceitfulness. He describes numerous examples of Roosevelt’s opposition to the rescue of Jews; not enforcing immigration quotas; talking out of both sides of his mouth depending on his audience; refusing to reign in the State Department; refusing to support the admission of Jewish children, but had no difficulty allowing the admission of British children who were endangered by Nazi bombing; refusing to consider bombing Auschwitz and other concentration camps, while at the same time assisting the Polish Underground through the air; creating obstacles for the creation of the War Refugee Board and then underfunding it, are among many actions taken or not taken by President Roosevelt. Medoff also explores what may have been Roosevelt’s motivations as he points to his family’s societal views which were decidedly anti-Semitic. The author points to numerous statements by Roosevelt bemoaning the mixture of Jewish and Asiatic blood with American blood. He wanted these groups to be spread out across America to reduce their impact on American society. He saw America as a “Protestant country” with the Jews and people of other backgrounds present only based “on sufferance.” With these types of beliefs, it is not surprising that he was disposed to oppose the admission of too many Jews during the war.
Wise does not emerge unscathed by Medoff’s analysis. The author points to Wise’s own ego issues brooking little or no opposition by Jews to his leadership in the Jewish community. Examples include Hillel Silver or groups outside the Jewish community like Peter Bergson and his group that was much more effective in pressuring Roosevelt to support the War Rescue Board. Wise spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with his opponents’ criticism, time that could have been spent fighting to rescue Jewish refugees and pressuring the president. Medoff is quite correct in pointing out that Wise was a flawed leader with his own powerful ego much like Roosevelt and perhaps that is in large part why he was able to swallow his own principles and do the President’s bidding in controlling negative Jewish commentary and actions against his “friend in the White House.”
Some might argue that Medoff’s monograph is too polemical in spots, but to his credit he provides supporting documentation for his viewpoints, integrates a great deal of the comments made by Wise and Roosevelt, and he tries to integrate differing viewpoints. All in all, Medoff has written a serious analysis and though he has reached what some might consider a scathing indictment of Roosevelt, in many instances his commentary is dead on.
This chapter in American immigration history is hard to ignore and Medoff’s work does a better job chronicling and analyzing US policy than previous historians in terms of Roosevelt’s private attitude toward Jews that motivated him to close America’s doors and shut down Jewish access to Ellis Island in the face of Nazi extermination. The reader will be exposed to Roosevelt’s convictions as early as 1931 and it is obvious that Jewish leadership should have tempered expectations once the New York governor assumed the presidency.
Medoff’s focus centers around Roosevelt’s relationship with the Jewish community in particular their titular leader Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, in addition to how the president’s State Department implemented an immigration policy that he totally supported. What is clear is that Roosevelt played Wise like a fiddle. The president described by numerous biographers and scholars as a “master manipulator” knew just what string to play upon in dealing with Wise in order to keep his true feelings about Roosevelt’s non-existent refugee policy out of the public eye. The president would use dinner engagements, personal notes, oval office visits and other gestures to keep criticism to a minimum. Medoff effectively argues that Roosevelt’s practice of “glad-handing” and making policy-related promises he had no intention of keeping was especially effective with Wise and Jewish leaders who were profoundly reluctant to press Roosevelt to follow through on his unfulfilled pledges. The dilemma for Jewish leadership was should they criticize a president whose domestic agenda they totally embraced.
Jews themselves realized their precarious position in American society. High levels of anti-Semitism, accusations they were trying to drag the United States into war in Europe, and hardships from economic depression exacerbated Jewish concerns. The publicity afforded Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist views and the anti-Semitic diatribes of Father Charles Coughlin who had over 3.5 million radio listeners unnerved the Jewish community.
The examples of Roosevelt’s vague promises, lack of interest, political calculations, and outright apathy presented by Medoff are many. Each is based on sound research, mostly appearing in other monographs, but there is a new element of seriousness and commitment in the author’s arguments. This is not to say that Wise and his cohorts should not share some of the blame for the lack of an American response. Wise’s “tendency to embrace the likeminded and exclude those whom he felt politically and religiously uncomfortable ultimately weakened his hand as a national Jewish leader.” However, no matter Wise’s faults it was Roosevelt who must accept the blame for America’s lack of empathy and his own political calculations when confronted by the Nazi horrors.
Examples of Roosevelt’s actions are many. His support of Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long who was in charge of the visa section of the State Department whose policy was to create as many obstructions as possible to thwart any attempt to lift barriers to Jewish immigration is clear in the documents. Long’s strategy was clear, “put every obstacle in the way and require additional evidence to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone the grinding of the visas.” In case after case the two men were on the same page to prevent any opportunity to allow numbers of Jews to enter the United States. The possible use of the Virgin Islands as a haven for small numbers of Jews was rejected. The ship, “The St. Louis” with 907 passengers was denied admission to the United States and turned back to Europe. The Evian Conference in 1937 and the later Bermuda Conference of 1943 were farces to make it appear that something might be done when in fact nothing was offered.
When evidence of the extermination of Jews was being disseminated to London and Washington, Roosevelt administration policy was to delay and delay in not confronting Germany for its atrocities until the United States entered World War II. Even after Kristallnacht in 1938 any American comments left out any criticism of Germany as well as references to Hitler, Goebbels, and others by name. When Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Switzerland cabled allied leaders in August 1942 providing evidence of the depth of Nazi atrocities, which was followed by a second telegram from Yitzchak and Recha Sternbuch rescue activists in Europe, in addition to reports from the Jewish Agency in Palestine the following month saw the State Department try and keep the information from Wise to prevent what the Roosevelt administration was learning from reaching the public. In fact, it took eighty-one days for Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Wells to get back to Wise that confirmed his greatest fears. This was part of a pattern pursued by the Roosevelt administration who took advantage of Wise’s fear that if he pushed too hard it would create an anti-Semitic backlash that Jews were trying to push their own wartime agenda. More and more Wise feared he was seen as Roosevelt’s “court Jew,” and Medoff points out that the Rabbi had a habit of embellishing Roosevelt’s responses of support in saving the Jews and the tragedy that befell them.
Medoff leaves no stone unturned in delineating Roosevelt’s deceitfulness. He describes numerous examples of Roosevelt’s opposition to the rescue of Jews; not enforcing immigration quotas; talking out of both sides of his mouth depending on his audience; refusing to reign in the State Department; refusing to support the admission of Jewish children, but had no difficulty allowing the admission of British children who were endangered by Nazi bombing; refusing to consider bombing Auschwitz and other concentration camps, while at the same time assisting the Polish Underground through the air; creating obstacles for the creation of the War Refugee Board and then underfunding it, are among many actions taken or not taken by President Roosevelt. Medoff also explores what may have been Roosevelt’s motivations as he points to his family’s societal views which were decidedly anti-Semitic. The author points to numerous statements by Roosevelt bemoaning the mixture of Jewish and Asiatic blood with American blood. He wanted these groups to be spread out across America to reduce their impact on American society. He saw America as a “Protestant country” with the Jews and people of other backgrounds present only based “on sufferance.” With these types of beliefs, it is not surprising that he was disposed to oppose the admission of too many Jews during the war.
Wise does not emerge unscathed by Medoff’s analysis. The author points to Wise’s own ego issues brooking little or no opposition by Jews to his leadership in the Jewish community. Examples include Hillel Silver or groups outside the Jewish community like Peter Bergson and his group that was much more effective in pressuring Roosevelt to support the War Rescue Board. Wise spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with his opponents’ criticism, time that could have been spent fighting to rescue Jewish refugees and pressuring the president. Medoff is quite correct in pointing out that Wise was a flawed leader with his own powerful ego much like Roosevelt and perhaps that is in large part why he was able to swallow his own principles and do the President’s bidding in controlling negative Jewish commentary and actions against his “friend in the White House.”
Some might argue that Medoff’s monograph is too polemical in spots, but to his credit he provides supporting documentation for his viewpoints, integrates a great deal of the comments made by Wise and Roosevelt, and he tries to integrate differing viewpoints. All in all, Medoff has written a serious analysis and though he has reached what some might consider a scathing indictment of Roosevelt, in many instances his commentary is dead on.
November 28, 2019
When I was young, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was spoken of highly by members of my family. As the years passed and more information about FDR – particularly the way he manipulated people and the media – was revealed to the public, my feelings about him changed. A new book offers an even more disturbing view of FDR, particularly his positions about Jewish immigration and the Holocaust. In “The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise” (The Jewish Publication Society), Rafael Medoff shows how FDR successfully manipulated Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to prevent the Jewish community from publicly protesting his policies relating to the Jews of Europe. However, Medoff also shows how Wise’s own blinders about FDR and his refusal to form coalitions with those who did not support progressive policies prevented him from being an effective voice for European Jews.
See the rest of my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...
See the rest of my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...
August 22, 2021
"The Jews Should Keep Quiet" is a very important book not to learn about the history of Rabbi Stephen Wise or President Roosevelt; everyone should read the book to learn how politicization of Antisemitism results in inaction. I believe the book has more to teach us about how to fight Antisemitism today than what occurred in the US during WW II.
The story is a fairly well known one and Rafael Medoff does a masterful job of researching and telling it in full detail. FDR took no action before the war to allow Jewish refugees into the US. In fact the actions he took did not even allow existing quotas to be filled. During the war, only after extreme pressure was put on him, did he take minor action to support the refugees fleeing from genocide. And he took no action during the war to bomb the trains leading up to death camps or the death camp killing machines.
And Stephen Wise, as a Jewish leader, although he knew well what was going was not the aggressive advocate that the Jews needed even though he had access to FDR. He had access to FDR because he was a supporter and did not, especially publicly criticize FDR. He also allowed FDR to make commitments and promises that were never followed up and yet Stephen Wise took no action.
Stephen Wise, a Jewish leader in those days, was often involved in maintaining his power and control on Jewish organizations; however, more importantly, the book documents that he was loathe to challenge FDR, especially publicly because he supported FDRs politics. He was a fan of the New Deal. He was an advocate of programs that helped the masses prior to WW II. And he was afraid that any criticism of FDR would undermine the President.
So instead of being the advocate the Jewish people needed, he did not challenge FDR on his decisions. Simply put, Stephen Wise put his political support for FDR ahead of his Jewish advocacy. Sadly this is a pattern I see again and again today.
We have all seen an extreme increase in Antisemitism all around the world. Instead of fighting the Antisemitism, I see people putting their political affiliations ahead of the need to fight Antisemitism. Republicans point to the Squad, Progressives and others as the poster child of Antisemitism and yet do not address it within their own ranks or constituencies. And of course the same is going on as the Democrats point to extremist groups, Majorie Greene and others. Both groups spend more time accusing the other side and nothing is done to fight the Antisemitism.
I respect people's right to have political perspectives; however, to me, Antisemitism has no politics. I have seen Antisemitic acts from the left, the right and center. Antisemitism has no single home in the political spectrum. And those who put their political affiliation ahead of the need to identify, address and fight Antisemitism are following in the footsteps of Stephen Wise.
I read books to understand what happened in the past and why it happened. However, If I do not learn from these books on how to avoid the mistakes of the past, I will be doomed to repeat them. Sadly, people read books such as these only has history miss the point and will suffer the inevitable consequences!
The story is a fairly well known one and Rafael Medoff does a masterful job of researching and telling it in full detail. FDR took no action before the war to allow Jewish refugees into the US. In fact the actions he took did not even allow existing quotas to be filled. During the war, only after extreme pressure was put on him, did he take minor action to support the refugees fleeing from genocide. And he took no action during the war to bomb the trains leading up to death camps or the death camp killing machines.
And Stephen Wise, as a Jewish leader, although he knew well what was going was not the aggressive advocate that the Jews needed even though he had access to FDR. He had access to FDR because he was a supporter and did not, especially publicly criticize FDR. He also allowed FDR to make commitments and promises that were never followed up and yet Stephen Wise took no action.
Stephen Wise, a Jewish leader in those days, was often involved in maintaining his power and control on Jewish organizations; however, more importantly, the book documents that he was loathe to challenge FDR, especially publicly because he supported FDRs politics. He was a fan of the New Deal. He was an advocate of programs that helped the masses prior to WW II. And he was afraid that any criticism of FDR would undermine the President.
So instead of being the advocate the Jewish people needed, he did not challenge FDR on his decisions. Simply put, Stephen Wise put his political support for FDR ahead of his Jewish advocacy. Sadly this is a pattern I see again and again today.
We have all seen an extreme increase in Antisemitism all around the world. Instead of fighting the Antisemitism, I see people putting their political affiliations ahead of the need to fight Antisemitism. Republicans point to the Squad, Progressives and others as the poster child of Antisemitism and yet do not address it within their own ranks or constituencies. And of course the same is going on as the Democrats point to extremist groups, Majorie Greene and others. Both groups spend more time accusing the other side and nothing is done to fight the Antisemitism.
I respect people's right to have political perspectives; however, to me, Antisemitism has no politics. I have seen Antisemitic acts from the left, the right and center. Antisemitism has no single home in the political spectrum. And those who put their political affiliation ahead of the need to identify, address and fight Antisemitism are following in the footsteps of Stephen Wise.
I read books to understand what happened in the past and why it happened. However, If I do not learn from these books on how to avoid the mistakes of the past, I will be doomed to repeat them. Sadly, people read books such as these only has history miss the point and will suffer the inevitable consequences!
January 28, 2021
This is an important book (that needed a better editor). Frequently I am asked how the Holocaust happened. In part because good people did not speak out. Here in the United States, where we definitely did know what was going on, and most certainly in Europe. As I read this book our own national news was playing out. The ongoing rise of anti-semitism and white supremacy is more than concerning. In this book neither FDR nor Rabbi Stephen Wise come out looking good. Even my beloved Eleanor does not look good. And while reading history I thought I knew is important--and well researched with many primary sources and 50 pages of footnotes, I couldn't help but think it would have been even better and more significant if it had had a better editor. Too much repetition and back and forth. Lots of places where it says See Chapter 3, which I had just read or in Chapter 3 it might say See Chapter 5. This back and forth made it hard to follow the chronology. Nonetheless if 40% of college students don't even know the word Auschwitz, the importance of this book, both for history and modern current events cannot be understated. Read the book. Suffer through it. Then remember to speak up.
Read
December 30, 2019This book made me very angry, pretty much "spitting nails" angry. It does no good, but that's how i reacted. To think that people's lives and futures depended on the whims of people who were full of prejudice and disdain. Much as they are now, in fact. Have we not learned anything?
I spit nails watching the news.
Very informative and well-researched, a real eye-opener.
I spit nails watching the news.
Very informative and well-researched, a real eye-opener.
June 29, 2023
If accurate, this book brings to light some new and disturbing assertions with respect to Franklin Roosevelt’s failure to respond aggressively to the destruction of European Jews during the Second World War. It asserts a level of personal anti- semitism on Roosevelt’s part that has not been documented in the hundreds of prior accounts written by Roosevelt’s personal acquaintances over the years. It is curious that Roosevelt’s many associates and enemies have rarely if ever exposed the level of Roosevelt’s alleged negative personal animus towards Jews.
Amazingly, Mr.Medoff dismisses as insignificant Roosevelt’s record of bringing Jews into his Administration. He comments that Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. , who he denigrates as an assimilated Jew, was the only Jew in the cabinet at time when the cabinet consisted of only 10 departments. Morgenthau was only the second Jew to serve in the US cabinet. (Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar Straus appointed by Theodore Roosevelt was the first). Medoff dismisses as insignificant the fact that Roosevelt relied of several Jews to serve on his staff and as close advisors, notably Samuel Rosenman, Ben Cohen , Felix Frankfurter, and Sidney Hillman. He brought in an unprecedented number Jews to serve in positions of responsibility to serve in his Administration. There were so many Jews in the Roosevelt Administration that many of his enemies called it “The Jew Deal.” This is strange behavior for a man who was supposedly an anti-Semite.
Medoff is correct when he criticizes Roosevelt and the State Department for failing to relax the harshly discriminatory immigration statute enacted by the US in 1924 to admit Jews in the US . Roosevelt’s failure to show leadership on this issue, even in the face of widespread opposition in Congress and the general public is a stain on Roosevelt’s legacy, as is his internment of Japanese-American citizens of the US.
However Medoff loses me when he repeats the old charge that Roosevelt could have saved Jews if he bombed the rail lines and death camp gas chambers. Given the fact that the German state and its collaborators had made elimination of the Jews their highest priority, the Germans could have easily repaired damaged rail lines within days of bombing . If the Gas chambers had been bombed , a relatively small target that would killed thousands of internees at the camps, the Germans would have simply utilized the same program of mass shootings that they used to kill millions of Jews In Eastern Europe. It is a horrible fact that more Jews were killed in the East by mass shootings than in the gas chambers.
In this and past books, Mr. Medoff has demonstrated an anti-Roosevelt bias and had chosen to use facts selectively. Roosevelt’s apologists are also guilty of selective use of facts to minimize his blame. The subject of Roosevelt’s response to Murder of Europe’s Jews deserves better from both sides.
Amazingly, Mr.Medoff dismisses as insignificant Roosevelt’s record of bringing Jews into his Administration. He comments that Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. , who he denigrates as an assimilated Jew, was the only Jew in the cabinet at time when the cabinet consisted of only 10 departments. Morgenthau was only the second Jew to serve in the US cabinet. (Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar Straus appointed by Theodore Roosevelt was the first). Medoff dismisses as insignificant the fact that Roosevelt relied of several Jews to serve on his staff and as close advisors, notably Samuel Rosenman, Ben Cohen , Felix Frankfurter, and Sidney Hillman. He brought in an unprecedented number Jews to serve in positions of responsibility to serve in his Administration. There were so many Jews in the Roosevelt Administration that many of his enemies called it “The Jew Deal.” This is strange behavior for a man who was supposedly an anti-Semite.
Medoff is correct when he criticizes Roosevelt and the State Department for failing to relax the harshly discriminatory immigration statute enacted by the US in 1924 to admit Jews in the US . Roosevelt’s failure to show leadership on this issue, even in the face of widespread opposition in Congress and the general public is a stain on Roosevelt’s legacy, as is his internment of Japanese-American citizens of the US.
However Medoff loses me when he repeats the old charge that Roosevelt could have saved Jews if he bombed the rail lines and death camp gas chambers. Given the fact that the German state and its collaborators had made elimination of the Jews their highest priority, the Germans could have easily repaired damaged rail lines within days of bombing . If the Gas chambers had been bombed , a relatively small target that would killed thousands of internees at the camps, the Germans would have simply utilized the same program of mass shootings that they used to kill millions of Jews In Eastern Europe. It is a horrible fact that more Jews were killed in the East by mass shootings than in the gas chambers.
In this and past books, Mr. Medoff has demonstrated an anti-Roosevelt bias and had chosen to use facts selectively. Roosevelt’s apologists are also guilty of selective use of facts to minimize his blame. The subject of Roosevelt’s response to Murder of Europe’s Jews deserves better from both sides.
May 30, 2020
Thoroughly researched, though with a definite bias of the author, he shows either the apathy or antipathy of the US Government/FDR/ towards the Jews, the Jews suffering in the holocaust, and their plight. He shows how all of the US Government attitude (and FDR's) was politics without a shred of pity or concern while the 6+ million perished at the hands of the Nazi's.
Like many, I grew up in an American household that held the Democratic party as high, revered JFK and FDR. What a shock to read how much of it was a spin - from the US Government as well as the Jewish authorities of the time. Stephen Wise was so enamored of FDR, he could never see the other side, see how he was being manipulated and the how FDR was willing to "sacrifice" the Jews for his own political gain.
Like many, I grew up in an American household that held the Democratic party as high, revered JFK and FDR. What a shock to read how much of it was a spin - from the US Government as well as the Jewish authorities of the time. Stephen Wise was so enamored of FDR, he could never see the other side, see how he was being manipulated and the how FDR was willing to "sacrifice" the Jews for his own political gain.
October 14, 2020
This was an excellent book. It laid out a very detailed story about the interactions of Rabbi Stephen Wise and FDR during WWII. These intersections were focused on two primary issues, the plight of European Jewry at the hands of the despot Hitler, and the formation of a Jewish State in the Palestine Mandate. For each issue, the author easily showed that FDR did not do anything to help the Jews other than speak nicely from the heart, and manipulate Rabbi Wise to silence his potential critics within the Jewish Community. In taking in the totality of what FDR accomplished through his manipulation of Rabbi Wise, one can only reflect on how sad this turned out for European Jewry as there were in fact things that could have been accomplished to save lives. FDR manipulated Rabbi Wise like a puppet and Rabbi Wise was a fool for allowing this to happen. The author spelled out how and why FDR was able to manipulate Rabbi Wise, so there is no need to repeat it here. Shameful indeed.
Why liberal Americans Jews still praise FDR to this day is easy to see now. FDR was a liberal who’s New Deal was the utopian gold standard of socialism that these people seek. In looking back, they placed too much praise on FDR because of his New Deal policies which blinded them to the fact that his actions to save European Jewish lives were none existent. As long as they were safe and sound in America, they really didn’t want to extend themselves to press FDR and his administration to rescue European Jewry. They had their safe life in America and they were happy and content. FDR a was not a friend of the Jews and does not deserve the praise that he gets today.
Why liberal Americans Jews still praise FDR to this day is easy to see now. FDR was a liberal who’s New Deal was the utopian gold standard of socialism that these people seek. In looking back, they placed too much praise on FDR because of his New Deal policies which blinded them to the fact that his actions to save European Jewish lives were none existent. As long as they were safe and sound in America, they really didn’t want to extend themselves to press FDR and his administration to rescue European Jewry. They had their safe life in America and they were happy and content. FDR a was not a friend of the Jews and does not deserve the praise that he gets today.
January 10, 2024
The years from 1933 through 1944 was spent dithering and grandstanding, and obviously, doing very little to stop Hitler's virulent anti-Semitism and the resultant destruction of European Jewry. Much of the fault lay with both FDR and Rabbi Wise, the self-proclaimed voice of American Jews.
p. 296 Roosevelt allowed his prejudices to influence his policies regarding America's response to the persecution of European Jewry. p. 301 FDR took advantage of Wise's adoration of him to manipulate Wise through flattery and intermittent access to the White House. Wise was self-important. In order to not lose his access and voice, he almost never publicly criticized or challenged the President.
p. 57 The president used Jewish fears of antisemitism to try to intimate Rabbi Wise into keeping quiet on matters of Jewish concern. p. 89 American Jews had no choice but to remain quiet and accept the administration's position. FDR convinced other countries, initially willing to take in Jewish refugees, to abrogate promises, in fear that these people would ultimately find their way to the United States.
p. 91 Mrs. Roosevelt shared a conviction with her husband: the notion that it was the Jews' own untoward behavior that caused antisemitism, and if only the Jews would keep quiet, their lot would improve. p. 93 Advocacy for the admission of refugees carried the taint of risking national security, even though in fact, not a single case of a Nazi spy disguised as a refugee entering the US was ever uncovered. p. 103 Durbrow recoiled at the idea of US action to aid the Jews; he treated the very notion as inconceivable.
p. 105 Wise knocked down the idea of reprisals toward Germany. There was a general feeling then, among Jewish organizers, that nothing really effective could be done to stop the menace to our people. p. 190 Wise was set in his ways encumbered by political loyalties and hamstrung by the dilemma of how to craft American Jewish responses to the Holocaust that would not negatively impact non-Jews perceptions of Jews, or at least what Wise believed those perceptions to be.
p. 211 The State Department officials were not only deliberately dragging their feet on the funds transfer request; they had also ordered US diplomats in Switzerland to stop sending Washington information about the mass murder of the Jews, fearing the circulation of such reports would increase pressure on the Roosevelt administration to assist the refugees. p. 216 The State Department was actually taking actions to prevent the rescue of Jews.
Wise was not only enamored of FDR, but he was an anglophile. It took him a long time to reach a conclusion that the British government yields as much as necessary to the Arabs and deny as much as necessary to the Jews.
p. 255 FDR reiterated his assurance, that he would take no action which might prove hostile to the Arab people.
p. 259 Wise even defended FDR posthumously. In general, Wise found it difficult to admit that he was wrong. Acknowledging that FDR was not the friend of Zionism that Wise had portrayed him to be would constitute an admission that Wise' entire political strategy over the past decade - anchored in faith in Roosevelt - had been fundamentally flawed. Wise's own position as a Jewish leader depended on the defense of the late president.
p. 280 Abandoning Jews did not seem to carry much political risk for FDR. Unlike their Polish counterparts, Rabbi Wise and other American Jewish leaders were not willing to raise the specter of Jewish voters turning against Roosevelt, even as a means of seeking US military intervention against the Hungarian deportations.
p. 286 The Delanos were rather antisemitic. Pride in his family's racial pedigree melded easily with the common early 20th century perception in America that the Aryan race was locked in a struggle with inferior races. FDR's position on immigration flowed naturally from this view. As he saw it only certain types of foreigners should be admitted to the United States, in limited numbers and under conditions that would lead to the elimination of their ethnic distinctiveness.
p. 294 Roosevelt wanted strict quotas so that Jews would not overcrowd various professions. This approach would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore to the Jews in Germany. Roosevelt rationalized German antisemitism as an understandable response to Jewish behavior (being professionals in numbers larger than proportion in population.)
p. 314 FDR's achievements in depression and the war do not mitigate his record with regard to the Holocaust because they did not conflict with many of the steps he could have taken regarding the Jews. He could have permitted immigration up to the limits set by US law, admitted refugees temporarily to a US territory, utilized empty Liberty ships to carry refugees, or authorized dropping bombs on Auschwitz or the railways from planes were already flying over the camp and its environs.
p. 314 While Roosevelt abhorred Nazism, he was still so committed to maintaining diplomatic and economic relations with Nazi Germany, despite its persecutions of the Jews, that his representatives attended Nazi rallies in NYC and Germany, and he personally removed Anti Hitler references from a cabinet member's speeches. He made no serious effort against the British White Paper immigration restrictions. he repeatedly broke his promises to Jewish leaders to issue strong pro-Zionist statements, and even pressured them to hold back on their own Zionist advocacy. Evidence suggests that FDR's harsh immigration policy and refusal to take military steps that might have left large numbers of European Jews on his hands, stemmed in part from the same bigoted notions that underlay his internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans. FDR was proud that he had no "Jewish blood." He believed Jews possessed certain innate and distasteful characteristics. He was disposed to policies that would exclude, restrict, disperse or silence such minorities (as Jews and Asians). Roosevelt exploited the insecurities of a mostly immigrant and not yet fully accepted community and maneuvered Rabbi Wise to help ensure that the Jews would keep quiet.
p. 296 Roosevelt allowed his prejudices to influence his policies regarding America's response to the persecution of European Jewry. p. 301 FDR took advantage of Wise's adoration of him to manipulate Wise through flattery and intermittent access to the White House. Wise was self-important. In order to not lose his access and voice, he almost never publicly criticized or challenged the President.
p. 57 The president used Jewish fears of antisemitism to try to intimate Rabbi Wise into keeping quiet on matters of Jewish concern. p. 89 American Jews had no choice but to remain quiet and accept the administration's position. FDR convinced other countries, initially willing to take in Jewish refugees, to abrogate promises, in fear that these people would ultimately find their way to the United States.
p. 91 Mrs. Roosevelt shared a conviction with her husband: the notion that it was the Jews' own untoward behavior that caused antisemitism, and if only the Jews would keep quiet, their lot would improve. p. 93 Advocacy for the admission of refugees carried the taint of risking national security, even though in fact, not a single case of a Nazi spy disguised as a refugee entering the US was ever uncovered. p. 103 Durbrow recoiled at the idea of US action to aid the Jews; he treated the very notion as inconceivable.
p. 105 Wise knocked down the idea of reprisals toward Germany. There was a general feeling then, among Jewish organizers, that nothing really effective could be done to stop the menace to our people. p. 190 Wise was set in his ways encumbered by political loyalties and hamstrung by the dilemma of how to craft American Jewish responses to the Holocaust that would not negatively impact non-Jews perceptions of Jews, or at least what Wise believed those perceptions to be.
p. 211 The State Department officials were not only deliberately dragging their feet on the funds transfer request; they had also ordered US diplomats in Switzerland to stop sending Washington information about the mass murder of the Jews, fearing the circulation of such reports would increase pressure on the Roosevelt administration to assist the refugees. p. 216 The State Department was actually taking actions to prevent the rescue of Jews.
Wise was not only enamored of FDR, but he was an anglophile. It took him a long time to reach a conclusion that the British government yields as much as necessary to the Arabs and deny as much as necessary to the Jews.
p. 255 FDR reiterated his assurance, that he would take no action which might prove hostile to the Arab people.
p. 259 Wise even defended FDR posthumously. In general, Wise found it difficult to admit that he was wrong. Acknowledging that FDR was not the friend of Zionism that Wise had portrayed him to be would constitute an admission that Wise' entire political strategy over the past decade - anchored in faith in Roosevelt - had been fundamentally flawed. Wise's own position as a Jewish leader depended on the defense of the late president.
p. 280 Abandoning Jews did not seem to carry much political risk for FDR. Unlike their Polish counterparts, Rabbi Wise and other American Jewish leaders were not willing to raise the specter of Jewish voters turning against Roosevelt, even as a means of seeking US military intervention against the Hungarian deportations.
p. 286 The Delanos were rather antisemitic. Pride in his family's racial pedigree melded easily with the common early 20th century perception in America that the Aryan race was locked in a struggle with inferior races. FDR's position on immigration flowed naturally from this view. As he saw it only certain types of foreigners should be admitted to the United States, in limited numbers and under conditions that would lead to the elimination of their ethnic distinctiveness.
p. 294 Roosevelt wanted strict quotas so that Jews would not overcrowd various professions. This approach would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore to the Jews in Germany. Roosevelt rationalized German antisemitism as an understandable response to Jewish behavior (being professionals in numbers larger than proportion in population.)
p. 314 FDR's achievements in depression and the war do not mitigate his record with regard to the Holocaust because they did not conflict with many of the steps he could have taken regarding the Jews. He could have permitted immigration up to the limits set by US law, admitted refugees temporarily to a US territory, utilized empty Liberty ships to carry refugees, or authorized dropping bombs on Auschwitz or the railways from planes were already flying over the camp and its environs.
p. 314 While Roosevelt abhorred Nazism, he was still so committed to maintaining diplomatic and economic relations with Nazi Germany, despite its persecutions of the Jews, that his representatives attended Nazi rallies in NYC and Germany, and he personally removed Anti Hitler references from a cabinet member's speeches. He made no serious effort against the British White Paper immigration restrictions. he repeatedly broke his promises to Jewish leaders to issue strong pro-Zionist statements, and even pressured them to hold back on their own Zionist advocacy. Evidence suggests that FDR's harsh immigration policy and refusal to take military steps that might have left large numbers of European Jews on his hands, stemmed in part from the same bigoted notions that underlay his internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans. FDR was proud that he had no "Jewish blood." He believed Jews possessed certain innate and distasteful characteristics. He was disposed to policies that would exclude, restrict, disperse or silence such minorities (as Jews and Asians). Roosevelt exploited the insecurities of a mostly immigrant and not yet fully accepted community and maneuvered Rabbi Wise to help ensure that the Jews would keep quiet.
December 8, 2021
The Jews Should Keep Quiet, by Rafael Medoff, is a difficult read, due to both the vastly researched historical record presented and the realization that the Roosevelt administration pushed a series of policies that prevented assistance to European Jews in the throes of the Holocaust.
The book centers on the relationship between Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leading voice in the American Jewish Community, and President Franklin Roosevelt. Wise cherished the access he had to the President, and became the perfect tool for FDR to prevent American Jews from pushing agendas including assisting European Jews, opening Palestine to Jewish immigration, and pressuring the US government — including Congress and the military — to take action. FDR told Wise a series of strategic lies before and during America’s involvement in WW2, lies which Wise was more than happy to believe. Wise actively shut down any opposition within the American Jewish community to FDR’s policies. FDR needed the American Jewish vote, and Wise handed it to him without FDR lifting a finger to help the Jews.
Wise's motivation to assist FDR was two-pronged. First, he idolized FDR and his New Deal policies. Wise also relished his own power, and his access to FDR helped guarantee that he didn't lose his grip no matter who challenged him to be the voice of American Jews.
FDR’s State Department found reasons to allow only a small fraction of the legislated annual quota of Jews to immigrate in all but one year during the holocaust. The US could have temporarily sheltered hundreds of thousands of Jews who were trying to escape certain death, be it in the US, in our territories, or in other countries around the globe. Instead, the administration actively prevented relocation.
FDR promised King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia that he would do nothing to promote the emigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine, even as he promised Wise and American Jewish organizations that he was pushing to make this happen. In a conversation with Saud, FDR asked the King’s opinion on what should be done with displaced Jewish refugees after the war. When the King replied they should be “given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them,” FDR responded “Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews.” While some believe FDR's motivation for protecting Saudi interests in Palestine was to help prevent the next world war, others point out that this policy matches FDR's opinion that Jews (and other minorities) should not be allowed to locate themselves in large numbers, including in American cities.
In 1944, when more than a half million Hungarian Jews were being deported to Auschwitz for extermination, US Jewish organizations tried to go around Rabbi Wise to pressure the US to bomb the gas chambers or the train tracks and bridges leading to the camp. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy formally replied that a War Department study found that bombing was impracticable because it would require “the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations.” There was never such a study. In fact, the US at the time was sending hundreds of planes to bomb German factories between 5 and 47 miles from Auschwitz — there would have been no diversion required. Elie Wiesel, 16 years old at the time, and a member of a slave labor battalion just outside Auschwitz, witnessed an August 20, 1944 air raid on oil factories 5 miles from Auschwitz.
Finally, the book reveals FDR’s racism — antisemitic as well as anti-Asian. In a column for Asia Magazine in 1923, FDR wrote of his sympathy for the view “that the mingling of white with oriental blood on an extensive scale is harmful to our future citizenship.” In a 1925 column for the Daily Telegraph, Roosevelt said he didn’t oppose all immigration; he favored the admission of some Europeans, so long as they had “blood of the right sort.” And in 1930, he wrote “Californians have properly objected [to Japanese immigration] on the ground that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population.” He continued, “Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.”
In 1938, FDR asserted that Jews in Poland were responsible for provoking antisemitism because they dominated the Polish economy. FDR used Rabbi Wise many times over the years to hold back American Jews from protests and other pro-Palestine activities under the rationale that doing so would cause antisemitic sentiment in the US. Wise fell for this again and again.At the Casablanca Conference in 1943, FDR argued that strict quotas should be imposed so that Jews in the region (North Africa) would not “overcrowd” various professions. This approach “would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc. in Germany, were Jews.” FDR was rationalizing German antisemitism and, by extension, the Holocaust as an “understandable” response to Jewish behavior.
A number of years ago I read David McCullough’s “Truman,” and learned how racist FDR’s successor was. Now I see that FDR too was a rabid antisemite, and his policies prevented America and the Allies from doing anything to stop millions of Jewish deaths. America has a long history of racism, bigotry and antisemitism, the depth of which is anything but hidden in our current environment. Sometimes it seems as though Americans have learned very little from our own history.
The book centers on the relationship between Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leading voice in the American Jewish Community, and President Franklin Roosevelt. Wise cherished the access he had to the President, and became the perfect tool for FDR to prevent American Jews from pushing agendas including assisting European Jews, opening Palestine to Jewish immigration, and pressuring the US government — including Congress and the military — to take action. FDR told Wise a series of strategic lies before and during America’s involvement in WW2, lies which Wise was more than happy to believe. Wise actively shut down any opposition within the American Jewish community to FDR’s policies. FDR needed the American Jewish vote, and Wise handed it to him without FDR lifting a finger to help the Jews.
Wise's motivation to assist FDR was two-pronged. First, he idolized FDR and his New Deal policies. Wise also relished his own power, and his access to FDR helped guarantee that he didn't lose his grip no matter who challenged him to be the voice of American Jews.
FDR’s State Department found reasons to allow only a small fraction of the legislated annual quota of Jews to immigrate in all but one year during the holocaust. The US could have temporarily sheltered hundreds of thousands of Jews who were trying to escape certain death, be it in the US, in our territories, or in other countries around the globe. Instead, the administration actively prevented relocation.
FDR promised King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia that he would do nothing to promote the emigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine, even as he promised Wise and American Jewish organizations that he was pushing to make this happen. In a conversation with Saud, FDR asked the King’s opinion on what should be done with displaced Jewish refugees after the war. When the King replied they should be “given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them,” FDR responded “Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews.” While some believe FDR's motivation for protecting Saudi interests in Palestine was to help prevent the next world war, others point out that this policy matches FDR's opinion that Jews (and other minorities) should not be allowed to locate themselves in large numbers, including in American cities.
In 1944, when more than a half million Hungarian Jews were being deported to Auschwitz for extermination, US Jewish organizations tried to go around Rabbi Wise to pressure the US to bomb the gas chambers or the train tracks and bridges leading to the camp. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy formally replied that a War Department study found that bombing was impracticable because it would require “the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations.” There was never such a study. In fact, the US at the time was sending hundreds of planes to bomb German factories between 5 and 47 miles from Auschwitz — there would have been no diversion required. Elie Wiesel, 16 years old at the time, and a member of a slave labor battalion just outside Auschwitz, witnessed an August 20, 1944 air raid on oil factories 5 miles from Auschwitz.
Finally, the book reveals FDR’s racism — antisemitic as well as anti-Asian. In a column for Asia Magazine in 1923, FDR wrote of his sympathy for the view “that the mingling of white with oriental blood on an extensive scale is harmful to our future citizenship.” In a 1925 column for the Daily Telegraph, Roosevelt said he didn’t oppose all immigration; he favored the admission of some Europeans, so long as they had “blood of the right sort.” And in 1930, he wrote “Californians have properly objected [to Japanese immigration] on the ground that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population.” He continued, “Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.”
In 1938, FDR asserted that Jews in Poland were responsible for provoking antisemitism because they dominated the Polish economy. FDR used Rabbi Wise many times over the years to hold back American Jews from protests and other pro-Palestine activities under the rationale that doing so would cause antisemitic sentiment in the US. Wise fell for this again and again.At the Casablanca Conference in 1943, FDR argued that strict quotas should be imposed so that Jews in the region (North Africa) would not “overcrowd” various professions. This approach “would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc. in Germany, were Jews.” FDR was rationalizing German antisemitism and, by extension, the Holocaust as an “understandable” response to Jewish behavior.
A number of years ago I read David McCullough’s “Truman,” and learned how racist FDR’s successor was. Now I see that FDR too was a rabid antisemite, and his policies prevented America and the Allies from doing anything to stop millions of Jewish deaths. America has a long history of racism, bigotry and antisemitism, the depth of which is anything but hidden in our current environment. Sometimes it seems as though Americans have learned very little from our own history.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 26, 2020
Well researched and quite nauseating. I knew there was a reluctance on the part of FDR to assist the Jewish people during the Shoah. I did not realize the extent to which active antisemitism led US policy to intentionally prevent their rescue.
September 1, 2022
This review was originally published by Jewish Book Council (https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org), the longest-running organization devoted exclusively to the support and celebration of Jewish literature.
There is a longstanding debate about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s actions — or inactions — in response to the Holocaust. According to one school of thought, Roosevelt — constrained by economic depression, public isolationism, and widespread antisemitism — did what he could to aid the Jews of Europe, all while navigating the political shoals of pre-Pearl Harbor America to provide vital aid to Britain and prepare the United States for war. By contrast, Roosevelt’s critics maintain that he could have taken a number of steps at no political cost that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Rafael Medoff’s latest book, The Jews Should Keep Quiet, lends weight to the more critical view. That’s not because it reveals new facts regarding Roosevelt’s tepid response to learning that the Nazis had embarked on a program to murder every Jew in the territories they controlled. Medoff’s account of those facts — including the president’s failure strongly to condemn Hitler’s early persecution of the Jews, US restrictions on refugee immigration, and the failure to disrupt the 1944 mass slaughter of Hungarian Jews by bombing the gas chambers and the railroads servicing them — is chillingly comprehensive. But that story has long been known.
What’s new and startling in The Jews Should Keep Quiet is the ample evidence it contains of Roosevelt’s antisemitic attitudes, which Medoff suggests may have accounted at least in part for the president’s lack of a more forceful response to Jewish persecution and, ultimately, to Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
As Medoff notes, there would have been nothing unusual in a man of Roosevelt’s background having antisemitic beliefs, since such attitudes were widespread in American society at the time. Still, Roosevelt’s verbal expression of antisemitism while he was president — and at times of unprecedented persecution and then mass murder of Jews — is shocking.
Medoff relates that Rabbi Stephen Wise told Roosevelt about Poland’s threat to expel Jews from land their families had owned for centuries in 1938. Roosevelt replied with an anecdote that suggested antisemitism in Poland was simply a response to the fact that “the Jewish grain dealer and the Jewish shoe dealer and the Jewish shopkeeper” were “controlling the Polish economy.”
The president spoke in a similar vein when discussing the return of Jews to professions from which they had been barred by the collaborationist Vichy regime following the liberation of North Africa in November 1942. Roosevelt suggested that the number of Jews in any profession should not exceed the percentage of Jews in the general population; by way of explanation, Roosevelt said that this “would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc. in Germany were Jews.”
Whatever the statistical accuracy of Roosevelt’s assertion, for him to speak of “understandable” German “complaints” about the Jews in January 1943 — two months after the Allies had publicly confirmed that the Nazis were trying to exterminate the Jewish people — is appalling.
And in an exchange with Stalin at the Yalta Conference, held in early February 1945, Roosevelt joked that he would offer to give six million American Jews to Saudi Arabia as a “concession” at an upcoming meeting. When an aide later referred to this conversation and used the word “kikes,” Roosevelt’s reported reaction was to laugh.
Certainly, the political constraints on Roosevelt cited by his defenders were very real. Hitler’s early years in power coincided with devastating economic depression in the United States, which led to anti-immigrant sentiment. Following American involvement in World War I, isolationism, as reflected by the America First Movement, was also politically powerful. And the 1930s and ‘40s may well have been the high watermark of antisemitism in the United States.
In these circumstances Roosevelt, who clearly perceived the Nazi threat to American security, was battling to obtain and keep approval for military aid to Britain. It would not have been unreasonable for him to be wary of supporting measures that could be depicted as reflecting his desire to lead the United States into “a war for the Jews.”
But as Medoff notes, many fewer Jewish refugees were allowed to come to the United States than the quotas of the time allowed. This is attributable to the deliberate efforts of US consular officials to obstruct the grant of visas to Jews by any available bureaucratic means. Breckenridge Long, an old friend of Roosevelt’s who became head of the visa section at the State Department in 1940, sent an infamous memo to his subordinates instructing them to “delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States.” This could be done, he said, by putting “every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.”
Although I do not find the evidence he cites conclusive (diary entries by Long that could have been self-serving), Medoff says that Roosevelt knew and approved of what Long was doing. But whether he specifically knew of it or not, he must surely have been aware of the rising chorus of pleas that the US admit more refugees from Hitler. Under these circumstances, it was his responsibility to find out why the combined immigration quotas from Germany and Austria were not being filled. Simply by picking up the phone or sending a cable, Roosevelt could have corrected this situation with no attendant publicity.
America’s greatest failure in responding to the Holocaust was that it did not afford a haven to more refugees from Nazism during the years 1933 – 40. During those years, 190,000 available places in the combined immigration quotas for Germany and Austria went unfilled. Had America’s day-to-day immigration practices not been intentionally restrictive, nearly 200,000 lives could have been saved.
Why didn’t Roosevelt intervene with the State Department to force it to allow the immigration quotas to be filled? In addition to his wartime statements, Medoff cites numerous examples from Roosevelt’s pre-presidential writings stressing the need to spread out Jewish immigrants around the country to thin out their influence and prevent them from dominating various professions. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Roosevelt’s negative feelings about Jews contributed significantly to his apparent indifference to their fate at the hands of the Nazis.
Nor were Jews the only group about whom Roosevelt gave vent to ethnic prejudices. In a 1925 column for the Macon Daily Telegraph, he warned that “Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population.…[a]nyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.” Is it likely that these views did not contribute to Roosevelt’s decision to intern American citizens of Japanese extraction, when no such action was taken against German or Italian Americans?
So how should Americans, and particularly Jewish Americans, view Roosevelt? It seems clear that the veneration nearly universally accorded Roosevelt by World War II – era Jews — and still by many Jews today — is misplaced. But that does not mean that he is unworthy of any respect.
In addition to his leadership during the Great Depression — which, whatever its economic impact, greatly rallied the morale of the American people — Roosevelt saw the threat posed by Hitler, and deftly took steps to counter that threat, notwithstanding the isolationist sentiment prevalent in the country at the time. He succeeded in getting the Congress to enact necessary amendments to the Neutrality Act, approve the Lend-Lease program, and institute a military draft. Once America joined the war, he agreed with Churchill that the Allies should follow a “Germany first” military strategy, although it was Japan that had launched the catastrophic, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
A fair evaluation of Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust must also take account of America’s record of doing little or nothing to intervene in other twentieth-century genocides. From Armenia to Bosnia, from Nigeria to Bangladesh, and most recently in Rwanda, the United States failed to take action, even when that could have been done at relatively low risk to US armed forces.
Nor, except in the case of Bosnia (a European country), has inaction by the United States stirred much concern on the part of the American public. Perhaps, in addition to evaluating the actions and inactions of our leaders, we should think critically about our own sensitivity to events beyond our shores.
Howard F. Jaeckel is a retired attorney and a member of the Jewish Book Council’s Board of Directors.
There is a longstanding debate about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s actions — or inactions — in response to the Holocaust. According to one school of thought, Roosevelt — constrained by economic depression, public isolationism, and widespread antisemitism — did what he could to aid the Jews of Europe, all while navigating the political shoals of pre-Pearl Harbor America to provide vital aid to Britain and prepare the United States for war. By contrast, Roosevelt’s critics maintain that he could have taken a number of steps at no political cost that would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Rafael Medoff’s latest book, The Jews Should Keep Quiet, lends weight to the more critical view. That’s not because it reveals new facts regarding Roosevelt’s tepid response to learning that the Nazis had embarked on a program to murder every Jew in the territories they controlled. Medoff’s account of those facts — including the president’s failure strongly to condemn Hitler’s early persecution of the Jews, US restrictions on refugee immigration, and the failure to disrupt the 1944 mass slaughter of Hungarian Jews by bombing the gas chambers and the railroads servicing them — is chillingly comprehensive. But that story has long been known.
What’s new and startling in The Jews Should Keep Quiet is the ample evidence it contains of Roosevelt’s antisemitic attitudes, which Medoff suggests may have accounted at least in part for the president’s lack of a more forceful response to Jewish persecution and, ultimately, to Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
As Medoff notes, there would have been nothing unusual in a man of Roosevelt’s background having antisemitic beliefs, since such attitudes were widespread in American society at the time. Still, Roosevelt’s verbal expression of antisemitism while he was president — and at times of unprecedented persecution and then mass murder of Jews — is shocking.
Medoff relates that Rabbi Stephen Wise told Roosevelt about Poland’s threat to expel Jews from land their families had owned for centuries in 1938. Roosevelt replied with an anecdote that suggested antisemitism in Poland was simply a response to the fact that “the Jewish grain dealer and the Jewish shoe dealer and the Jewish shopkeeper” were “controlling the Polish economy.”
The president spoke in a similar vein when discussing the return of Jews to professions from which they had been barred by the collaborationist Vichy regime following the liberation of North Africa in November 1942. Roosevelt suggested that the number of Jews in any profession should not exceed the percentage of Jews in the general population; by way of explanation, Roosevelt said that this “would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc. in Germany were Jews.”
Whatever the statistical accuracy of Roosevelt’s assertion, for him to speak of “understandable” German “complaints” about the Jews in January 1943 — two months after the Allies had publicly confirmed that the Nazis were trying to exterminate the Jewish people — is appalling.
And in an exchange with Stalin at the Yalta Conference, held in early February 1945, Roosevelt joked that he would offer to give six million American Jews to Saudi Arabia as a “concession” at an upcoming meeting. When an aide later referred to this conversation and used the word “kikes,” Roosevelt’s reported reaction was to laugh.
Certainly, the political constraints on Roosevelt cited by his defenders were very real. Hitler’s early years in power coincided with devastating economic depression in the United States, which led to anti-immigrant sentiment. Following American involvement in World War I, isolationism, as reflected by the America First Movement, was also politically powerful. And the 1930s and ‘40s may well have been the high watermark of antisemitism in the United States.
In these circumstances Roosevelt, who clearly perceived the Nazi threat to American security, was battling to obtain and keep approval for military aid to Britain. It would not have been unreasonable for him to be wary of supporting measures that could be depicted as reflecting his desire to lead the United States into “a war for the Jews.”
But as Medoff notes, many fewer Jewish refugees were allowed to come to the United States than the quotas of the time allowed. This is attributable to the deliberate efforts of US consular officials to obstruct the grant of visas to Jews by any available bureaucratic means. Breckenridge Long, an old friend of Roosevelt’s who became head of the visa section at the State Department in 1940, sent an infamous memo to his subordinates instructing them to “delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States.” This could be done, he said, by putting “every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.”
Although I do not find the evidence he cites conclusive (diary entries by Long that could have been self-serving), Medoff says that Roosevelt knew and approved of what Long was doing. But whether he specifically knew of it or not, he must surely have been aware of the rising chorus of pleas that the US admit more refugees from Hitler. Under these circumstances, it was his responsibility to find out why the combined immigration quotas from Germany and Austria were not being filled. Simply by picking up the phone or sending a cable, Roosevelt could have corrected this situation with no attendant publicity.
America’s greatest failure in responding to the Holocaust was that it did not afford a haven to more refugees from Nazism during the years 1933 – 40. During those years, 190,000 available places in the combined immigration quotas for Germany and Austria went unfilled. Had America’s day-to-day immigration practices not been intentionally restrictive, nearly 200,000 lives could have been saved.
Why didn’t Roosevelt intervene with the State Department to force it to allow the immigration quotas to be filled? In addition to his wartime statements, Medoff cites numerous examples from Roosevelt’s pre-presidential writings stressing the need to spread out Jewish immigrants around the country to thin out their influence and prevent them from dominating various professions. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Roosevelt’s negative feelings about Jews contributed significantly to his apparent indifference to their fate at the hands of the Nazis.
Nor were Jews the only group about whom Roosevelt gave vent to ethnic prejudices. In a 1925 column for the Macon Daily Telegraph, he warned that “Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population.…[a]nyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.” Is it likely that these views did not contribute to Roosevelt’s decision to intern American citizens of Japanese extraction, when no such action was taken against German or Italian Americans?
So how should Americans, and particularly Jewish Americans, view Roosevelt? It seems clear that the veneration nearly universally accorded Roosevelt by World War II – era Jews — and still by many Jews today — is misplaced. But that does not mean that he is unworthy of any respect.
In addition to his leadership during the Great Depression — which, whatever its economic impact, greatly rallied the morale of the American people — Roosevelt saw the threat posed by Hitler, and deftly took steps to counter that threat, notwithstanding the isolationist sentiment prevalent in the country at the time. He succeeded in getting the Congress to enact necessary amendments to the Neutrality Act, approve the Lend-Lease program, and institute a military draft. Once America joined the war, he agreed with Churchill that the Allies should follow a “Germany first” military strategy, although it was Japan that had launched the catastrophic, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
A fair evaluation of Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust must also take account of America’s record of doing little or nothing to intervene in other twentieth-century genocides. From Armenia to Bosnia, from Nigeria to Bangladesh, and most recently in Rwanda, the United States failed to take action, even when that could have been done at relatively low risk to US armed forces.
Nor, except in the case of Bosnia (a European country), has inaction by the United States stirred much concern on the part of the American public. Perhaps, in addition to evaluating the actions and inactions of our leaders, we should think critically about our own sensitivity to events beyond our shores.
Howard F. Jaeckel is a retired attorney and a member of the Jewish Book Council’s Board of Directors.
December 29, 2021
I just finished reading The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the Holocaust, by Rafael Medoff. All I can say is "wow." This book earns a definite Goodreads "Five Star." With apologies to the readership, large chunks of this review may find its way into related postings. Medoff's tour d' force is of a similar vein to While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy by Arthur D. Morse. About two years ago I read 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History by Jay Winik. This trilogy of books debunks the premise that FDR was any friend of the Jews, or had any particular principals other than a keen regard for his own political well-being.
FDR was elected with much Jewish support. The Jews' numbers were never important; their vote in electorally crucial states such as New York was. More important numerically was the nativist portions of non-urban America. However, Jews did play a leading role in media and academia, so arousing active Jewish opposition was a must to avoid. There were strenuous efforts to keep alarming reports by such people as Jan Karski and Rudolf Vrba from wide circulation. Those reports concerned some gruesome details of the slaughter as it unfolded.
Also mentioned in the book is his views of Japanese-Americans where he states:
FDR projected an image of compassionate caring. The reality, as shown in this book, was anything but.
Where this book goes further than the Morse or Winik books is his depiction of a leading figure in Jewish life at the time, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Rabbi Wise, a close political ally of FDR, is described by his rival, Rabbi Hillel Silver of being at worst a "Stadtlan" and his activities as a "shtadlanuth." P.261 of book. The term we would used is "useful idiot " (a phrase appearing nowhere in the book). Rabbi Wise was, according to the author, a victim of FDR's charm, and was manipulated to keep the U.S. Jewish population silent as 2,000,000, then 4,000,000, and finally 6,000,000 Jews were massacred. Other prominent Jewish figures such as Joseph Proskauer and Samuel Rosenman come in for similar criticism of "going along to get along." The book's conclusion addresses the question as to whether a more assertive posture would have done any good. Alternative history is not mine, or this author's field, but the implication is that given FDR's desire for Jewish and history's approval it might have.
FDR was elected with much Jewish support. The Jews' numbers were never important; their vote in electorally crucial states such as New York was. More important numerically was the nativist portions of non-urban America. However, Jews did play a leading role in media and academia, so arousing active Jewish opposition was a must to avoid. There were strenuous efforts to keep alarming reports by such people as Jan Karski and Rudolf Vrba from wide circulation. Those reports concerned some gruesome details of the slaughter as it unfolded.
Also mentioned in the book is his views of Japanese-Americans where he states:
Californians have properly objected [to Japanese immigration] on the sound basic ground that Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population.....Anyone who has traveled in the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results.
FDR projected an image of compassionate caring. The reality, as shown in this book, was anything but.
Where this book goes further than the Morse or Winik books is his depiction of a leading figure in Jewish life at the time, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Rabbi Wise, a close political ally of FDR, is described by his rival, Rabbi Hillel Silver of being at worst a "Stadtlan" and his activities as a "shtadlanuth." P.261 of book. The term we would used is "useful idiot " (a phrase appearing nowhere in the book). Rabbi Wise was, according to the author, a victim of FDR's charm, and was manipulated to keep the U.S. Jewish population silent as 2,000,000, then 4,000,000, and finally 6,000,000 Jews were massacred. Other prominent Jewish figures such as Joseph Proskauer and Samuel Rosenman come in for similar criticism of "going along to get along." The book's conclusion addresses the question as to whether a more assertive posture would have done any good. Alternative history is not mine, or this author's field, but the implication is that given FDR's desire for Jewish and history's approval it might have.
April 20, 2021
The unsettling title is nonetheless the appropriate “take away” from Rafael Medoff’s meticulous exploration of FDR’s manipulative manoeuvring of the Jewish community’s plea to the President to rescue European Jews from the Nazi annihilation. Through the acquiescence of the foremost Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Jews were pressured to “keep quiet”, not to interfere in the war effort or call attention to their “special” issues and, most particularly, not to question or criticise FDR’s policies regarding Nazi Germany. Medoff does not shy away from citing the responsibility Wise must take in so blindly worshipping FDR and in valuing what he saw as his special relationship with the President, which ultimately allowed for the President’s inaction and his rejection of any Jewish rescue operation. Ultimately, Wise did not lead any protest campaign in the naïve belief that FDR was acting behind the scenes in the best interests of the Jewish community.
Medoff’s analysis destroys the myth about FDR being “a friend of the Jews”. In fact, the concluding chapter of the text considers whether antisemitism was in fact behind the political motivations of FDR’s inaction. The historian asks “Could there be a connection between his policy of excluding Jewish refugees [from immigration] and his mass internment of Japanese Americans?” Medoff goes further to present documented evidence that FDR “allowed his prejudices to influence his policies regarding America’s response to the persecution of European Jewry.”
Medoff makes his point with the mention of FDR’s unwillingness to “use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees”, and “to drop bombs on the railways and bridges leading to Auschwitz”. The reply the administration offered to all questions was that any action would interfere with the war effort. Yet, immigration quotas remained unfilled as FDR and the State Department refused to accept Jewish refugees or to support offers from territories like the Virgin Islands and other Caribbean islands to offer refuge.
The text is explosive in its account of a popular President, one who garnered the majority of votes from the Jewish public, yet who ignored the voices of 6,000,000 European Jews and silenced the American Jews who had desperately sought to rescue them.
Medoff’s analysis destroys the myth about FDR being “a friend of the Jews”. In fact, the concluding chapter of the text considers whether antisemitism was in fact behind the political motivations of FDR’s inaction. The historian asks “Could there be a connection between his policy of excluding Jewish refugees [from immigration] and his mass internment of Japanese Americans?” Medoff goes further to present documented evidence that FDR “allowed his prejudices to influence his policies regarding America’s response to the persecution of European Jewry.”
Medoff makes his point with the mention of FDR’s unwillingness to “use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees”, and “to drop bombs on the railways and bridges leading to Auschwitz”. The reply the administration offered to all questions was that any action would interfere with the war effort. Yet, immigration quotas remained unfilled as FDR and the State Department refused to accept Jewish refugees or to support offers from territories like the Virgin Islands and other Caribbean islands to offer refuge.
The text is explosive in its account of a popular President, one who garnered the majority of votes from the Jewish public, yet who ignored the voices of 6,000,000 European Jews and silenced the American Jews who had desperately sought to rescue them.
November 8, 2023
Rafael Medoff (born c. 1959) is an American professor of Jewish history and the founding director of The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which is based in Washington, D.C. and focuses on issues related to America's response to the Holocaust.
Medoff's book, "The Jews Should Keep Quiet," is a thoroughgoing refutation of Roosevelt's reputation as a "humanitarian" and "friend of the Jews." Not only does the book reveal the multi-faceted national and racial bigotry that FDR inherited from his forbears (and never abandoned), but it shows how skillfully this first executive acted to deflect the growing protest of American Jews who demanded that the U.S. intervene to publicly expose Hitler's monstrous murder machine. FDR refused the demands stop the process of mass murder by bombing the tracks to Auschwitz. FDR also opposed funding the Jewish volunteers led by Peter Bergson who were organizing to intervene militarily in Poland to disrupt the Holocaust.
Roosevelt's antisemitism is not surprising in light of his policy of arresting hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans and placing them in relocation camps, his retention of racial segregation in the armed forces, assigning menial jobs to African-Americans, and his refusal to allow desperate Jewish refugees to enter the United States in the 1930s.
The Holocaust Encyclopedia reports:
"Zionist and activist Peter H. Bergson advocated in the United States for the establishment of a Jewish Army and for the rescue of European Jews during the Holocaust. His aggressive lobbying tactics angered the leaders of many American Jewish organizations. Nevertheless, he successfully alerted Americans to the ongoing murder of European Jews and increased pressure on the Roosevelt administration to initiate rescue efforts."
Those who have learned about the Holocaust, and have been able to recognize how unbelievably inhuman was the Nazi regime]s fanatical devotion to mass murder, will learn how despicable were the attitudes and actions of the Roosevelt administration during World War II.
Medoff's book, "The Jews Should Keep Quiet," is a thoroughgoing refutation of Roosevelt's reputation as a "humanitarian" and "friend of the Jews." Not only does the book reveal the multi-faceted national and racial bigotry that FDR inherited from his forbears (and never abandoned), but it shows how skillfully this first executive acted to deflect the growing protest of American Jews who demanded that the U.S. intervene to publicly expose Hitler's monstrous murder machine. FDR refused the demands stop the process of mass murder by bombing the tracks to Auschwitz. FDR also opposed funding the Jewish volunteers led by Peter Bergson who were organizing to intervene militarily in Poland to disrupt the Holocaust.
Roosevelt's antisemitism is not surprising in light of his policy of arresting hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans and placing them in relocation camps, his retention of racial segregation in the armed forces, assigning menial jobs to African-Americans, and his refusal to allow desperate Jewish refugees to enter the United States in the 1930s.
The Holocaust Encyclopedia reports:
"Zionist and activist Peter H. Bergson advocated in the United States for the establishment of a Jewish Army and for the rescue of European Jews during the Holocaust. His aggressive lobbying tactics angered the leaders of many American Jewish organizations. Nevertheless, he successfully alerted Americans to the ongoing murder of European Jews and increased pressure on the Roosevelt administration to initiate rescue efforts."
Those who have learned about the Holocaust, and have been able to recognize how unbelievably inhuman was the Nazi regime]s fanatical devotion to mass murder, will learn how despicable were the attitudes and actions of the Roosevelt administration during World War II.
April 27, 2020
"The Jews Should Keep Quiet". With a friendly pat on the back President Roosevelt convinced Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to be patient and not demand too many concessions for the Jewish people. Rabbi Wise, a leader of the American Jewish Congress, complied with that advice during the 1930s as Jewish people were being persecuted by Nazis in Germany, all the way through the holocaust and the murder of six million. Roosevelt could have easily saved two hundred thousand German Jewish refugees from Hitler simply by using unfilled immigration quotas. He could have saved a thousand Jewish children by admitting them to safe refuge. He could have allowed the St. Louis, a ship contained 900 Jewish refugees to dock in the Virgin Islands. He could have bombed the train routes to Auschwitz. Roosevelt did none of these things. Tragically, Rabbi Wise failed to pressure the administration to take action to save European Jews. He actively worked against other Jewish groups that were aggressively demanding humanitarian intervention. Wise, despite all contrary evidence, believed in the President and was betrayed by him. Antisemitism was rampant in the State Department during the 1930s and 1940s. Sadly, this well researched book reveals that the President himself shared that contemptuous bigotry.
October 10, 2021
This book is an analysis of the relationship between FDR and Rabbi Stephen Wise during the rise of Hitler, the persecution of European Jewry and the Holocaust. Wise was a strong advocate for FDR. He believed in him as the person who could lead the country out of the Depression and then to victory over the Axis. This trust often led to FDR taking advantage of their relationship stop Jewish protests or public criticism of his policies towards Nazi Germany and the plight of the Jews in Europe. Roosevelt promised many things, but failed to deliver in most cases.
The State Department did everything in their power to stop immigration of Jews into the country and Roosevelt allowed that to happen. Roosevelt backed the British when they severely restricted immigration to Palestine. Wise stifled most public criticism of these actions. Part of the motivation for his backing of Roosevelt was to protect his own position as leader of America’s Jews.
The relationship between these two men was complicated and influenced by world events, but the story is fascinating and detailed expertly by the author.
The State Department did everything in their power to stop immigration of Jews into the country and Roosevelt allowed that to happen. Roosevelt backed the British when they severely restricted immigration to Palestine. Wise stifled most public criticism of these actions. Part of the motivation for his backing of Roosevelt was to protect his own position as leader of America’s Jews.
The relationship between these two men was complicated and influenced by world events, but the story is fascinating and detailed expertly by the author.
October 5, 2020
This informative and important book shows a different side of FDR. Medoff quotes Truman as saying FDR was “the coldest man I ever met.” After reading this book, it’s hard to disagree with Truman’s assessment. Medoff also looks at the schisms within and between the various Jewish groups. The main issues that caused conflict were how best to save as many European Jews as possible and how best to push for the Zionist cause of making a Jewish state out of Palestine. In a way, you have some Jews saying that Jews should keep quiet. Rabbi Wise is one of those. He wanted Jews to stay silent and put their trust in FDR. Others wanted to protest how little effort American (and British) leaders made in trying to save six million European Jews from extermination by the Nazis. Medoff also questions if FDR was biased against Jews and if Rabbi Wise’s quest for power played a role in his failure to see that FDR was using him.
November 9, 2021
I took years to read The Abandonment of the Jews, due to how shocking and sad the information was. This book brings the same information into clearer focus by exposing FDR for the antisemitic putz that he was, causing thousands of Jews to be slaughtered during the Holocaust that might otherwise have gone to Palestine, been saved by a Liberty ship or immigrated by lawful quota into the USA. For shame.
October 13, 2020
This is an important book that details the ways in which President Roosevelt and his administration ignored pleas for help from the American and European Jewish community while Hitler slaughtered six million Jews from 1939-1945. It's long. It's detailed. It's also very well written and very readable.
November 18, 2021
A very interesting book, though not written with absolute grace. Too much repetition, for one. How awful FDR actually was! He and Wise reminded me fore of the negative characters in Philip Roth's Plot Against America than I expected.
May 26, 2024
A completely different view of history: cast aside the hagiographic descriptions of FDR and Churchill. Yes, we know racism, anti-Semitism was common in the past. But how strongly did they influence policies towards Jews in relation to the holocaust? Only this book gives you the facts!
October 31, 2019
Great topic and sourcing but was expecting more novel research and a bit more exciting of a read.
October 1, 2022
Heartbreaking, informative and dry. The perfect storm of a heartless and antisemitic president and a power-hungry, arrogant and foolish Rabbi costs tens of thousands of Jewish lives.
December 30, 2022
Informative and well written
February 24, 2023
Very well researched book that tells us a very sad story.
Shame on Roosevelt and disappointed by Rabbi Wise trust on his president.
Shame on Roosevelt and disappointed by Rabbi Wise trust on his president.
June 25, 2024
Such an important an great book! I like the topic and think its very important, but the writing style is a little boring .. But an important book!
June 22, 2025
Almost unbelievable story. As much as you don't want to know the stark facts speak for themselves. Not that the US didn't help, but that they were obstructionist to any rescue.
May 7, 2024
If ever there was a need to understand the lack of trust by Israel in the United States to protect its interest, this is the book. At every turn FDF failed to protect the Jews from the holocaust. His claim tthat it was was necessary to win the war and not get diverted by an unsolvable problem. Even Natanyahu's father, a professor at Cornell is mentioned as a pit player tried unsuccessfully to get FDF to intervene. The indiffernce of the world powers to the plight of the Jews appears to be the given response to such form of genocide regardless if in Africa, Middle East, Asia or Europe. The West has failed in Kosovo with the Serbs, Ukraine with the Rufssians and now Gaza and Israel. The reality of a World War is far greater immediate threat to mankind than climate change and the wake up call is unanswered. Great Book but a hard and disturbing read.
December 8, 2025
This work is a monumental testimony to symbiosis of ruling xenophobia on one side and, on the other hand, oversaturated importance being manipulated to achieve factually opposite goals through a sort of mateship a statesman and a community leader self-proclaimed exercised on a very expense of lives perished in Holocaust.
Are "other circumstances" an author mentioned while describing some bureaucratic achievements of saving the European Jewry remnants in 1944-1945, a very gloomy hint at a refuge the USSR granted indiscriminately for hundreds of thousands Jews who managed fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland in September-1939, and post-Stalingrad advances of the Red Army having liberated Auszwitz in January-1945?
Are "other circumstances" an author mentioned while describing some bureaucratic achievements of saving the European Jewry remnants in 1944-1945, a very gloomy hint at a refuge the USSR granted indiscriminately for hundreds of thousands Jews who managed fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland in September-1939, and post-Stalingrad advances of the Red Army having liberated Auszwitz in January-1945?
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