The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust
By Rafael Medoff
For those of us old enough to remember the esteem with which American Jews held President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the U.S. effort against Nazi Germany in World War II, this book may change your mind. Similarly, if you or someone close to you lost relatives or friends in the Holocaust, the contents of this book may disgust you. To cite just two quotes in this book, this is what the editors of The New Republic, published following the Bermuda Conference of April 1943, “If the AngloSaxon nations continue on their present course, we shall have connived with Hitler in one of the most terrible episodes of history.” A letter to Under Secretary of State Sumner Wells from the Joint Emergency Committee on European Affairs from June 1, 1943 said, “To relegate the rescue of the Jews of Europe, the only people marked for total extermination, to the day of victory is…virtually to doom them to the fate Hitler has marked out for them.”
This excellently written and researched book deals with the relationship between Rabbi Stephen Wise and his personal relationship with and devotion to President Roosevelt. Wise was a Reform rabbi, outspoken Zionist, founder of the American Jewish Congress (AJC), and one of the most prominent leaders of the American Jewish community at the time. Roosevelt used his relationship with Wise to stifle “potential Jewish criticism of his refugee policy.” The book’s eight chapters begin with the indifference of Roosevelt to the situation in Germany, the isolationist and anti-immigration policy of the Congress, and the failure of the United States government to undertake measures that might have saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis. It also includes a discussion of the issue of bombing the railroads leading to the extermination camps and closes with a discussion of anti-Semitism in the White House. This book makes a valuable contribution which may fundamentally change our understanding.
Throughout the book, Medoff tells us that Wise agonized over the fate of the Jews of Europe, but that his misplaced devotion to the president would not allow him to go against the government’s policies. On the other hand, he discouraged any active efforts by Jewish organizations he did not control to publicly raise the issue of the wholesale murder of Jews in Europe, lest it place the Jews in a position of appearing to fail to support the president in wartime and lead to acts of anti-Semitism at home. The October 1943 march on Washington by 400 rabbis, was anathema to Wise. Marshals for that march were provided by the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. (JWV). At the same time, Wise’s large ego often led to conflict with other Jewish organizations, such as the Bergson Group, and Jewish organizational leaders whom he felt were attempting to usurp his leadership role.
Wise continued to use every opportunity he could to meet with the president, thinking that his access equaled influence, but he was wrong. Yet despite Roosevelt’s failure to do anything, Wise remained a staunch supporter. Wise’s turning point came with the arrival of two telegrams. The first, on August 8, 1942, from AJC’s representative in Switzerland Gerhard Rieger, who reported on German plans to exterminate all the Jews in Europe. This telegram, which the State Department had marked as “unreliable,” also went to the British Foreign Office. Wise only received a copy on August 25.
The second, received in September 1942 came from Racha and Yitzchak Steinbuck, who were AJC orthodox activists. It went to the President of Agudath Israel, who relayed it to President Roosevelt and Rabbi Wise. It reported that the Germans had “bestially” murdered 100,000 Jews. Nonetheless, the U.S. position was nothing could be done to aid the Jews except to swiftly defeat the Nazis. The continued reporting of German atrocities by the Jewish Telegraph Agency, The New York Times, and others, combined with pressure from the British Foreign Office, led the U.S. State Department to publicly acknowledge in December 1942 that hundreds of thousands of Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazis as part of the “Final Solution.”
Medoff also describes the issue of Jews and Palestine and the U.S. failure to oppose its wartime ally, Great Britain, which subverted the Balfour Declaration making Palestine a homeland for the Jews and restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine to a trickle. In the same vein, he discusses the anti-Semitism of Breckenridge Long, Assistant Secretary of State, who rejected more than 190,000 visas for Jews attempting to escape Europe and the anti-immigration Congress which refused to change and even disregarded 1924 immigration quotas limiting immigration of foreigners, especially Jews.
Other actions the U.S. government was asked to take that might have helped are discussed in the book, including the bombing of railroads leading to Auschwitz. In this particular case, the government argued they could not divert airplanes from their mission to destroy German industry despite the fact several targets were within 20 miles of Auschwitz. In fact, both the U.S. and the British diverted aircraft that flew over Auschwitz to aid a losing battle fought by the Polish Home Army. Medoff writes that of 1,200 cannisters of weapons and supplies dropped, less than 300 were retrieved by the Poles. The Germans recovered the rest. The above notwithstanding, the U.S. saw efforts against Auschwitz as a Soviet issue. Medoff indicates this decision was political, made in the shadow of the 1944 election and designed to retain the Polish American vote.
An essay written by Jeffrey Herf concludes there is no real answer to the question of whether the Russians could have slowed the “Final Solution” as the needed research has not been done. More than half of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were already dead by November 1943, most in extermination camps that no longer functioned or were destroyed by the Germans. Auschwitz was the only exception. In addition, while the Soviet Air Force gained air superiority over the Eastern Front except for Poland in mid-1943, and their aircraft had the range and capability, Soviet strategy focused on combined arms operations. Russians fought in World War II to save themselves, not the Jews.
It should be noted however that the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem and others in the U.S. opposed the bombing idea. They thought it will kill Jews and that German propaganda would claim that Americans were also killing Jews.
Medoff covers much more, such as lies and dissembling by the U.S. government to placate Wise and make him believe that things were being done to rescue the Jews when, in fact, nothing was being done. He also discusses the issues surrounding the president’s Executive Order leading up to the creation of the War Refugee Board on January 22, 1944 and the subsequent attack on the Bergson Group that sponsored the Congressional Rescue Resolution, of which Wise disapproved.
The last chapter of the book questions whether Roosevelt was an anti-Semite. Medoff gives no answer but describes the environment that FDR was bought up in, including his parents attitude toward Jews and race in general. Medoff writes of the family’s interest in bloodlines, “at least a dozen lines of Mayflower descent converged in Franklin….” And that “his pride in his family’s racial pedigree melded easily with the common early twentieth century perception in America that the Caucasian, or Aryan, race was locked in an ages-old struggle with inferior races.”
For those students of the Holocaust, of American policy during World War II, and German-Jewish/American-Jewish history in general, “The Jews Should Keep Quiet” describes a little known but important period in American history that needs to be told.
Volume 75. Number 4. 2021
