Roosevelt and The Holocaust

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a president with more on his agenda then any president before or since. The great depression had suffocated the nation with unemployment, loss of property and of self-respect. Dust bowls were devastating the Midwestern portion of the country sending soil across the states. The war to bring down the Empire of Japan and the Nazis was a massive undertaking that this country was ill prepared for and required the President to travel overseas to make alliances with both the British and the Soviet Union. With all of these issues going on in his mind as well as the war being fought on many fronts, there was not much that the president wasn’t concerned with. Today, many scholars continue to judge FDR for his approach to handling those victims of Nazi crimes both before and during the war. Many of those even believed that Roosevelt himself was anti-Semitic. If one bothers to do the research they will see that Roosevelt was certainly more of a friend to the Jews of his country and the world and tried his best in saving them from extinction.

As a park ranger at the Home of FDR, I get to study this subject more in detail. However when I gave my first tour to visitors two years ago, I will admit that I only knew the basics of his life and presidency and had not yet touched on the issues with the Holocaust. This would prove to be a problem. On my very first day of giving tours alone, an angry middle-aged Jewish woman decided to confront me on the subject of the SS St Louis. She demanded to know why Roosevelt would not allow the Jews of that ship to enter Cuba to which I instinctively responded that Roosevelt had no jurisdiction over Cuba, of course. And she then demanded to know why he wouldn’t allow them entry into this country. I knew of the immigration laws which had been passed long before Roosevelt was even in office but I didn’t know why he couldn’t make an exception. She also went on to ask why he didn’t bomb Auschwitz in order to stop the killings that went on there. So she continued to bash both me and the president for the majority of the tour, and I do hope that she got her $14 worth. But by the end of that tour I wanted to know more.

In a time when anti-Semitism was common in the world and civil rights were a long way off, Jews had had it rough for centuries. In the 1930’s things were getting even worse as the Nazi party gained control and laws were being passed in Germany that prevented the rights of Jews. At first, most Jews in Europe and America did not take Hitler and his Nazi party seriously, there was no way they could see the troubles that lay ahead. Quickly these people went from average loyal citizens of Germany, to refugees of the Reich. As FDR was trying to pull this country out of a great depression, he was also kept well informed of the growing refugee crisis in Europe. By 1935 his friend and former Lieutenant Governor of New York, current Governor Herbert Lehman, a son of Reform Jews, was keeping Roosevelt up to date on all strict immigration quotas. These quotas undoubtedly concerned to president and in a letter to Lehman he expressed his concerns for the safety of these refugees, “persons who are obliged to leave the country of their regular residence, and who seek to escape from the conditions in that country by coming to the United States, should receive, on the part of American consular officers, the most considerate attention and the most generous and favorable treatment possible under the laws of this country.”

In November of 1938, FDR was informed by Rabbi Stephen Wise of the crimes of Kristallnacht and he quickly recalled the ambassador to Germany to report on the situation. Roosevelt addressed the press on the matter, “I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization.” This civilization that he was referring to was still very much an anti-Semitic one even in his home country. In fact, FDR was the first president to have both a female cabinet member and openly Jewish members in the cabinet and in high ranking positions. Jews made up 15 percent of Roosevelt’s high-level appointments. These were the best of the best, people like his trusted speech writer, Samuel Rosenman and his good friend and neighbor Henry Morgenthau who had been with Roosevelt since his early days in public service and became the Secretary of the Treasury all the way through Roosevelt’s twelve years in office. Scholars, like Monty Penkower, Herbert Druks, and David Wyman, who had referred to Roosevelt as an anti-Semitic or claimed that he had abandoned the Jews, seem to have lost sight of the real monsters to blame.

As the war was raging in Europe with the invasion of Poland in 1939, it was not clear at first what was to become of the Jews of Europe, at least not to most Americans. At first, it was the Poles who suffered the brutality of the Nazis while Jewish poles were herded into ghettos. But still, one in five of Americans did not want to enter this war. Eighty four percent of Americans were pro-ally while only two percent were pro-German. The Wagner-Rogers Bill, that would have allowed 20,000 Jewish children into this country from Germany was approved by Roosevelt but shot down by Congress in 1939 and still seventy seven percent of the American people were opposed to allowing more Jews into the United States. In August of 1942 Gerhart Riegner a representative of the World Jewish Congress, informed American officials that Germany had begun mass exterminations of Jews in the areas under Nazi control. However, this new information was hazy and left most Americans skeptical at best. There had been rumors of war atrocities during the great war but some had proved to be false so it seemed difficult for many to believe what they were hearing about this war. Further evidence soon came on December 8th of 1942 and Roosevelt finally realized the importance of a rescue of prisoners. During the deportations that were quickly occurring in Hungary, two inmates escaped from Auschwitz and brought to the west some of the first accounts of the true horrors of that camp. However, this was not yet an option for FDR who still had “not yet landed a single soldier on the continent of Europe“. And as much of a shock as it might have been, still many people could not believe that such cold-blooded crimes were being committed.

With the war getting into high gear and the Americans putting together a force that could make a stand, Roosevelt turned his attention to what he promised to Prime Minister Winston Churchill; tanks, airplanes, and absolute victory. “There never has been-there never can be” Roosevelt told congress, “successful compromise between good and evil”. Roosevelt and Churchill met in Quebec in 1943 to agree on Operation Overlord and the plans for D-Day. But while the war was being worked out between allies, there were workings going on with Roosevelt’s men to help the refugees, while still other’s were working against this idea of helping Jewish refugees.

When it comes to proper facts and just what the president was aware of, how much and when, it seems that the state department was not always completely honest on the subject of Jews in Europe. FDR was usually left in the dark and he was not aware of the amount of people being let into the country or being killed in extermination camps. Breckinridge Long, of the State department had given FDR the wrong numbers and informed him that the U.S. had allowed over 500,000 refugees into the country since 1933 when in reality only about 200,000 had been given safe entry. To make matters worse, the State department also kept important messages about the exterminations away from important Jewish leaders. Between the State department and the British foreign office there did not seem to be much hope in the rescuing of refugees.

Henry Morgenthau was irritated by the constant manipulation of important knowledge and particularly angry with Secretary of State Cordell Hull who did not seem the least bit concerned with the Jews of Europe. Morgenthau believed that his friend the president would always do the right thing if he were given the proper intelligence to work with. Morgenthau also knew that the State department had blocked the license needed to transfer the funds that Roosevelt had approved for the refugee rescue efforts. He and others worked along side of Roosevelt to put together the War Refugee Board which the president issued on January 22, 1944. It was about that time that Roosevelt’s health was beginning to fail. He ordered the military to assist the WRB, however not everyone agreed that much could be done to save the refugees other then to win the war.

The WRB brought in 982 refugees, mostly Jews who snuck into Italy, and were taken to a camp in Oswego New York. This new board also played a major role in saving thousands of Jews from Hungary. When Adolf Eichmann arrived to impose the final solution there, the WRB sent in Raoul Wallenberg under Swedish diplomatic cover. The WRB also arranged for air-leaflet drops reminding those in the process of committing these war crimes that they would be prosecuted as war criminals as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin all agreed in December of 1942. This helped save some of the Hungarian Jews but still many thousands were transported to Auschwitz where they were exterminated.

Auschwitz was the largest and most efficient of all of the camps. The complex and its sub-camps killed over one million people between 1940 and 1945 alone. So why didn’t Roosevelt send planes over this horrifying place and just bomb it? American surveillance planes had flown above it in 1944 and had sent photos back for the government to see but still no attempts were made to silence it's operation. Its important to keep in mind that the Germans also held over 200,000 British and American prisoners of war throughout camps in Germany and there was never any mention of saving these men either. The quickest way to save all prisoners of any kind, in the minds of many war officials, was to end the war and end Hitler.

As soon as reports started flowing in of the rapid pace deporting and killing of Hungarian Jews, there were ideas floating around Washington concerning the bombing of Auschwitz. However, these ideas never seemed to go very far, most Jewish groups said no to the idea, not wanting to be responsible for the deaths of any Jews. The World Jewish Congress did not approve of it either, saying "the destruction of the death installations cannot be done from bombing from the air, as the first victims would be the Jews who are gathered in these camps, and such a bombing would be a welcome pretext for the Germans to assert that their Jewish victims have been massacred not by their killers, but by the Allied bombings." It seems likely that since most Jewish leaders never wanted the bombings of these camps, that FDR was never even informed of the idea.

FDR had promised his Jewish friends back in 1944 that he would try to develop a Jewish State once things had been settled and even in the final months of his life and in failing health, he tried to stay true to his word. On his way back from Yalta, in February of 1945 he stopped to talk with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. He was hoping to convince the King to allow the Jewish refugees some space in Palestine but the King informed Roosevelt of his own people's feelings on the Jews and that it would not be possible, insisting instead that the land in Germany should be taken from the Nazis who have committed the crimes and given to the Jews. The two leaders battled back and forth but in the end Roosevelt could not win over Saud and had to return back to America empty handed with the great disappointment of knowing he could not keep his promise.

If Roosevelt did not care for the Jews as many of his critics believe, then why would he go out of his way to try to specifically help the Jews in finding a new homeland? He did not have to even bother with such a task in his final painful days of life but he did. He did not have to listen to his Jewish friends like Morgenthau about the Jews of Europe who had nothing to do with his own country and his own peoples problems and yet he did and it obviously weighed heavy on his mind. As Roosevelt said in a statement in March of 1944, "this government will use all means at its command to aid the escape of all intended victims of the Nazi and Japanese executioner, regardless of race, religion or color." He did his best in times and circumstances there were unlike any other. In the end, people should be judged, not by what they didn't do but what they did.