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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 truths: 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. … (more)
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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.