While Ken Burns and his associates are unquestionably capable documentarians, they also carry on an agenda – in this case, a liberal agenda focused more on promoting open and unlimited immigration to America. For the likes of Ken Burns, FDR was a demi-God who saved the world from Fascism and Nazism, and instituted the New Deal following the depression of the 1930’s. For many European Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, however, FDR is a person who could have saved millions of Jews but did nothing.
Burns’ documentary, The US and the Holocaust, excuses FDR’s inaction, and lets the viewers believe that FDR’s hands were tied, that because of the pervasive antisemitism in America at the time he was unable to act. That is a lame excuse. As president he could have fired his antisemitic Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who personally obstructed all efforts to save European Jews. Moreover, he instructed US consulates in Europe to make it impossible for Jews, especially Eastern European Jews, to get visas to America. Such a visa meant life for a family or a person, while without it death was almost certain.
Isaac Feith, married to my father’s sister Sarah arrived in America before WWII, and intended to bring his family out of Poland. When the war broke out in September 1939, he had already secured an affidavit to bring his wife, 16-year old daughter, and 13-year old son. He would visit the US immigration office daily begging to get a visa for his family in Poland. He received one excuse after another, all deliberately instructed from above. By 1942, it was already too late to save them. In October of that year in a German Nazi roundup in Ulanow, Poland, Sarah and his daughter were sent off to Belzec Death Camp and gassed immediately. His son was deposited with a Polish farmer, who received a hefty sum to keep him alive, murdering him to save the money needed to feed him. Isaac Feith survived, but his life turned to hell. Guilt shortened his life. As Chief Executive, FDR could have intervened with the Department of State, and asked Congress for a special humanitarian gesture to allow Jews fleeing certain death to enter the US, especially in cases such as Isaac Feith.
Greek-Americans pressured the US government during WWII to provide aid to the starving Greeks under Nazi occupation. FDR’s administration responded with massive aid, over 2,500,000 pounds of food and nine tons of medicines left the New York harbor to reach the port of Pireous, Greece. The Red Cross and the neutral nations of Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland arranged with the Nazis the distribution of food in Greece. In the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were dying in the thousands daily from starvation, particularly children. For a loaf of bread, Jewish families agreed to go to the assembly line that took them by cattle trains to their horrible deaths in the Treblinka Nazi Death Camp, in northeastern Poland. Why couldn’t FDR’s administration do the same for the starving Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto with the aid of the Red Cross and the neutral nations?
This reporter was privileged to have met and conduct an interview with a true hero of WWII, Professor Jan Karsky. A devout Polish Catholic, and a courier for the Polish Government-in-exile based in London, he risked his life several times penetrating Nazi occupied Poland. He smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto dressed as a Ukrainian guard, and he witnessed the dying children in the streets, perishing from starvation and disease. He was the only living witness to the horrible murders at the Belzec Death Camp, where he once again dressed as a Ukrainian guard. Karsky is credited with bringing eye-witness reports to the leaders of the Western allies; among them was President Roosevelt, in July 1943. Karsky described to me the expression on FDR’s face: “He sat behind his desk on a high chair surrounded by American flags, and a cigar in his mouth.” Karsky first described to FDR the overall situation in Poland, and then turned to the plight of Polish Jewry. He pleaded with the President for help, saying: “Without outside help the Jews will perish in Poland.” FDR completely ignored the Jewish aspects of Karsky’s report, and all he could say was, “The allied nations are going to win this war…” Karsky described to me FDR’s passivity when he discussed the Jewish situation. “He didn’t ask a single question about the Jews,” Karsky pointed out. Karsky concluded that the entire western civilization and especially the government of the US was guilty of the Second Original Sin during the Holocaust: the sin commission, omission, and self-imposed ignorance.
At this point in the war, the systematic annihilation of the European Jews was already well known to the leaders of the US and Britain, and FDR was duly informed that millions of Jews had already perished at that time. In August 1942, Gerhart Riegner, the Geneva, Switzerland based representative of the World Jewish Congress sent an urgent telegram to the US State Department, the British Foreign Office, as well as to then President of the World Jewish Congress and American Jewish Congress, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise. At the time, Wise was one of the most influential Jews in America, and a friend of the US president – FDR. The State Department blocked Riegner’s message. The message contained the warning that the Nazi German leadership planned to systematically murder the European Jews. Riegner, it turned out, got the sensitive information from a reliable source; a German managing director of a large German mining company operating in Poland named Eduard Schulte. Rabbi Wise might have been alarmed by the telegram but he didn’t want to “disturb” his friend – the US president. Wise didn’t want to “rock the boat.” It is more likely that he knew that FDR would not appreciate it, and would consider it “interference in the war effort.”
To the question of allied bombing of the railway leading to the Auschwitz Death Camp, FDR and his minions had a single answer. “We must only concentrate on the war efforts and win the war.” But did it preclude saving Jews or opening America’s door to fortunate few that escaped the Nazi roundups? As president, FDR could have issued an executive order to temporarily at least allow European Jews to enter America for the war’s duration.
The ship St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany in June 1939 with 900 Jewish refugees who managed to flee Germany. The St. Louis cruised off the Miami Coast but was denied entry to the US. It would be interesting to know what went through Stephen Wise’s mind, and why he didn’t ask his friend to do the human thing; let those fortunate few get asylum in America! Instead most of the refugees were returned to Europe to a certain death. Didn’t the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor proclaim the immortal words of Emma Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…?” It wasn’t meant as much for modern economic migrants but for those fleeing persecution and death. It clearly envisioned those refugees fleeing Hitler’s genocide.
In January 14, 1943, at the allies’ conference in Casablanca, Morocco, FDR advised the leaders of the Free French government in North Africa that they should discriminate against the local Jews just as Hitler did in the 1930’s. Was FDR an antisemite? It is only for God to judge. It is clear however that FDR made no serious efforts to rescue the European Jews. None of this was brought up in Ken Burns’ US and the Holocaust.
Pres Ponzi Scheme, aka FDR, knew or was in a position that he should have known quite well that Hitler’s German master race scheme was adopted directly from the DemoKKKrat party’s military wing KKK manifesto. All the Germans had to do was edit negro to Jew.
FDR is known as a false and antisemitic person and if there was not Prime Minister fo UKSir Winston Churchill then Europe and maybe the US would be in the nazis hands
Let’s have some context. Germany had about 300k Jews when Hitler took power and half left before WWII started. Once the war started, population movements generally stop. This trapped the 6M Jews in Eastern Europe. They didn’t have the years to plan and move as the German Jews had.
After WWII, Soviets fleeing Stalin were streaming Westward. FDR captured and sent then back on trains that went straight to Siberia. That was an act of commission, not omission, that tells us who FDR is.
FDR died before the war ended. What the hell are you talking about?
It’s what he agreed to at Yalta, carried out by his VP.
Yes. During the War it was not that Roosevelt wouldn’t let European Jews in, it was that Hitler wouldn’t let them out. The Nazis didn’t let Jews leave Poland. The Warsaw Ghetto was not on a coast-how could food have been shipped there? Did anyone propose at the time that German Jews be conscripted into the US Army? And the Jews on the St Louis were not a “fortunate few”. 200,000 German Jews gained entry to the US.
FDR died before the war ended. What the hell are you talking about?
By the late 1930s, FDR presumably knew that it was only a matter of time before we would have to fight Hitler (and Imperial Japan, for that matter), despite the unwillingness of most Americans to do so prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At least some of the Jews of Europe who were physically able to be conscripted could have, at least prior to the Final Solution, been given visas to come here and wind up serving in our military, augmenting the ranks of Americans who would soon be drafted and sent off to Europe, Japan, and Africa to fight the Axis. But FDR and others in his administration, such as Hull and Breckinridge Long, presumably were so antisemitic that they never seriously considered how admitting more European Jews into our country would be advantageous, strengthening our military.
Many Jewish scientist were welcomed and help in the Manhattan Project, etc.
“Commonsense” is obviously “nonsense”.
Ya would have thought that the Captain of the ship St. Louis would have rammed his ship onto the Miami Coast making it impossible for it to remain seaworthy forcing the passengers to evacuate…….I guess his remaining paycheck was more important….
This article is completely ignoring the logistics of the War, but I’m tired of arguing those points.
I will never understand this hatred of the Jewish people as they have only created, invented and discovered many of the things we use in our daily life…
FYI Im not Jewish but I have had a few close friends that were plus a Russian Jewish California Wife in San Francisco plus I lived in Israel as a young man in the late 1970s.
Perhaps its resentment or jealously by people who achieved nothing in their life.
Bingo! Just rap a nice long slice of HATE around that envy – and you know the illogigal answer.
If Jews were so bad, and were stealing others wealth for 5,000 + years…you would think they would ba ruling the world these days, and not just Hollywood. Ha ha!
Unfortunately, too many of the folks making comments do not know the many people who tried to save the European Jews and get them to America. FDR would not even relent for Jewish children. And, FDR was surrounded by communists, one of them lived in the Lincoln bedroom and funded Russia throughout the war, Harry Hopkins, who was in charge of the Lend Lease program to Russia.
Rewriting history is common, but the truth remains, FDR never allowed many European Jews into the USA. They went to their deaths because of him.
JEWS WEREN’T ALLOWED TO LEAVE OCCUPIED EUROPE AND THE NAZIS NEVER WOULD HAVE COOPERATED WITH ATTEMPTS TO FEED THOSE IN THE WARSAW GHETTO. THE FEW JEWS WHO COULD MAKE IT TO THE US DURING OUR INVOLVEMENT IN THE WAR WERE NOT SENT BACK TO EUROPE!! Articles like this ignore both history and logic for the sake of smearing Roosevelt. No, Roosevelt wasn’t perfect-he probably made the economy worse during the depression, and many suffered under the New Deal. But one doesn’t have to twist history to find fault with him. By the way, the Dutch starved near the end of the War and we made no efforts at relief. Was the Administration anti-Dutch? Roosevelt WAS Dutch!
Let’s see. The Dutch under dire food shortages. No help from the US. The Nazi’s killing 6 million Jews plus a few million others.
That is not comparing two Oranges now is it?
The US was a war machine on an industrial scale only getting stronger by the month. Except in the beginning, there was never any doubt we would win the war if we had to go it alone.
Roosevelt COULD have done many more moral rescues than he did. And he made those choices conscieously. Racist reasons or not.
We could have rescued Jews before liberating the territory they were on like you can take someone’s appendix out before opening the person up.
I was responding to Mr. Puder’s argument that if we could send relief to the Greeks during the War, we easily could have sent food to the Warsaw Ghetto. If the only thing standing in the way of relief efforts was the administration’s anti-Semitism, why didn’t we send food packages to Holland?
This article is basically a condensed version of David Wyman’s “The Abandonment of the Jews”, one of the worst history books ever to become a best-seller. Historian William D. Rubinstein wrote “The evidence Wyman amasses, when interpreted correctly, goes in every case to prove the opposite of the interpretation he places on it”, referring to Wyman’s confusion between refugees(those who had already escaped occupied Europe but were living in less than ideal conditions)and prisoners(those who the Nazis wouldn’t let out). The idea that we could have and should have sent food to the Warsaw Ghetto is a perfect example of this. Even if the Allies had been able to do that(why would the Nazis have allowed them to have the food?)the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto would still have been murdered, and mostly not in exchange for bread.
This article sounds wildly hysterical and counter-historical.
“For many European Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, however, FDR is a person who could have saved millions of Jews but did nothing.” This assertion is absurd. FDR might have save some thousands of Jews, mainly by filling the immigration quotas before the major war, but “millions of Jews”??? Not even close.
As for the refugee ship, St Louis, it was refused docking in America in 1939 — BEFORE the Holocaust started, so it is not really fair to judge the refusal with out hindsight knowledge. Furthermore, the 900+ refugees on that ship were not sent back to Germany. All of them disembarked in Antwerp from which nearly 300 went to England and the rest to Holland, Belgium and France. It is estimated that of the 900+ passengers, probably more than 700 survived the war.
My comment continued:
The issue of FDR and the Jews is a complicated and controversial question which this article utterly fails to deal with objectively. Check the writings of Rafael Medoff, the leading historian concerning FDR and the Jews in Europe. Medoff is, in my opinion, overly harsh about FDR, but at least he presents actual historical evidence.
For FDR, Churchill and Stalin, the overriding priority was to bring Nazi Germany to unconditional surrender as fast as possible. For them, that took precedence over rescuing Jews and other victims of Nazism.
That said, it may be that Ken Burns presents FDR in a more favorable light than is warranted concerning the Jews, but we need to keep things in perspective. This article does not do it.
My comment continued:
The issue of FDR and the Jews is a complicated and controversial question which this article utterly fails to deal with objectively. Check the writings of Rafael Medoff, the leading historian concerning FDR and the Jews in Europe. Medoff is, in my opinion, overly harsh about FDR, but at least he presents actual historical evidence.
For FDR, Churchill and Stalin, the overriding priority was to bring Nazi Germany to unconditional surrender as fast as possible. For them, that took precedence over rescuing Jews and other victims of Nazism.
That said, it may be that Ken Burns presents FDR in a more favorable light than is warranted concerning the Jews, but we need to keep things in perspective. This article does not do it.
The issue of FDR and the Jews is a complicated and controversial question which this article utterly fails to deal with objectively. Check the writings of Rafael Medoff, the leading historian concerning FDR and the Jews in Europe. Medoff is, in my opinion, overly harsh about FDR, but at least he presents actual historical evidence.
For FDR, Churchill and Stalin, the overriding priority was to bring Nazi Germany to unconditional surrender as fast as possible. For them, that took precedence over rescuing Jews and other victims of Nazism.
That said, it may be that Ken Burns presents FDR in a more favorable light than is warranted concerning the Jews, but we need to keep things in perspective. This article does not do it.
The issue of FDR and the Jews is a complicated and controversial question which this article utterly fails to deal with objectively. Check the writings of Rafael Medoff, the leading historian concerning FDR and the Jews in Europe. Medoff is, in my opinion, overly harsh about FDR, but at least he presents actual historical evidence.
For FDR, Churchill and Stalin, the overriding priority was to bring Nazi Germany to unconditional surrender as fast as possible. For them, that took precedence over rescuing Jews and other victims of Nazism.
That said, it may be that Ken Burns presents FDR in a more favorable light than is warranted concerning the Jews, but we need to keep things in perspective. This article does not do it.