|
Letters They Wouldn't Publish
September 25, 2006
Letters to the Editor The Forward letters@forward.com To the Editor: Towards the end of his review of Robert N. Rosen's new book on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Holocaust (Sept. 22), Gal Beckerman poses a series of important questions: "What plans [for rescuing Jews from Hitler] ... could have worked practically, with Germany in control of all of Europe until the summer of 1944? How many Jews could have been saved in the best of circumstances? And finally ... wasn’t bringing the war to as quick an end as possible, committing to it all available resources and energies, the best that one could do?" The answer is that while the American government could not have prevented the Holocaust, a timely and concerted rescue effort could done much to save Jewish lives, as rescue activists were insisting at the time. In July 1943, the activists known as the Bergson Group sponsored an Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe, held at the Commodore Hotel in New York City. It proposed practical steps that FDR and the Allies could have immediately adopted without harming the war effort, such as: * temporary asylum for Jewish refugees in Allied and neutral countries (in addition, the U.S. had 190,000 unused quota places under which it could have admitted Jews); * opening the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigration; * using empty Allied supply ships to transport refugees when they returned to America after delivering supplies and troops to Europe; * deterring would-be war criminals by announcing an ironclad Allied vow to punish all Nazis involved in war crimes (the State Department opposed doing so until its scandalous position was made public in early 1945). * Most important, the conference called for the establishment of "an official [U.S. government] agency specifically charged with the task of saving the Jewish people of Europe." (It was only six months later, under enormous political and public pressure, that FDR established the War Refugee Board, which ultimately played a key role in saving more than 200,000 lives.) Thus it was clear, to all who had eyes to see, that much could and should have been done to rescue Jews, besides FDR's clear commitment to winning the war. Had timely and concerted action been taken, hundreds of thousands of Jews probably could have been saved, according to Prof. David S. Wyman's authoritative analysis in The Abandonment of the Jews. The burning question Beckerman does not pose is: why was so little done so late? The answer to that question is that little was done to help Jewish refugees because saving them would have meant needing to admit large numbers of them to the United States, to British Mandatory Palestine, and to other places of potential refuge in Alllied countries. And this the Roosevelt Administration and its allies were never willing to do. Sincerely, Benyamin "Buddy" Korn |
Letters: Compassion Fatigue on Darfur? Yes, Let's Be Candid About the Mideast Brandeis and the White Paper Iran and Germany Rescue Was Possible The Jews in Iran The Failure to Bomb Auschwitz Mel Gibson's Critics Jo Davidson: Sculptor and Activist Nazi War Criminals in Arab Countries Israel and Auschwitz William Safire and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Suppressing Holocaust News Betty Friedan and the Nazis Civil Liberties, in Nazi Germany and the U.S. Paul McCloskey and the Deniers Holocaust Denial is Bigotry Not Just "Following Orders" Melvin Lasky and the Holocaust Saudi Arabian Holocaust-Denial Iranian Holocaust Denial Anti-Semitism in Jordan |
