Roosevelt knows best
American Jews and the Holocaust: Part 3
This is part 3 of an ongoing series. Read part 1 and part 2.
As the war engulfed Europe and the United States entered the fray, American Jews continued to give their government, especially President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the benefit of the doubt. They believed in the President, seeing him as a friend and an ally, and trusted that he knew best and would do the right thing, whatever that may be. Analyzing the Jewish press of the time, Haskel Lookstein finds that the Jewish attitude toward President Roosevelt “was reverential and subservient, obsequious in requests and fawning in gratitude for small favors… a basic confidence on the part of American Jews in his leadership and a fundamental trust that somehow, in some way, Roosevelt would do what had to be done.” During a tense time of fervid wartime patriotism, America’s Jews didn’t feel secure enough to protest Roosevelt’s handling of the war and the European Jewish crisis, whether or not they agreed with it. Any “act of civil disobedience would have been directed ultimately against the President. This was unthinkable to Jews at that time. Whatever the President’s failings, Jews believed that in a world filled with enemies, Roosevelt represented the best that Jews could hope for.”
Having overwhelmingly supported Roosevelt, American Jews could or would not paint him as their enemy. They instead focused their animus on the State Department. Breckinridge Long, architect of the State Department’s rescue policy and one of the major obstacles to rescue efforts for refugees or humanitarian adjustments to American immigration policies, viewed his own “fight against the refugees as primarily a battle against Jewish Communist agitators who were trying to ruin his political career.” For the American Jewish community, he was a much more palatable opponent than heroic, popular Roosevelt. Henry L. Feingold writes that the American Jewish community “rarely directly questioned the sincerity of Roosevelt. They preferred to attack the State Department, which was being used by Roosevelt as a foil.” Indeed, the State Department’s obstinacy contributed enormously to the American government’s failure to act to save the Jews of Europe.
Even today Franklin Roosevelt’s role regarding the Holocaust remains hotly debated and controversial. Here the point to note is the wartime Jewish community’s view of Roosevelt: he was their friend and ally, he represented the America in which they believed, and if they trusted in his leadership, all would turn out for the best. Their faith in America as Americans ultimately allowed them to distance themselves mentally from the imperiled European Jews.
There was yet another element to the question of identity, attitude, and allegiance during the Second World War for American Jews. They were concerned for their European brethren; they kept up with the news from Europe, fasted in solidarity, and engaged in activism to support the rescue effort. But for the most part, like other Americans, they were concerned about America’s role in the war. They wanted to see the United States win the war and defeat Nazi Germany, which so brutally oppressed, persecuted, and murdered their brethren. Aside from the obvious emotional aspect of their desire to defeat this enemy of the Jewish people, American Jews were strongly tied to the American forces as individuals. They weren’t supporting a foreign war from afar; rather, Jewish families sent their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers off to war in their American uniforms. Families wanted to win the war, defeat Nazi Germany, and see their boys come home safely. Given this personal dynamic, it is not altogether surprising that the “Roosevelt administration’s argument that a quick victory was the best way to save the Jews was not directly challenged by American Jewry. Given the patriotic fervor of American Jewry and fear of the accusation that Jews were fighting for an ethnic rather than a national interest, it was difficult for Jewish leaders to oppose the administration’s argument. For most American Jews, winning the war—not the rescue of their brethren—received priority.”
For American Jewish soldiers especially, the experience of serving in the American military, fighting Nazi Germany, and sometimes even personally liberating concentration camps necessarily separated them from European Jews. As American soldiers, they had proved and validated their own place in American society and found a sense of belonging as Americans, not primarily as Jews. “Military service had empowered Jews as Americans and as Jews, and secured their future,” writes Deborah Dash Moore, author of G.I. Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation. She explains: “When European Jews welcomed them as saviors, Jewish soldiers understood their own good fortune to be wearing the uniform of the armed forces of the United States. Notwithstanding the enduring evidences of racial and religious discrimination, they believed in the commitment of the United States to move toward equality.” Furthermore, “although they sympathized with their European co-religionists, American Jewish veterans recognized when they came home that despite the enduring antisemitism in the United States, the nation’s democratic premises promised Jews a decent future if they were ready to fight for it. The United States was not like Europe, and American Jews were different from European Jews.”
Through the experience of fighting for their country side by side with young Christians who perhaps had never met a Jew before, American Jewish soldiers developed their sense of self as Americans. They felt what it was like to be part of America and to be on the winning side; they were helping to liberate the camps, rather than having to be liberated themselves. They were the victors, not the victims; they were at home in America in a way that Jews had never been at home in Europe.
This is part 3 of a series. Stay tuned for the next installment.