Book tells of American role in the Holocaust
DIMITRI DROBATSCHEWSKY
Special to Jewish News
In the late summer of 1942, two Jewish refugees, who had come out of Germany to Marseilles, had received from U.S. relatives all the papers demanded by the American Consulate for the issuance of immigration visas. Officials at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) had assured the couple that their steamship tickets to America were ready and paid for by HIAS; all that was necessary now was to actually show HIAS the U.S. visas.
So the couple, my parents, borrowed and scraped together what money they could and took the train to Lisbon, where the nearest U.S. Consulate was functioning. They underwent medical exams and several interviews with consular personnel and were told that everything was OK. Their visas were ready; all they had to do was show the steamship tickets to the consulate, and they'd be on their way.
Sorry, the HIAS people said, but we can't give you the tickets unless you have the visas. This Catch-22 run-around continued for several days until it became clear to my parents that they would not get the visas. The procedure was rigged. A few weeks later, my father was deported to Auschwitz, never to be heard from again
This sordid story and other sickening tales of connivance between American-Jewish assistance organizations and the U.S. Government in denying Jewish refugees access to the U.S., and thus delivering more grist to the mills of Hitler's Final Solution - are spelled out in great detail in a captivating book on the Holocaust: Henry L. Feingold's "Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust" (Syracuse University Press).
Feingold asserts that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who routinely relied on the Jewish vote for his political successes, did little to interfere with the fate of threatened European Jews. Anti-Semitic feelings in the U.S. and conservatives' support for isolationism had its effects on FDR. He did not want to be labeled as fighting a "Jew War." It was bad enough for him to face mocking accusations that his New Deal was mostly a "Jew Deal."
In 1938, the St. Louis, a ship loaded with 900 Jewish ‚migr‚s from Germany, having been refused landing permits in Cuba, begged and pleaded with U.S. authorities to be admitted into the states. But FDR ordered the refugees returned to Germany, where they all perished.
The notorious anti-Semite at the U.S. State Department, Breckinridge Long, was instrumental in constantly sabotaging various agencies that were established to search for a resettlement solution for the ever-increasing number of Jews for whom emigration had become tantamount to survival, Feingold writes.
The American Jewish community was of no help, Feingold adds. When it came time to decide where to resettle potential immigrants, American Zionists would not hear of any solution other than Palestine, something the British opposed adamantly. Other Jewish representatives toyed with lands such as Madagascar, Alaska, British Guiana and other territories that, before escape from Germany became a matter of survival, did not always even meet with the approval of the concerned Jews.
Among the many disturbing charges that are made in this book is the claim that economic self-interest and, in some cases, professional jealousies played a part in subverting some of the rescue efforts. Fear of competition from knowledgeable immigrants, it is said, appeared to be stronger than the desire to save fellow Jews and other human beings from wanton destruction.
Feingold's expose is not the first or only such book, but it is the latest and perhaps most powerful. All those who were directly affected by the Holocaust, survivors and witnesses alike, owe it to themselves to read it and reflect.
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