FDR’s Antisemitism Doomed Over 200K Jews To Die At Hitler’s Hands (As Did Churchill’s Appeasement)

 Perhaps his distaste for Jews was the reason, that while there were many actions FDR could have taken to stop or slow down the Holocaust, he didn’t. “He could have quietly permitted the immigration quotas to be filled to their legal limit — that alone would have saved 190,000 lives,” Medoff said.

“He could have pressed the British to open Palestine’s doors to Jewish refugees. He could have authorized the use of empty troop-supply ships to bring refugees to stay in the U.S. temporarily, until the end of the war. He could have permitted refugees to stay as tourists in a U.S. territory, such as the Virgin Islands, until it was safe for them to return to Europe. He could have authorized the bombing of Auschwitz or the railway lines leading to it, which would have interrupted the mass-murder process.”

Asked to respond to the argument that it was better for Roosevelt to focus on winning the war than divert resources to bomb Auschwitz, Medoff said “[b]ombing Auschwitz would not have required any diversion of resources, because U.S. planes were already bombing targets that were less than five miles from the gas chambers, during the summer and autumn of 1944.”

It really goes beyond that. FDR was reluctant to speak out against the impending genocide

 On August 25, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt brought her friend Alice Hamilton, who had recently spent three months in Germany, to Hyde Park to give FDR a detailed eyewitness account of German brutality against the Jews. He still refused to publicly criticize Hitler.

On Roosevelt’s most blatant acts of bigotry involved the St. Louis whose story was recently explained at Constitution.com

On May 13, 1939, the St. Louis set sail from Hamburg, Germany, to Cuba with 937 Jewish refugees on board. Captain Gustav Schroder, a non-Jewish German, was determined to rescue these men, women and children from Nazi Germany. To his dismay, he was forced to return 907 passengers to Europe, landing in Antwerp, Belgium, on June 17, 1939.

Four months before Hitler invaded Poland, officially starting World War II, Jews were fleeing Germany by the thousands. Captain Schroder agreed to take a shipload on his luxury cruise liner to Cuba. Shortly before leaving, he was informed Cuba rejected most of the visas issued to his passengers. He left with them anyway, praying for a miracle.

(…) Upon arrival at Cuba, the St. Louis was not allowed to dock. Captain Schroder worked for a week in vain to allow his passengers to disembark. He was denied. Only 22 Jewish refugees were allowed entry as they did have acceptable passage, along with four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals. One gentleman, so distraught over returning to Nazi Germany, attempted suicide. He was taken to a hospital in Havana for treatment for his wounds.

Captain Schroder turned to America, pleading to President Franklin D. Roosevelt for help. Claims of improper paperwork, German Jewish immigration quotas and national security were given as excuses for rejecting the passengers. Afraid Schroder would run his ship ashore in Florida, forcing America to accept the refugees, the Coast Guard was sent to watch the St. Louis as it sailed close to our shores.

Finding no help anywhere in North America, Schroder was forced to return to Europe. Determined to be the liberator of his remaining 907 passengers (as one person died during the voyage), Schroder refused to return his ship to Germany until all the refugees were given protection in other countries. The United States finally stepped in and helped secure those arrangements in European countries.

Once those agreements for asylum were made, Captain Schroder docked his boat in Antwerp, Belgium, on June 17th. The United Kingdom accepted 288 passengers while France welcomed 224, Belgium accepted 214, and the Netherlands received 181. In less than a year, Hitler invaded Belgium and France in May of 1940, again threatening those refugees who for a moment had a taste of true freedom. It is estimated that 254 of the 907 returned to Europe were victims of the Holocaust, loosing their lives in concentration or internment camps.

When Hitler came into power in Germany there was a large increase in the demand for Jewish immigration to Palestine as Jews tried to escape.  The British allowed around 50,000 Jews to immigrate from 1934-1936 but it infuriated the Arab population.Based on the higher immigration levels the Arabs started the an intifada against the Palestinian Jews. The Arab attacks continued for three years (1936-1939). Britain did take a stab at limiting the Arab attacks, but it was more important to keep the Arabs from jumping to the German side. So they began the British tradition of appeasing Palestinian terrorists, that exists even today.  Their solution was the White Paper of 1939.

The White Paper limited the immigration of Jews to Palestine which resulted in the death sentence. A limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the five-year period 1940-1944, consisting of a regular yearly quota of 10,000, and a supplementary quota of 25,000, spread out over the same period, to cover refugee emergencies. After this cut-off date, further immigration would depend on the permission of the Arabs . Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs—a restriction that President Obama tried to duplicate.

Today, Yom HaShoah we remember the horror of the Holocaust. It is sad to consider that partly because of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Antisemitism, and Winston Churchill’s appeasement, innocent people who could have been saved were instead abandoned.