FDR & the Holocaust Documents - Download

President Franklin D. Roosevelt & the Holocaust Documents

2,840 pages of documents related to President Roosevelt and his Administration’s response to the Holocaust.

“With almost sixty years of hindsight, Roosevelt’s silence [about the plight of European Jews] seems a strange lapse in the record of a President who normally spoke to Americans on grand world issues with courage, candor and foresight.  That lapse is underscored by Roosevelt’s lateness in pushing his officials to save Jewish refugees and his reluctance to seriously entertain whether bombing Auschwitz might save some of Hitler’s intended victims without postponing victory in Europe.”

Michael Beschloss - From “The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-45” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).

It remains to this a day a subject of argument whether or not President  Franklin Roosevelt could have done more to rescue European Jews and to stop Hitler’s killing.

Critics of the Roosevelt Administration’s policies related to and effecting Jews in Europe often say FDR’s approach to refugee issues prior to and during World War II was weak, and he is even accused of having pursued misguided policies and of being indifferent to the Holocaust.

Others would say that Roosevelt’s strongest critics on the issue fail to  sufficiently account for the American public’s pre-war isolationism and anti-Semitism, strict immigration and quota laws that enjoyed wide public and Congressional support, and military practicalities that, for much of the war, limited the Allies’ ability to reach Jews trapped deep behind enemy lines.

This collection of documents Includes a summary of the controversy over Roosevelt’s response to the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust beginning with 20 pages of annotated documents that shows the path of FDR’s response to the persecution of European Jews.

This is followed by 2,820 pages extracted from various document collections held by Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Includng:

Department of State Files.

Covers the State Department views on alien visa controls. Reports from American embassies in Europe about German Atrocities. The Administration’s position on British immigration Policies.


Church/Religious Matters - Jewish Matters 1933-1945

Correspondences from the general public, community leaders, and elected officials concerning the plight of Jews in Europe and Jewish refugees, Includes anti-Semitic correspondences.


Immigration - Correspondences

Correspondences dealing with United States immigration policies and laws effecting Jewish refugees.

 

Highlights include:

In a letter dated November 13, 1935 to New York Governor Herbert Lehman, President Roosevelt responds to Lehman’s claim that strict immigration quotas in place at the time were not being fully or fairly administered by the State Department. FDR advises Lehman of the results of his own examination of the visa issue, the legal limitations imposed by the Immigration Act of 1924, and his instruction to the State Department that German Jews applying for visas were to be given “the most generous and favorable treatment possible under the laws of this country.”

A memorandum for the Secretary’s Files, January 16, 1944. A contemporaneous memorandum written by John Pehle, an assistant to Henry  Morgenthau. This document marks a key change in the Roosevelt Administration’s response to the Holocaust. In a January 16, 1944 meeting at the White House involving the President Roosevelt, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Treasury’s general counsel Randolph Paul, and John W. Pehle. At this meeting, Secretary Morgenthau presented to the President a lengthy and blunt “Personal Report” on what Morgenthau and other Treasury officials believed to be the State Department’s acquiescence in Germany’s mass murder of Jews. The startling evidence presented to the President of the State Department’s incompetence, delay, and even obstruction of a variety of rescue efforts convinced him of the need to establish an independent commission to coordinate rescue and relief efforts. John Pehle would become the first Director of the War Refugee Board, which FDR established by executive order several days later.

A letter from Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy to John W. Pehle, dated July 4, 1944. One of the most controversial aspects of the Roosevelt Administration’s reaction to the Holocaust is the decision not to bomb rail lines used to transport prisoners to Auschwitz. As early as March 1943, requests for bombing of Hitler’s instruments of death had reached various government officials from Jewish sources both at home and abroad. The Administration was reluctant to take such action, though, because of the danger of the raids also killing the prisoners they were meant to save as well as of the practicality of diverting military resources that were needed elsewhere to defeat Germany. In 1944, War Refugee Board Director John W. Pehle made several direct appeals to the War Department for the bombing of various camps and rail lines. This July 4, 1944 letter from Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy to Pehle, written one month after the D-Day invasion of Northwest Europe, states the military’s position with regard to such suggestions, and reflects Roosevelt’s belief that the surest way to end the killing was to defeat Nazi Germany as quickly as possible.