Did Roosevelt try to save Jews?

A new book, "Refugees and Rescue," tries to advance the claim that FDR had plans and desires to save the Jews of Europe from the Holocaust.  For example, the book claims FDR developed plans in 1938 for the United States to fill its immigration quota with 27,000 Jews from Germany and Austria and to send others to British-held Palestine and friendly nations in Africa and Latin America. The plan to fill the quota with Jews is already known and was touted as a US concession at the disastrous Evian Conference. However, the number of people who might be saved in this way was minuscule compared to the need, and other plans of Roosevelt to send Jews to someone else's territory were more typical  - everyone wanted someone else to take in Jews, but nobody would do it. There is no doubt that Roosevelt at least saw a political need to make the proper noises about Jews, since the  Evian Conference was convened at his initiative. However, he did not use his political clout to change US immigration laws, did not allow the immigrant ship SS St. Louis into the United States, and evidently ignored information about murder of Jews that was available as earlier as 1941. The claim that Roosevelt was "powerless" to bring about changes seems ludricrous, as he could pass a lot of other very controversial legislation. When the US was supplying Lend Lease equipment to Britain, Roosevelt had an infinitely powerful lever over British policy in Palestine, yet he did not use it to force Britain to reverse the illegal prohibition on Jewish immigration to Palestine of the White Paper, It is true that in 1944, Roosevelt helped in organizing some belated immigration from Europe. By then, it was too late of course.

 

Roosevelt's execrable record regarding the the rescue of the Jews is an aching sore in the political identity of American Jews, many of whom had idolized him. But the facts should not be hidden by wishful thinking. 

 

 The book is reviewed here.