by Dr. Rafael Medoff
Daily Lobo guest columnist
In his recent remarks at UNM concerning the United States' response to the Holocaust, Robert Rosen made claims that are untrue.
For example, Rosen said in the Nov. 1 Daily Lobo that he was "suspicious" that our institute, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, "discouraged" UNM from hosting his lecture; he also claimed the Wyman Institute "tried to prevent him from speaking in Boston." That's false. The Wyman Institute has never asked anyone to cancel a speaking invitation to Rosen, whether in New Mexico, Boston or anywhere else. I call on Rosen to apologize for making this baseless and defamatory allegation.
Rosen's claims regarding the Roosevelt administration's response to the Holocaust were similarly baseless.
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According to Tuesday's Daily Lobo, Rosen claimed that "Roosevelt couldn't change immigration laws to give the Jews refuge in the U.S."
The issue is not whether Roosevelt could have changed America's restrictive immigration quotas. Roosevelt could have saved the lives of many Jews fleeing Hitler simply by quietly permitting the existing immigration quotas to be filled - without changing a single law. The quota for immigrants from Germany and Austria, for example, would have allowed a maximum of 27,370 refugees to enter the U.S. each year. But the Roosevelt administration encouraged U.S. consular officials abroad to create bureaucratic obstacles that would reduce immigration to levels far below what the law allowed. Thus, during Hitler's first year in power, 1933, less than 6 percent of the German quota was filled. The following year, less than 14 percent of those spaces were filled.
During the entire period of Hitler's reign, 1933 to 1945, less than 36 percent of the German and Austrian quota places were used. During the years that the Nazis were slaughtering 6 million European Jews, that is, 1941 to 1945, nearly 190,000 quota places from Axis-controlled countries sat unused - 190,000 lives that could have been saved had Roosevelt shown even a minimal amount of humanitarian interest in their plight.
Rosen said, "Roosevelt didn't bomb Auschwitz, because doing so would have killed the Jews there."
That's false. The Roosevelt administration officials who received bombing requests from Jewish leaders did not cite fear of killing the inmates as their reason for rejecting them. They claimed the Department of War had conducted a study which found such bombing would require "diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere..." In fact, there is no evidence that any such study was undertaken. Moreover, U.S. bombers repeatedly flew over the Auschwitz region in 1944, bombing German oil facilities nearby - some of them less than five miles from the gas chambers. It would not have required any meaningful diversion if a few bombs had been dropped on the mass-murder machinery in the camp.
Rosen claimed that "American Jewish leaders urged Roosevelt to not bomb Auschwitz." That, too, is false. Only one official of one Jewish organization, A. Leon Kubowitzki of the World Jewish Congress, is known to have expressed opposition to bombing - he urged the administration to attack Auschwitz with ground troops instead. But Kubowitzki's boss, World Jewish Congress President Nahum Goldmann, repeatedly urged U.S., British and Soviet officials to bomb Auschwitz. The Labor Zionists of America and the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe - known as the Bergson Group - also called for bombing Auschwitz in 1944. The American Jewish Conference, a coalition of all major U.S. Jewish organizations, publicly called for all measures to be taken by the Allies to destroy the death camps. Numerous Jewish newspaper columnists urged bombing.
According to Rosen, "The Jews of Europe could only be saved by the defeat of the massive Nazi army."
That's what the Roosevelt administration claimed - until early 1944, when Roosevelt, under pressure from Congress, Jewish activists and Department of Treasury officials, established the War Refugee Board, an agency devoted solely to rescue. Although given very little government funding, the board played a central role in saving the lives of more than 200,000 refugees. Among other things, it financed the rescue work of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
The War Refugee Board's successes shattered the claims made by the Roosevelt administration then, and by Rosen today, that rescue was impossible. But many more lives could have been saved if Roosevelt had demonstrated his reputed humanitarianism by establishing the War Refugee Board earlier, or by pressing England to open the gates of Palestine to refugees, or just by allowing U.S. immigration quotas to be filled. That is the sad truth about Roosevelt and the Holocaust.
Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
