Rafael Medoff - The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust

Based on recently discovered documents, The Jews Should Keep Quiet reassesses the hows and whys behind the Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations fateful policies during the Holocaust. Rafael Medoff delves into difficult truths: With FDRs consent, the administration deliberately suppressed European immigration far below the limits set by U.S. law. His administration also refused to admit Jewish refugees to the U.S. Virgin Islands, dismissed proposals to use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees, and rejected pleas to drop bombs on the railways leading to Auschwitz, even while American planes were bombing targets only a few miles awayactions that would not have conflicted with the larger goal of winning the war.

What motivated FDR? Medoff explores the sensitive question of the presidents private sentiments toward Jews. Unmasking strong parallels between Roosevelts statements regarding Jews and Asians, he connects the administrations policies of excluding Jewish refugees and interning Japanese Americans.

The Jews Should Keep Quiet further reveals how FDRs personal relationship with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewrys foremost leader in the 1930s and 1940s, swayed the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Documenting how Roosevelt and others pressured Wise to stifle American Jewish criticism of FDRs policies, Medoff chronicles how and why the American Jewish community largely fell in line with Wise. Ultimately Medoff weighs the administrations realistic options for rescue action, which, if taken, would have saved many lives.

This highly original work addresses the U.S. governments unwillingness to undertake serious rescue efforts and the deep divisions within American Jewry over how to respond to U.S. indifference to European Jewrys plight. Expanding on David S. Wymans pathbreaking work on Americas response to the Holocaust, using new archival materials and interviews with persons then on the scene, Medoff provides the best assessment to date of the relationship between Americas foremost Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Professor S TEPHEN H. N ORWOOD , author of
The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower and coeditor of
Encyclopedia of American Jewish History

The Jews Should Keep Quiet reveals in troubling detail how FDR manipulated American Jewish leaders to suppress criticism of his abandonment of Europes Jews during the Holocaust. Our family was certainly impacted. I was two years old on January 30, 1933, the day Hitler became Reichschancellor and my Dad told my Mom: We are leaving Germany forever. It took us two and a half years of seeking a sympathetic American consul to overcome the barriers of FDRs State Department. We need to learn from Rafael Medoffs disturbing but necessary and enlightening study of moral failure and its consequences.

R UDY B OSCHWITZ , U.S. senator (197891)

The Jews Should Keep Quiet conclusively documents, far better than anything else I have read, how Franklin Delano Roosevelts private attitude towards Jews motivated him to close Americas doors to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Medoff adroitly exposes how FDR suppressed Jewish immigration with the unwitting assistance of Rabbi Stephen Wise. This book is a revelationcourageous, scholarly, and chillingly honest. You will never think of FDR the same way again after reading it.

I RVING A BELLA , president of the Academy of the Arts
and the Humanities of Canada and past Shiff Professor of
Jewish Studies at York University, Toronto

The Jews Should Keep Quiet is of lasting importance for the teaching and understanding of the Holocaust. Rafael Medoffs incisive examination of the complex relationship between the U.S. president and Americas foremost Jewish leader shines a light on troubling aspects of American history that many would prefer to ignore. This book is must reading.

Z SUZSANNA O ZSVATH , director of Holocaust Studies,
Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies,
University of Texas at Dallas

The Jews Should Keep Quiet is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of elite complicity with government inaction. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise regarded Franklin D. Roosevelt as a friend, even though the Roosevelt administration was unfriendly to the plight of Jewish refugees, opposed the bombing of extermination camps, and remained ambivalent toward Zionism. Meticulously researched, engagingly written, and eminently fair-minded, The Jews Should Keep Quiet deserves a wide audience.

D EAN J. K OTLOWSKI , professor of history at
Salisbury University and author of Nixons Civil Rights and
Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR

In this important volume, Medoff shows there was a great deal Roosevelt could have done despite the political circumstances and limitations. The new material and analysis he brings to light are vital study in a field rife with apologetic, consensus historiansand dare not to be forgotten.

A LLEN H. P ODET , professor emeritus, Philosophy and Religious
Studies, Buffalo State, State University of New York

The Jews Should Keep Quiet is a meticulously researched and disquieting history of the reasons behind Americas failure to rescue Europes doomed Jews. Readers may rightly conclude that if there is a Roosevelt they can admire, it is Eleanor and not Franklin.

A LAN L. B ERGER , Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair
in Holocaust Studies, Florida Atlantic University

2019 by Rafael Medoff

All rights reserved. Published by the University of
Nebraska Press as a Jewish Publication Society book.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Medoff, Rafael, 1959 author.

Title: The Jews should keep quiet: Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust / Rafael Medoff.

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
[2019] | Published by the University of Nebraska
Press as a Jewish Publication Society book. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018052333

ISBN 9780827614703 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 9780827618305 (epub)

ISBN 9780827618312 (mobi)

ISBN 9780827618329 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)
Foreign public opinion, American. | Public
opinionUnited States. | World War, 19391945
JewsRescue. | JewsUnited StatesPolitics and
government20th century. | Roosevelt, Franklin D.
(Franklin Delano), 18821945Relations with Jews.
| Wise, Stephen S. (Stephen Samuel), 18741949.
| United StatesPolitics and government19331945.
| United StatesForeign relations19331945.

Classification: LCC D 804.45. U 55 M 42 2019 |
DDC 940.53/18dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052333

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

In memory of David S. Wyman

scholar, teacher, friend

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I AM GRATEFUL TO Ilya Slavutskiy and his colleagues at the American Jewish Historical Society; Simone Schliachter and her colleagues at the Central Zionist Archives; the staff members of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, the American Jewish Archives, the Jabotinsky Institute (Metzudat Zeev), the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Public Record Office (London), and the American Friends Service Committee Archives, for their assistance and cooperation in the research for this book; and to Benyamin Korn for helping to craft the title.