SPECIAL ARTICLES FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE JEWISH CRISIS 1933-1945 By EDWARD N. SAVETH* HE Roosevelt Administration coincided with the most T critical period in the long history of the Jewish people, induced by the evil spell which Hitlerism cast over the entire world. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the healthy spirit of progressive democracy had made its influence universally felt. But in the third decade of the twentieth century, this lusty child who had caused monarchs to tremble on their thrones, had the gauntlet thrown down to it by the antithetical philosophy of Nazism. The blunt challenge to democracy, its contempt for human rights, and cynical hatred of people other than members of the "master race" found a worthy antagonist in Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Guardian of the democratic tradition, Roosevelt was heir to the mantle of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson. In addition, Roosevelt was himself a convinced democrat. Scion of an aristocratic New York family, Roosevelt bore no caste mark setting him apart from the bulk of his fellow citizens. He counted among his friends those who stemmed from Pilgrim ancestors and those whose forbears saluted the Statue of Liberty aboard crowded immigrant ships. To him they were one people. Roosevelt, especially when provoked by the Nazis, was proud, even boastful, of our national heterogeneity. "As to the humorous theory that we are hybrid and undynamic, mongrel and corrupt, and that therefore we can have no common tradition, let them look at most gatherings of •Member of research staff, American Jewish Committee. 37 38 AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK Americans and study -the common purpose that animates those gatherings. Let them look at any church sociable in any small town, at any fraternal convention, or meeting of doctors, or mine workers, at any cheering section of any football game. Let them look with a special attention at the crowds which will gather in and around every polling place November 5. Let them observe the unconquerable vitality of democracy. It is the very mingling of races, dedicated to common ideals, which creates and recreates our vitality." Ever since the nation's beginnings, Roosevelt said on the occasion of the second anniversary of the University in Exile on January 14, 1936, "we have welcomed many men and women of ability and character from other countries, who had found their usefulness cut off by conditions which are alien to the American system. Some of our most famous patriots, scholars and scientists came to this country in 1848. The whole nation has been enriched, morally and materially through the ability which they have placed at our service." Continuing benefit, the President felt, would derive from this latest group of immigrants who came to the United States after 1933. Precisely because we were a nation of many nationalities and religions united in determination to live under conditions of freedom and equality, Roosevelt was quick to recognize the threat to national well-being by those who were bent upon arousing jfroup antagonisms. He cautioned against "doctrines that set group against group, faith against faith, race against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred." His warning was simple and direct. "Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities. "Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. "Whoever seeks to set one religion against another, seeks to destroy all religion." Roosevelt was a firm believer in the religious foundation of democracy. "Our democratic way of life," he once said, "has its deepest roots in our great common religious tradition, which for ages past has taught to civilized mankind the FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT 39 dignity of the human being, his equality before God, and his responsibility in the making of a better and fairer world." The President formulated no narrow construction of de- mocracy's religious wellspring. "After all," he argued, "the majority of Americans whether they adhere to the ancient teaching of Israel or accept the tenets of the Christian reli- gion, have a common source of inspiration in the Old Testa- ment. In the spirit of brotherhood we should, therefore, seek to emphasize all those many essential things in which we find unity in our common biblical heritage." Roosevelt had occasion to stress this common inheritance in letters addressed on December 23, 1939 to Pope Pius XII; the President of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, Dr. George A. Buttrick; and the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Dr. Cyrus Adler. In that hour of world conflict, the President wrote of the "spiritual kinship of all who believe in a common God" and of the necessity of parallel endeavors among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews for the alleviation of suffer- ing. So that he might benefit from religious counsel, Roose- velt named Myron C. Taylor his personal representative at the Vatican and invited Dr. Buttrick and Dr. Adler "to discuss the problems which all of us have on our minds." Mindful of the key significance of religious freedom to the democratic way of life, Roosevelt was particularly in- sistent that it be preserved. "Embodied in the Federal Constitution and ingrained in our hearts and souls is the national conviction that every man has an inalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own con- science." Implementing this ideology, Roosevelt, at the very outset of negotiations for the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, was insistent that American citizens resident in Russia should have the right of religious expression. In 1928, while campaigning for Alfred E. Smith, then a candidate for the presidency, Roosevelt lashed out against injection of the issue of Smith's Catholicism into the election campaign. According to George N. Shuster, writing in the magazine Commonweal, Roosevelt "was unfailingly tactful in his relations with Catholics, and considerate of their legitimate interests, for quite other than political 40 AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK II No less sympathetic was the President's attitude toward the Jewish people, suffering from persecution inflicted upon them by the Nazis. As a humanitarian, the President could not be unmoved by what had occurred; as an American, he could not be other than concerned by the challenge to the democratic way of life that emanated from Berlin. Religious freedom was not alone at stake; democracy was itself on trial, accused of being "decadent," "corrupt," and the product of peoples inferior to the "master race." The fate of the nation was inextricably tied to the clash of the democratic and Nazi ideologies and as the Nazi war machine was girded and then launched upon a career of world con- quest, no American mindful of his true heritage could remain silent. In the ensuing titanic struggle thatr began in 1933 with the inauguration of Roosevelt and the advent of Hitler to power in Germany, the Jewish issue played an important, though by no means exclusive part. True, Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis was great and that is why, if Roosevelt seemed to defend the Jews with primacy, it was because they had been persecuted with flagrant primacy. The Nazis had made Jews an initial target in their crusade against the democratic way of life and the peoples and nations of the world. Roosevelt, determined to defend democracy, in so doing came to the defense of Jews against their oppressors. In the history of American diplomacy, there are precedents for intercessions on behalf of persecuted minorities. But these moves involved the less enlightened states of Persia, Syria, Morocco, Rumania and, in the early twentieth cen- tury, Tsarist Russia. Stunned surprise that Germany, a civilized nation of the western world, should exceed these backward areas in excesses perpetrated upon the Jewish population, combining with early uncertainty concerning the consistency of Nazi policies, served to commit the Admin- istration to a policy of watchful waiting. Nevertheless, the Government, under Roosevelt's leadership, lost no occasion to make known to the Hitler regime the sentiments of the American people with regard to the Nazi outrages. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT 41 On April 28, 1933, a State Department announcement expressed Secretary Cordell Hull's willingness "to do every- thing within diplomatic usage to be of assistance" to the Jews of Germany. On June 28, Under Secretary of State William Phillips gave assurances that "every reasonable effort is being made to insure sympathetic and considerate treatment of aliens applying for visas in Germany." That month, in his oral instructions to William E. Dodd, recently appointed Ambassador to Germany, the Pres- ident, although strongly disapproving of Nazi treatment of the Jews, indicated to what extent the United States was limited by diplomatic precedent in its protests. The Pres- ident said: "The German authorities are treating the Jews shamefully .... But this is ... not a governmental affair. We can do nothing except for American citizens who happen to be made victims. We must protect them, and whatever we can do to moderate the general persecution by unofficial and personal influence ought to be done." As it became evident that anti-Semitism in Germany was increasing rather than diminishing, American public opinion was loud in its demand for official condemnation by the Administration. The President at this time made no public protest, but Administration spokesmen in both houses of Congress reflected the White House attitude toward what was happening in Germany. Senator Joseph T. Robinson, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, on June 10, 1934, uttered a protest and a warning to the German regime; Senator Millard Tydings urged the severance of diplomatic relations with Germany; Senators Royal S.