Acknowledgments
Introduction: “If Only He Would Do Something for My
People!”
1. “Nothing but Indifference”
2. In Search of Havens
3. Silence and Its Consequences
4. Suppressing the Dissidents
5. The Politics of Rescue
6. FDR, Wise, and Palestine
7. The Failure to Bomb Auschwitz
8. Antisemitism in the White House
Conclusion: A President’s Strategy and a Rabbi’s
Anguish
Notes
Bibliography
Index
-- The central theme of President Roosevelt actively trying to
silence his critics in the Jewish community represents a completely
new approach in scholarly interpretation of the period.
-- The shocking story of how a US president deceived Jewish leaders
and manipulated them to silence critics of his response to the
Holocaust.
-- The author has located hundreds of additional documents not
previously cited by other historians, which shed important new
light on the Wise-Roosevelt relationship and American Jewish
responses to the Holocaust.
-- Among the many previously-unpublished revelations contained in
this book:
* Dismissing Rabbi Wise's pleas, the Roosevelt administration sent
representatives to a pro-Hitler rally in New York City (1933), and
to Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg, Germany, in the 1930s.
* The Roosevelt administration pressured Rabbi Wise's associates to
cancel an anti-Hitler rally in Chicago (1934).
* President Roosevelt repeatedly censored anti-Nazi speeches that
Interior Secretary Harold Ickes intended to deliver in the
1930s.
* Rabbi Wise and his colleagues tried to sabotage Jewish activists
in Brooklyn who sought to mobilize Jewish political influence in
the 1930s.
* Dissidents within several of Wise's own organizations pressed for
protests against US refugee policy, but were stifled.
* The Roosevelt administration in effect blackmailed Wise, by
threatening to issue an anti-Zionist declaration unless he stopped
Jewish groups from agitating for a Jewish state during World War
Two.
* FDR repeatedly promised Rabbi Wise he would issue statements
supporting Zionism, then either broke his promises or delivered
significantly watered-down messages.
-- Reveals the surprising connection between President Roosevelt's
internment of Japanese Americans and his policy of preventing
Jewish refugees from entering the United States.
-- Documents Roosevelt's disturbing private comments about Jews-and
how his views influenced his refugee policy.
-- Explains why President Roosevelt maintained friendly relations
with Nazi Germany in the 1930s-even censoring anti-Hitler remarks
by one of his cabinet members-and how he manipulated American Jews
to keep quiet about it.
-- A fresh and surprising account of the complex relationship
between the leader of the Free World and the world's most
influential Jewish leader-and how that relationship affected
America's response to genocide.
-- Finally addresses questions that many other historians have
shied away from, specifically:
* Why did American Jews support FDR so fervently, despite his
failure to rescue Jews from the Holocaust?
* Why did Roosevelt suppress Jewish refugee immigration far below
the amount allowed by law?
* Why didn't U.S. planes bomb Auschwitz-when they were already
bombing other targets fewer than five miles from the gas
chambers?
* Why did FDR maintain friendly relations with Nazi Germany in the
1930s-even censoring anti-Hitler remarks by his cabinet
members?
-- Provides new insight into the history of American immigration
policy, specifically:
* Explores why the Roosevelt administration turned Jewish refugees
away, even though US immigration quotas were almost never full.
* Chronicles FDR's refusal to admit Jewish refugees to US
territories such as the Virgin Islands.
* Describes the little-known loopholes in US immigration law that
could have been used to rescue rabbis, professors and students.
-- Offers new insight into the history of American Zionism,
specifically:
* Reveals how FDR undermined efforts for Jewish statehood behind
the scenes-and manipulated American Zionist leaders to keep quiet
about it.
* Documents Roosevelt's disturbing plan to "spread the Jews thin
all over the world," instead of creating a Jewish homeland in
Palestine.
* Describes the little-known role of the Palestine issue in the
1944 presidential race, as Republicans and Democrats actively
competed for Jewish votes for the first time.
-- A very important contribution to both American Jewish history
and Holocaust studies.
Rafael Medoff is founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and coeditor of the institute’s online Encyclopedia of America’s Response to the Holocaust. He has taught history at Ohio State University, the State University of New York at Purchase, and elsewhere, and has written nineteen books about American Jewish history, the Holocaust, and related topics, including Too Little, and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust.
"Judicious and nuanced."—Drew Darien, Journal of American
History
"Meticulously documented . . . sober . . . an important
contribution to our understanding of the American government's
response to the Holocaust, and that of Franklin D. Roosevelt at the
helm of power."—American Historical Review
"The Jews Should Keep Quiet is the culmination of more than three
decades of research, and it is devastating. Few readers will come
away from Rafael Medoff ’s book without their view of FDR having
been signicantly changed."—David G. Dalin, Jewish Review of
Books
"Readers with an interest in World War II, 20th-century political
history, Jewish history, and the Holocaust should find this an
incisive and insightful exploration of the leading figures of this
period."—Library Journal, starred review
"With meticulous detail, Medoff documents the entwined failures of
an indifferent president and a sycophantic Jewish leader."—Jerold
Auerbach, Algemeiner
"An essential study shedding further light on a watershed period,
attempting a challenging balanced approach with irrefutable
evidence condemning two major figures whose close collaboration
ultimately carried disastrous consequences."—CCAR Journal/The
Reform Jewish Quarterly
"This sad chapter in the history of American Jewry should serve as
a keen example to all in today's Jewish community that we cannot
assume that liberal, left-wing ideology is inherently
pro-Jewish."—Alan Jay Gerber, Jewish Star
"The Jews Should Keep Quiet is a historical accounting of lies,
deceptions and subterfuge promulgated by Roosevelt and his
administration on American Jews and their leaders together with the
struggles of Wise, as a recognized Jewish leader, and the American
Jewish community against the tide of growing anti-Semitism and a
racially-biased president. Medoff, as a first-rate historian of the
Holocaust, clearly communicates what my poorly educated immigrant
grandmother instinctively recognized, 'Roosevelt was a great
president, except for the Jews.'"—Fred Reiss, San Diego Jewish
World
"Readers interested in American Jewish history or American politics
will definitely want to read this unsettling, but important,
work."—Rabbi Rachel Esserman, Reporter
"Rafael Medoff . . . has come closer than anyone before him to
explaining the inexplicable. He does so in a new book titled, The
Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S.
Wise, and the Holocaust."—Sol Stern, Tablet Magazine
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