Letters They Wouldn't Publish
18 June 2004
Letters to the Editor The Forward Dear Editor: Your May 21 article, quoting from my recent remarks in New York City, reported that I said: "The leaders of the two great democracies did not want Jews to get out of Hitler's Europe." The quotation is accurate, but taken out context. Here is what I said (quoted from the prepared text for my lecture): "Why did the United States turn its back on the Jews of Europe? The answer I found is that the State Department, and the British government equally, did not want rescue to occur, not in any large numbers. I will be as plain as I can. The leaders of the two great Western democracies did not want the Jews to get out of Hitler's Europe, certainly not in the tens of thousands. This was because in London and in Washington, they saw no places to put tens of thousands of Jews if they did come out. They knew no other nations were willing to let the Jews in. That meant that if the Jews came out, especially if we took the initiative to get them out, the responsibility to take them would fall on Britain and the United States. But Great Britain was not willing to take Jews into their country. And the British were adamant that the doors of Palestine, which they then controlled, would be kept closed to Jewish immigration. And the U.S. State Department was equally unwilling to consider any substantial influx of Jewish refugees into the United States (not over 6,000 per year). For both Britain and the United States, the policy was not rescue, but avoidance of rescue. This is shown time and again in document after document. "Just two brief examples to illustrate the point. The first involves a meeting held late in March 1943, at the White House in Washington. Present were British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, President Roosevelt and American Secretary of State Hull, and a few others. Secretary of State Hull raised the issue of perhaps helping the 60,000 Jews in Bulgaria. Eden replied 'that the whole problem of the Jews in Europe is very difficult and that we should move very cautiously about offering to take all Jews out of a country like Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany.' In other words, if we take 60,000, the Jews will pressure us to take hundreds of thousands. Eden was afraid large numbers would be saved. And these men knew that massive genocide was going on. No one there questioned Eden's positions. "The second example. A State Department official, some months later, put the problem this way: 'There was always the danger that the German government might agree to turn over the United States and to Great Britain a large number of Jewish refugees. In the event of our admission of inability to take care of these people, the onus for their continued persecution would have been largely transferred from the German government to the Allied nations.' Rather than trying to rescue Jews, the State Department would not even let the small U.S. immigrations quotas be filled." Sincerely,
David S. Wyman
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