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Letters They Wouldn't Publish
September 1, 2004
Letters to the Editor
Jewish World
Dear editor:
David Yehuda Avner ("A Walk with Harry Truman," Aug. 27-Sept.4) described a conversation he had in 1966 with former U.S. president Harry Truman. "The fate of the Jewish victims of Hitlerism was a matter of deep personal concern to me," the ex-president claimed. "The Holocaust was one of the most shocking crimes of all times. Hitler's war against the Jews was not a Jewish problem; it was an American problem."
Strong words--but twenty-five years too late. The fact is that while the Holocaust raged, Truman showed no real interest in the plight of Europe's Jews. When a constituent, a Missouri rabbi, wrote to then-Senator Truman in 1943 to urge U.S. action to rescue Jewish refugees, Truman coldly replied: "I do not think it is the business of Senators who are not on the Foreign Relations Committee to dabble in matters which affect our relations with the Allies at this time ...it is of vital importance that the Jewish Congregations be patient and support wholeheartedly the foreign policy of our government" --that is, the policy of refraining from taking any meaningful steps to aid refugees from Hitler.
Truman’s counsel of "patience" in the face of genocide clearly contradicts his claim, to Yehuda Avner in 1966, that the Nazi massacres of Jews were of "deep personal concern" to him.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rafael Medoff
Director
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Melrose Park, PA
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