Friend or Foe?: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Jews

A question that has long haunted historians is what Franklin D. Roosevelt's attitude was towards the Jews. Since the publication of Arthur D. Morse's While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy (1967), scholars have debated why Roosevelt took, or did not take, the actions he did while the Nazis increased their persecution of the Jews that culminated in the “Final Solution,” which resulted in the deaths of more than six million Jewish men, women, and children. In seeking to answer this query, Roosevelt's character has often come into question. Some scholars have painted FDR as an anti-Semite, someone who abandoned the Jews; others viewed him as a political opportunist who would do or say anything to retain his power. Some academics portrayed Roosevelt as being apathetic to the suffering of the Jews, while others have hailed him as a savior for the actions he did take. Since FDR preferred to have oral rather than written communication, he left behind few clues as to his motivations. Therefore, the actions of this private president have been under intense scrutiny, with authors competing to see who can offer the most plausible explanation for Roosevelt's decisions.

In 2013, Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, published FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith in order to analyze how Roosevelt responded to the Holocaust. In this book, Medoff implies that FDR has not been subjected to the same type of criticism as other public leaders; though, when looking at the historiography, it seems clear that Roosevelt has endured more scrutiny than any other president in U.S. history. This book, which is written for a general audience rather than academics, takes the stance of the Wyman Institute, namely that Roosevelt could have chosen to save the Jews but did not for a variety of reasons. Published two months before Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman's FDR and the Jews (2013), Medoff's work serves more as a preemptive rebuttal to these authors than as a piece of serious scholarship. Medoff has published fourteen books on the Holocaust, but his latest effort is by far his weakest, both in terms of argument and content. Though Medoff utilized a number of previously unused sources, for instance from the Central Zionist Archives, this treatise simply serves to promote his personal agenda, and thus has to be read warily.

Medoff starts with the basic premise that FDR was an anti-Semite and that many of the people surrounding him shared these same sentiments. Medoff demonstrates that many figures within FDR's administration, most notably within the State Department, were all anti-Semitic. This point cannot be debated. In particular, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long's anti-Semitism is well documented in his private diaries, which were published under the title The War Diary of Breckinridge Long: Selections from the Years 1939–1944 (1966). Medoff insists the fact that these anti-Semitic men were allowed to remain in high-ranking positions within the State Department, War Department, as well as other various governmental agencies demonstrates FDR's mentality. Medoff concludes that they, when essentially stopping the entrance of refugees to the United States by giving various (unapproved) directives to the consulates or when taking other anti-immigration measures, were carrying out the wishes of FDR. However, there is no evidence to support this accusation. Though Roosevelt likely knew the attitudes of some of his advisors, he probably did not realize the depth to which their anti-Semitism ran and it cannot be assumed that their attitudes mirrored Roosevelt's. In fact, when examining FDR's government, one will find many Jews among Roosevelt's most trusted advisors, including Felix Frankfurter, Benjamin Cohen, Henry Morgenthau, and Louis Brandeis. If FDR was so anti-Semitic, as Medoff claims, why would he have included so many Jews in such prominent...