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THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS -- AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945 |
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[b]10. THE CABINET WAR[/b]
During the last eight months of 1943, while the Bergsonites pressed for a government rescue agency and the Zionists consolidated their gains and opened the drive for a Palestine commonwealth, developments crucial to rescue were unfolding behind the scenes in the Roosevelt administration. The flow of events commenced in the State Department. Then, in June, the Treasury Department was drawn in. In the months that followed, as the Treasury intervened increasingly in rescue policy, relations between it and State moved closer and closer to the combustion point. [i] [1]
The explosion that finally resulted was set off by the Riegner plan, a promising rescue proposal that originated shortly before the Bermuda Conference. In early 1943, as has been noted, Gerhart Riegner dispatched a report confirming the extermination program from new sources and summarizing the terrible situation of the European Jews, country by country. Middle-level State Department officials reacted with a telegram (number 354 of February 10) to the American legation in Bern. It ordered a halt to the forwarding of further messages of that sort. The aim was to cut off the flow of information that had been fueling public pressure for rescue action. [3]
Despite the communications barrier, Riegner managed weeks later to notify the World Jewish Congress in New York that he had additional urgent news. Stephen Wise asked Sumner Welles to look into it. Welles, who was unaware of the stop order, telegraphed Leland Harrison, the American minister in Bern, directing him to obtain Riegner's latest message and relay it to Washington. Harrison did so on April 20. He also requested that
Welles's affirmative reply broke the blockade on extermination news. The incident did not end there, though. The matter of telegram 354 resurfaced months later, at the height of the State-Treasury conflict. [4]
Riegner's April 20 message, the basis. for the Riegner plan, outlined important new possibilities for "wide rescue action" in two countries. In Rumania, relief supplies could be obtained for the Jews in Transnistria; moreover, the children there could be removed to Palestine if funds were available. In France, where deportations continued, funds were needed to support hidden Jewish children and to finance escapes of young people to Spain. In no instance would the money move into Axis territory. Sufficient local currency could be borrowed in both Rumania and France if repayment were guaranteed by transferring funds from the United States to blocked accounts in Switzerland. The accounts would be controlled by American officials there and frozen until after the war. Funds for the plan were to come from American Jewish organizations. [5]
Shortly after receiving Riegner's message, Stephen Wise imd Nahum Goldmann opened negotiations on the plan with State Department officials. For the next eleven weeks, department personnel, searching for defects in the proposal, advised each other that it was too "vaguely phrased" to permit a decision, or that it might be a World Jewish Congress scheme to transfer money for ransom purposes, or. that approval might encourage other organizations to ask to send reelef funds to Europe. In the meantime, the World Jewish Congress received indications that Rumanian officials, for $170,000 in Rumanian currency, might revive the earlier offer to let all 70,000 Jews in Transnistria leave for overseas. [6]
It was late June before the State Department even mentioned the Riegner plan to the Treasury Department's Foreign Funds Control Di vision, the agency legally charged with issuing the licenses required for transferring funds overseas during World War II. Three weeks later, when State and Treasury officials finally met to consider the proposal, R. Borden Reams argued that the funds should not be transferred because the plan was not workable. [ii] Later in the discussion, though, Reams revealed the State Department's real objection: the proposals might actually succeed. Reams considered it unrealistic to encourage large-scale rescue because only 30,000 places remained available under the Palestine White Paper quota and he "did not know of any other areas to which the remaining Jews could be evacuated." This reasoning, though standard currency in the State Department, was not convincing to the Treasury. The next day, July 16, Treasury advised State that it was prepared to issue the license. [7]
Unaware of these developments, but anxious about the long delay, Wise discussed the Riegner plan with Roosevelt during a White House visit on July 22. The rabbi emphasized that it could not possibly interfere with the war effort, because none of the funds would he unblocked until the war ended. Roosevelt agreed to the plan, informed Morgenthau, and on August 14 signed a letter to Wise reporting that the Treasury Department had approved and all arrangements were complete except for "a further exchange of cables between the State Department and our mission in Bern regarding some of the details." [9]
But even the President's intervention failed to daunt Breckinridge Long and his group. They delayed the license another six and one-half weeks, asserting that Riegner's plan would somehow provide the enemy with foreign exchange. Within the State Department, only Herbert Feis, the adviser on international economic affairs, and Bernard Meltzer, acting chief of the Division of Foreign Funds Control, pressed for issuance of the license. [iii] [10]
Ultimately, on September 28, the State Department telegraphed the Treasury license to Harrison in Bern. Harrison, who had been aware that the license was in the works, had already expressed his readiness to relay it to Riegner. Moreover, he had left unanswered an earlier Treasury Department message asking him to spell out any problems he foresaw in issuing the license. Yet, when he received it, he telegraphed back that he wanted a specific State Department order before delivering it to Riegner. He also mentioned that, in line with standing instructions concerning such transactions, he had discussed the license with British authorities in Switzerland and they opposed it on economic-warfare grounds. [12]
The State Department took no action on Harrison's telegram. It did not order him to issue the license, nor did it inform the Treasury of his message. When the Treasury learned of it (through informal contacts it had elsewhere in the State Department), it drafted a telegram for the State Department to send to Harrison instructing him to issue the license. Treasury officials insisted that British clearance was not necessary, because the license had been carefully drawn to safeguard it from abuse. Moreover, the British had carried out comparable relief actions without consulting American authorities. [13]
Reams resisted the Treasury demand, claiming that issuance of the license would incense the British, single out "a special group of enemy aliens" for help, and improperly bypass the Intergovernmental Committee. But Long, apparently wary of a confrontation with the Treasury, gave in. On October 26, he cabled Harrison to issue the license. Within the State Department, he justified his action on the grounds that similar transmissions of funds had been allowed in the past, the chance that this one could help the enemy was remote, and the President supported it. [14]
Harrison still did not act. Seventeen days later, the British Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) lodged official objections to the license through the British embassy in Washington and the British legation in Bern. Only then did Harrison reply, stating that the British in Bern had orders to withhold consent until MEW had discussed the matter with the Treasury. Before defying the British, Harrison explained, he would really need specific instructions to do so from the State Department. [15]
When Treasury officials learned of the latest complications, they drafted a letter, which Morgenthau sent to Hull. It pointed out that three and one-half months had passed since the Treasury Department had embarked on "the relatively simple matter of getting our Minister in Switzerland to issue a license," The message outlined the obstacles encountered and closed with a request for Hull's assistance. Accompanying the letter was a telegram that Morgenthau asked Hull to dispatch to John G. Winant, the American ambassador to Great Britain. It asked Winant to approach the Ministry of Economic Warfare, explain that the proposed license was fully safeguarded, and try to get the British to withdraw their objections. The telegram went out without delay. [16]
Winant complied immediately, but two more weeks passed before the British responded. Their reply, finally delivered on December 15, showed that the economic-warfare argument had been a pretext which the British now realized was not going to stop the Treasury Department. Aware that Treasury's interest in the Jewish situation went beyond the Riegner license and could lead to a serious American rescue drive, the Foreign Office had stepped in. The resulting message, described by Morgenthau as "a satanic combination of British chill and diplomatic double-talk, cold and correct and adding up to a sentence of death," revealed the real British objection to the Riegner plan. It brought into sharp focus the underlying fear that had determined the entire British policy toward rescue-a fear that had similarly shaped the State Department's response to the Holocaust. The core of the message follows:
Treasury officials were shocked. The four men closest to the license battle -- all of them non-Jews and tough-minded lawyers accustomed to Washington's bruising administrative politics -- reacted with pain and anger:
The British message dissolved the smoke screen of excuses that the State Department and the Foreign Office had used throughout the preceding year to conceal their actual opposition to rescue action. Now that the real issue was out in the open, Morgenthau's staff began to press him to urge Roosevelt to remove the rescue question from the State Department. The President, they argued, had to be persuaded to form a special agency to try to save European Jews. [21]
Off and on since June 1943, Oscar Cox of the Lend-Lease Administration had tried to convince Morgenthau, and the State Department as well, that a separate rescue agency was essential. Cox suggested a board appointed by the President and based on the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Foreign Economic Administration (because it was responsible for lend-lease funds). This "War Refugee Rescue Committee" would "attack the whole problem afresh" by formulating rescue plans, developing the necessary funding, asking the various countries to accept a fair share of refugees on an emergency basis, and pressing Europe's neutral nations to let refugees enter. In October, the State Department had rejected Cox's plan, claiming that such a commission would duplicate and interfere with the work of the Intergovernmental Committee. Nor had the Treasury shown much interest in the proposal. But in mid-December, during the uproar over the British message, Cox again pressed his plan. This time he had the support of several of Morgenthau's staff. Moreover, he asserted, Roosevelt favored the idea. [22]
But Morgenthau still held back, convinced that polite pressure on Hull would activate the State Department. His Foreign Funds Control staff disagreed with this optimism. But they did not object when he insisted that before going to Roosevelt he must at least confer with Hull. That afternoon (Saturday, December 18), Morgenthau telephoned and made an appointment for Monday morning. State Department personnel realized what was in store, for on the preceding day Morgenthau had sent a courteous message to Hull which spelled out once more the many complications that had prevented the Treasury from transmitting the license to Riegner. [23]
When Morgenthau, Pehle, and Paul arrived for the meeting with Hull, they were amazed to learn that on Saturday, at Breckinridge Long's initiative, the State Department had dispatched an extremely sharp message to Ambassador Winant for delivery to the British government:
That was not all. That same Saturday, despite British disapproval and Harrison's objections, Long had sent the long-sought license, authorizing an initial $25,000. He acted in such haste that, contrary to all practice, the final version was not cleared with the Treasury. Two days before Christmas, Harrison reported that he had personally taken the license to Riegner. Thus, eight months after he had requested the funds, Riegner was free to carry out his now outdated rescue plans. [25]
During the Monday morning conference, Hull explained to Morgenthau, "The trouble is, the fellows down the line.... I don't get a chance to know everything that is going on. You just sort of have to rip things out if you want to get them done." Hull was correct that recalcitrance and obstruction "down the line" were at the center of the problem. But he himself, even though his wife came from a Jewish family, had paid almost no attention to his department's policies concerning the destruction of the Jews. [vi] [26]
Breckinridge Long, uneasy about the recent turn of events, tried to use the conference to disassociate himself from the policies of his own clique. He asked Morgenthau to talk with him alone in another room. There he said, "I just want to tell you that unfortunately the people lower down in you~ Department and lower down in the State Department are making a lot of trouble." He proceeded to put most of the blame on Bernard Meltzer who, he claimed, had thrown technical difficulties in the way of the license and had spread accusations of anti-Semitism. [28]
Morgenthau, aware that Metzer and Herbert Feis had fought alone in the State Department to put the license through, turned the conversation back on Long. Later in the morning, he summarized the discussion that resulted:
Morgenthau continued:
Long protested, assured Morgenthau of his commitment to rescue, and said he hoped he and the Treasury could cooperate toward that end. [29]
Immediately following the conference, Treasury officials gathered to assess the situation. Morgenthau maintained that Hull's assistance was now assured and, consequently, there was no need for a special rescue agency. Others disagreed, arguing that cooperation by Long and his group would disappear when the heat let up. It was evident that the State Department's biting reply to the British and its sudden issuance of the license had come only after Morgenthau had arranged to see Hull. [30]
Shortly before the meeting with Hull took place, Josiah DuBois, chief counsel for Treasury's Foreign Funds Control Division, had uncovered a sensational instance of State Department malfeasance. The earliest telegram that the Treasury Department had received from the State Department concerning the Jewish situation in Europe was a message that Harrison sent from Bern on April 20, 1943. It included a reference to State Department cable 354, dispatched to Bern on February 10. Treasury officials thought 354 might contain additional information on the Riegner plan. So they asked for a copy. The State Department refused, claiming that 354 did not concern the Treasury. [31]
Eventually, DuBois managed to see 354, but only through the cooperation of a friend in the State Department, Donald Hiss, who knowingly risked his job to help. Hiss also showed DuBois a telegram to which 354 made reference, number 482 from Bern to the State Department on January 21. The latter carried Riegner's report reconfirming the Nazi extermination plan and detailing the situation then confronting the Jews of Europe. Number 354, as previously noted, was the instrument by which the State Department had cut off the flow of information from Riegner. But 354 by itself did not specify the type of information that was to be blocked. To comprehend its real meaning, one had to read it in conjunction with 482. [32]
At the State Department conference, Morgenthau managed, offhand edly and without revealing his purpose, to get Hull to tell Long to send a copy of cable 354 to the Treasury. Long did so, that same day. But the line in the cablegram that referred to 482 had been deleted. Thus the only clue to the real meaning of 354 was missing. Only because DuBois had already seen a true copy of 354 did the Treasury realize what had happened. Morgenthau immediately sent one of his staff to look at Long's copy of 354. Noticing its reference to 482, the Treasury official told Long that Morgenthau would also want a copy of 482. The next day, 482 reached the Treasury, confirming DuBois's disclosure. [33]
Even knowledge of the scheme to silence Riegner and discovery of the deceitful attempt to cover it up did not convince Morgenthau that the rescue issue had to be taken out of the State Department. But Cox and others in the Roosevelt administration were becoming increasingly anxious about growing support in the press and on Capitol Hill for the Bergsonite legislation calling for a government rescue agency. They wanted Roosevelt to take action before it was forced on him, particularly since several supporters of the legislation were opponents of I President. During the rest of December, Cox unsuccessfully pressed Morgenthau to go to Roosevelt and emphasize the need for him to set up a rescue commission. [34]
By January 10, all of Morgenthau's staff who had been working on the rescue question agreed with Cox. They were sure that Hull could not or would not do the job and that Long's cooperation would cease when the pressures slackened. What finally convinced Morgenthau was an eighteen-page memorandum on State Department obstruction entitled "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews." Led by DuBois, the Foreign Funds Control staff prepared this searing indictment, which charged that the State Department was "guilty not only of gross procrastination and wilful failure to act, but even of wilful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler." [35]
The report documented the long struggle for the Riegner license and the story of cable 354 as well as the deception employed in trying to keep it secret. It also pointed to the State Department's strategy of sidetracking rescue proposals to the ineffective Intergovernmental Committee, its inordinately tight restrictions on visa issuance, and its role in the fraudulent Bermuda Conference. Morgenthau received the report on January 13. Within two days, he decided to go to Roosevelt, explain the situation, and urge him to establish a rescue agency. [36]
***
One passage in the "Report to the Secretary" accused State Department officials of "kicking the [rescue] matter around for over a year without producing results," The State Department's own records bear that out. While the Riegner license was bogged down in the bureaucratic morass, the State Department was holding back a parallel effort by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to transfer funds to Switzer land for relief and rescue. After the breakthrough on the Riegner license, the Treasury forced the State Department to issue a license for the JDC. [37]
Another project caught in the State Department maze in 1943 was the Goldmann plan, probably the most ambitious of the wartime proposals to aid Jews inside Europe. In September, Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress asked Breckinridge Long for help in providing food and medicines to Jews still alive in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans. The aid, to be channeled through the International Red Cross, would cost about $10 million. Goldmann stated that American Jewish organizations could furnish $2 million. He hoped the U.S. government might supply the other $8 million. Long replied that he knew of no government funds for such a purpose, but he offered to submit the proposal to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. Under the ICR's new setup, Long explained, funds for specific projects that it approved would be provided by Britain and the United States on a fifty-fifty basis. [38]
On the surface, this arrangement looked like a workable answer to Goldmann's call for help. In reality, it was another runaround. Diverting the project through the ICR meant indefinite delays and no results. Ansel Luxlord of the Treasury Department described the State Department's handling of the Goldmann plan: "Long first tossed it into the waste-paper basket; namely, the Inter-Governmental Committee." [39]
By January 1944, nothing more had happened concerning the Goldmann plan. When a Jewish leader inquired about it, Long explained that the ICR had approved some of its projects, but no government funds were currently available for them. Yet, less than two months earlier, Long had told a congressional committee about the Goldmann plan, citing it as' important evidence of the State Department's vigorous efforts for refugees. He stated unequivocally that "we have agreed to finance half of the cost. It would be $4 million for each government." Moreover, in January, when Long insisted that no government funds could be found, a Treasury Department inquiry confirmed that $80 million remained available in the most obvious account for such undertakings, the President's Emergency Fund. The other side of the Goldmann plan collapsed in January when it became clear that the British government had no intention of participating. [vii] [40]
The Riegner, Joint Distribution Committee, and Goldmann proposals were not the only plans that were bottled up in the State Department. A fifty-page State Department internal memorandum of July 1943 summarized several rescue projects then under consideration. Only two ultimately succeeded, and they concerned non-Jewish refugees. One involving Jews, the refugee camp in North Africa, did provide a minor benefit, but only after a thirteen-month delay. None of the other projects advanced beyond the preliminary stages. [42]
Six months later, the State Department compiled another report on its current rescue programs. Again, the projects concerned with Jews had been pursued without enthusiasm and had achieved nothing. In the judgment of Treasury's John Pehle, one needed only to read the memorandum to see "the way they kick this stuff around.... All of a sudden, right in the middle of something, they will refer [it] to the Intergovernmental Committee and nothing will happen.... Really, they are things that. something could have been done on." [43]
***
Why did the State Department respond so inadequately to the Holocaust? Lack of knowledge was not the problem; it had the fullest available information. Nor was disbelief a factor. Even R. Borden Reams, the most skeptical of the officials involved, described the terrible reports as "essentially correct.'' [44]
The failure stemmed in part from plain bureaucratic inefficiency. Close study of State Department records leaves one with the impression of a poorly administered unit where initiative and imagination were scarce. Furthermore, the absence of any comprehensive approach to rescue meant that opportunities for action were handled in piecemeal fashion. Even then they were usually fumbled. An additional handicap was the widespread belief within the department that nothing much could be done anyway; One Jewish leader described the results: "interminable delay, miles and miles of paper work, little measures for gigantic problems and gigantic difficulties for little problems." [45]
By far the most important cause for State Department inaction was fear that sizable numbers of Jews might actually get out of Axis territory. (Sizable numbers meant more than a very few thousand.) This fear determined the State Department's entire response to the Holocaust, as it did that of the British. Behind it loomed the problem that both governments regarded as unsolvable: Where could masses of Jews be put if they did come out? It was apprehensiveness about stimulating an outflow of Jews that underlay the State Department's consistently negative approach to rescue. Its own documents reveal that the basic policy was not rescue but the avoidance of rescue. [viii]
Closely related to the fear of a large exodus of Jews from Axis Europe were two other aspects of the State Department's response to the Holocaust. One was the visa policy that shut the United States to all but a tiny trickle of refugee immigration. The other was the department's quiet, but unwavering, support for Britain's policy of very tight limits on refugee entrance into Palestine. Thus two of the most likely havens of refuge were virtually dosed. And other countries were provided with justification for their own barred doors.
Under such circumstances, large-scale removal of Jews appeared impossible; yet public pressures for action could not be kept down. The State Department's solution to that quandary was the Intergovernmental Committee. Proclaimed as the international engine of rescue, its ineffectiveness hidden behind a supposedly necessary veil of secrecy, it provided an excuse for State Department inaction. Rescue proposals could be relayed to it with confidence that nothing significant would develop, that no outflow of Jews would result.
The State Department's policies arose to some degree from the personal anti-alien, anti-immigrant attitudes that prevailed among those involved in refugee affairs. Breckinridge Long was an extreme nativist, especially with regard to eastern Europeans. His subordinates shared his anti-alienism. Their altitudes influenced not only visa policy but the department's entire response to the European Jewish catastrophe. [47]
The extent to which anti-Semitism was a factor is more problematic. The fact that few Jews held State Department posts points to a generally anti-Semitic atmosphere. But direct proof of anti-Semitism in the department is limited. [ix] [48]
In any case, much of the top and middle-level leadership seemed little moved by the European Jewish catastrophe. Cordell Hull was uninterested in and uninformed about his department's rescue policies. (It is striking that almost nothing about refugees appears in the voluminous Hull files in the Library of Congress.) Undersecretary Sumner Welles and Assistant Secretary Adolf Berle appear to have been sym- pathetic, but neither responded effectively to the challenge. By May 1943, Berle had concluded that nothing could be done to save Jews short of defeating Hitler's forces. Welles's reaction to the Holocaust remains an enigma. On many occasions, he cooperated with Jewish leaders and seemed on the point of forcing middle-level officials to act. But he seldom followed through. Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., named undersecretary in September 1943 and secretary of state in December 1944, was genuinely concerned. Under his leadership, the department's record improved, but only slightly. [50]
The people in the State Department who were most closely associated with the rescue issue were Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long and several middle-level officials. They included George Brandt, Long's executive assistant, James Dunn and Wallace Murray, departmental advisers on political relations, Ray Atherton, acting chief of the Division of European Affairs, Howard Travers, chief of the Visa Division, and a number of lesser officers, especially R. Borden Reams. These men were indifferent to the tragedy of the European Jews. Randolph Paul of the Treasury Department described them as an American "underground movement ... to let the Jews be killed." [51]
Since neither Roosevelt nor Hull paid much attention to the European Jewish tragedy, the main responsibility for American rescue policy fell to Long and his subordinates. Instead of sensitivity to the human values involved, Long brought strongly nativist attitudes to the situation. [x] Moreover, he was difficult to work with, unless his ideas prevailed. And he was extremely suspicious, as his diary clearly reveals. He viewed himself as under persistent attack from "the Communists, extreme radicals, Jewish professional agitators, [and] refugee enthusiasts," as well as "the radical press" and "Jewish radical circles." "They all hate me," he believed. The supposed assaults came also from within, from limy colleagues in the Government." Long was certain that some of them disliked him intensely, interfered with his work, and conspired against him. Toward the end of his tenure, he even concluded that he had borne "the brunt of the worst attack made against any officer of this Government." With a person of such perceptions and attitudes in charge, little chance existed for a positive American response to the difficult problem of helping the Jews of Europe. [52]
As 1944 opened, however, Morgenthau and the Treasury Department were about to challenge the grip that Long and his followers had on rescue policy. At the same time, the legislation calling for a special rescue agency that had been in Congress since November was nearing a showdown vote. Its prospects appeared good. [54]
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[b]Notes:[/b]
[i] Conflict between State and Treasury was no novelty. Many foreign-affairs problems had important economic dimensions, and Morgenthau and Hull (and their subordinates) frequently disagreed on policy. Areas of contention included, among others, the China silver problem of the 1930s, lend-lease arrangements, the freezing of Argentine assets during the war, plans for postwar monetary policy; and the question of deindustrialization of Germany after the war. [2]
[ii] This point was irrelevant. Hundreds of licenses for funds transfers had been issued and not used. The idea was to have the funds available for rapid action if an opportunity arose to utilize them. [8]
[iii] Privately, Meltzer expressed amazement at the arguments raised by Long and his followers. Usually, when such questions came up, it was Meltzer's Foreign Funds Control Division that opposed issuing licenses and the others in the department who insisted that political factors outweighed such minor economic-warfare considerations. [11]
[iv] A week later, the British position was clearly spelled out again. A. W. G. Randall, head of the Foreign Office's Refugee Department, noted in an internal communication, "Once we open the door to adult male Jews to be taken out of enemy territory, a quite unmanageable flood may result. (Hitler may facilitate it!)" [18]
[v] The anger and bitterness were slow to recede, as the transcript of a Treasury staff meeting held weeks later shows:
[vi] At a follow-up conference three weeks later, Morgenthau told Hull that he had gone carefully over the State Department's rescue record and found it "most shocking." Hull replied that "he had no doubt of that." Yet he came to that meeting completely unprepared and had no idea what the discussion was about, even though he had been given a file briefing him on the issues. Moreover, to everyone's embarrassment, he was unable to introduce four of the five State Department officials involved in refugee affairs who accompanied him to the meeting. [27]
[vii] The State Department's treatment of the Goldmann plan differed markedly from its quick allotment earlier in 1943 of $3 million from the President's Emergency Fund for transportation to Mexico and maintenance there of up to 28,000 non-Jewish Polish refugees. [41]
[viii] See chapters 5 and 6.
In October 1943, a State Department adviser on political relations stressed the point again: "There are grave objections to a direct approach to the German Government to request the release to us of these people. Despite the fact that such an offer would almost certainly be refused, a counter offer on the part of the German Government to deliver a large number of refugees at a specified point would have even graver consequences. Lack of a place of temporary refuge and the impossibility of diverting the necessary shipping from the war effort would make it impossible for us to take them. The net result would be the transfer of odium from the German to Allied Governments." [46]
[ix] Josiah DuBois, who had close contacts in the State Department, has maintained that several of its officials were anti-Semitic. But the research for this book turned up only two documented examples. One, in 1934, concerned a visa official who told a representative of a Catholic organization that it was a relief to have someone come to him who was not attempting to get Jews into the United States. The other instance involved an official in the department's Western European Division who reportedly denounced Morgenthau as "that damned Jew in the Treasury."
There is no doubt about the existence of anti-Semitism among American consuls overseas. It was widespread. [49]
[x] Whether Long was also anti-Semitic is not clear. The record does not show him to be overtly negative toward Jews simply because they were Jews. He appears to have had good relations with the more conservative Jewish leaders -- that is, the ones who did not rankle him or openly criticize him.
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