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THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS -- AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945 |
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[b]11. THE RESCUE RESOLUTION[/b]
Congressional approval of the Rescue Resolution would not in itself have created a governmental rescue agency. The measure was advisory legislation that urged the President to take that step. [i] Nonetheless, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe initiated the proposal with the expectation that its passage would force Roosevelt to act. The State Department evidently shared that perception, to judge from Breckinridge Long's maneuvers to block the resolution. In the struggle over the legislation, which began even before it was introduced, its supporters also encountered opposition from the Zionist leadership and from the most influential Jewish Congress, Sol Bloom.
But the Emergency Committee, anticipating resistance, had waged an intensive lobbying campaign and had lined up important backing in Congress. Senator Guy Gillette (Dem., Iowa) originally sponsored the resolution. Eleven other senators joined him in introducing it. Among them were two consistent Bergson supporters, Elbert Thomas (Dem., Utah) and Edwin Johnson (Dem., Col.). Two of the cosponsors were Republicans, Robert Taft (Ohio) and Homer Ferguson (Mich.). Six of the twelve sat on the Foreign Relations Committee, where the proposal would probably face its most critical Senate test. [ii] [2]
In the House, Will Rogers, Jr. (Dem., Calif.) was the chief proponent of the resolution. Its cosponsor was Joseph c. Baldwin, a liberal Republican from New York City. Both congressmen were members of the Emergency Committee. [3]
Endorsement by many major newspapers across the country helped build public support. The New York Post was emphatically favorable. It kept the resolution in the news spotlight and printed several editorials on it. William Randolph Hearst ran a series of friendly editorials in all his newspapers. The Emergency Committee further publicized the issue through radio broadcasts. Several featured Dean Alfange, the American Labor party leader who had run a strong race for governor of New York in 1942. Alfange, an ardent New Dealer, nonetheless censured Roosevelt for his "tragic inaction" and the State Department for its inertia. He called on Roosevelt and Hull to endorse the Rescue Resolution. Petitions supporting the legislation flowed into Congress, as did individual messages from Alfred E. Smith, Wendell Willkie, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Palestine, and many others. [4]
Action on the Rescue Resolution opened in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where five days of hearings were held. Although press accounts of the first three days emphasized the vigorous endorsements made by Willkie, Alfange, and Fiorello La Guardia, Sol Bloom, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, actually used much of that time to attack the Emergency Committee and Peter Bergson. [iii] Bloom, at one time a Yiddish-speaking vaudeville comedian, took a sharp, no-nonsense stance. On the first day, he tried to intimidate Herbert Moore, a non-Jew who was president of Transradio News Features and an officer of the Emergency Committee. Moore's offense had been the production of a radio script, broadcast two days before, that charged Bloom, along with "large Jewish groups." with maneuvering to undermine the Rescue Resolution. Despite Bloom's repeated demands, Moore refused to retract the accusation. [5]
Bloom also denounced a telegram recently sent by the Emergency Committee to 200 of its members asking for funds "to mobilize public opinion throughout country to force passage resolution." He made a major issue of the word force and seized on the telegram as grounds for several harsh attacks on the group. He even turned most of one day's hearing into an interrogation (under oath) of Peter Bergson concerning the Emergency Committee's activities and Bergson's personal affairs. [6]
Bloom's negative attitude toward the Emergency Committee extended to the Rescue Resolution as well. Although he denied that he opposed the legislation, his behavior proved he was determined to choke it off. Throughout the hearings, he claimed that the Bermuda Conference had dealt thoroughly with the problem arid the United States and the revitalized Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees were already doing all that was possible for the European Jews. [7]
Bloom also implied, by underscoring the coxts involved, that mass rescue was virtually impossible. On the first day of the hearings, he twice talked about the expense of rescuing 100,000 people: "You have to figure at least $2,000 a person, so that would be $200 million." At the following session, he again stressed the cost factor. It was Congressman Andrew Schiffler (Rep., W.Va.), a non-Jew, who remarked, "I do not think money is of primary importance" in these circumstances. A columnist in the New York Yiddish-language Forward wrote in exasperation, "It is truly difficult to understand why it is such a life and death matter for Congressman Bloom to dig up arguments against the resolution." [8]
By the third day of the hearings, pressures had built to the point that Bloom put himself on record in a telegram to New York Post editor Ted Thackrey: "I personally agree that the resolution should pass." Later that day, he told reporters that he was 100 percent in favor of the proposal and predicted that the full House was going to approve it. Yet, two days afterward, Bloom and the State Department collaborated in a maneuver intended to kill the resolution. [9]
On November 26, the fourth day of the hearings, Breckinridge Long testified at a closed meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He insisted on secrecy because, he claimed, the Germans might block projected refugee-aid operations if they found out what he was about to reveal. In a three and one-half hour session, Long convinced the committee that the United States and the Intergovernmental Committee were already doing everything humanly possible to save Jews. He greatly exaggerated the little that had been attempted since Hitler's rise to power, assigned most of the credit for it to the State Department, and, with a verbal magic wand, turned the inert Intergovernmental Committee into an effective mechanism for rescue. [10]
Long's words and his apparent dedication to the refugee cause greatly impressed the congressmen. Karl Mundt (Rep., S. Dak.) termed the testimony "a rather complete rejoinder" to the claims of earlier witnesses that little was being done to rescue Jews. One after another, committee members expressed their gratitude to Long for all the State Department had quietly accomplished. Some asked Long for his opinion on the Rescue Resolution. He indicated that its passage might be construed as a repudiation of the work of the State Department and the Intergovernmental Committee. But he carefully avoided going on record against the measure. When Robert Chiperfield (Rep., Ill.) raised the possibility of the committee's voting against it, Long advised, "I think it would be very dangerous to vote it down, very unwise, in a way." [11]
Several of the congressmen perceived that they were dealing with legislation that had become, in Mundt's words, a "hot poker." They began to look for a way to sidestep the resolution, with its implied criticism of the State Department and the Intergovernmental Committee, and yet avoid antagonizing American Jews. The answer, suggested by James Wadsworth (Rep., N.Y.) and encouraged by Bloom, Mundt, and Luther Johnson (Dem., Tex.), was to obtain authorization to publicize an item Long had brought to the committee's attention -- the still- secret mandate of the supposedly revived Intergovernmental Committee. [12]
This document, which originated at the Bermuda Conference and appeared to confer broad new powers on the ICR, had impressed the congressmen as compelling evidence that all feasible steps were already under way. It thus offered, as Wadsworth pointed out, a basis on which the committee "could rest its case for failure to act affirmatively" on the resolution. Mundt saw the idea as "a perfect answer to the dilemma in which we all find ourselves." Long offered to move immediately to arrange for public release of the secret ICR mandate. Within four days, the British government and the Intergovernmental Committee agreed to its publication. [13]
Long's testimony crippled the Rescue Resolution in the House committee, and Bloom managed to keep it from ever reaching the House floor. But the favorable response from the congressmen, who were generally ignorant about the refugee situation, misled Long and Bloom. They concluded that release of the entire transcript of Long's remarks, rather than the ICR mandate alone, would prove even more effective in quieting Jewish pressures. Vanished was the need for strict secrecy that had supposedly been essential to safeguard the interests of the refugees. On December 10, Long's testimony was made public. Instead of the result envisioned, however, it ignited a burst of criticism. [14]
Long's testimony contained several inaccuracies, the most flagrant of which concerned the numbers of refugees who had reached the United States. Along with other erroneous statistics, Long claimed that "we have taken into this country since the beginning of the Hitler regime and the persecution of the Jews, until today, approximately 580,000 refugees." People familiar with the situation knew that not over 250,000 had come and many of them were not Jews. [15]
It was more difficult to check Long's statements about the Intergovernmental Committee, because secrecy surrounded its activities. But the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, after inquiry at the ICR's London headquarters, revealed that one of Long's key assertions about that organization was wrong. He had declared that under the new mandate ICR officials had "plenary authority to do whatever they can, within and without Germany and the occupied territories." Patrick Malin, the ICR's vice-director, flatly contradicted that claim, pointing out that his committee did not have the power to deal with Germany. [16]
Long had also misrepresented the situation regarding ocean transportation. Discussing the low rate of refugee immigration to the United States, he had explained that "demands for a wider opening cannot be justified for the time being because there just is not any transportation." While the congressmen had believed this statement, in refugee-aid circles it was commonly known that Portuguese and Spanish passenger ships, which plied the Atlantic throughout the war, were sailing to the United States less than one-fourth full. [17]
Like the Foreign Affairs Committee, most of the press assumed that Long's information was accurate. The New York Times reported it at the top of the front page. Headed "580,000 Refugees Admitted To United States in Decade," the story marked the first time that Holocaust- related news received such prominent notice in the Times. Long's misleading statements also opened the way for restrictionists to whip up suspicions that Jewish refugees were flooding the country. The Chicago Tribune, the most influential newspaper in the Midwest, subheaded its report: "'Open Door' Policy Bared; Quotas Disregarded." [18]
The New York Post and a few other newspapers analyzed Long's testimony more carefully and raised serious questions about it. The Post labeled it "false and distorted." The Nation and the New Republic also refuted it. The Nation asserted that Long's "attempt to confuse the issue and mislead the House Foreign Affairs Committee" only proved the need for a special government rescue commission. Shortly afterward, news releases from the American Jewish Conference and the World Jewish Congress, as well as a long letter in the New York Times from the Yiddish Scientific Institute, thoroughly documented Long's inaccuracies. [19]
The President's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees and the American Jewish Committee wrote Long asking for clarification. He replied that he had meant to say that 580,000 visas had been authorized, not that 580,000 refugees had entered the United States. On all other questions, he doggedly insisted that he had been correct or misinterpreted. [iv] [20]
The controversy echoed in the halls of Congress. Samuel Dickstein assailed Long for having created the false impression of action. Emanuel Celler angrily exclaimed that Long "drips with sympathy for the persecuted Jews, but the tears he sheds are crocodile." He called for Long's resignation on the grounds that he was "woefully lacking in knowledge" or else "he did not tell the truth." Either way, Celler asserted, he was not fit to supervise refugee policy. A month later, Celler read into the Congressional Record a full critique of Long's testimony as well as an analysis of the State Department's nearly impenetrable visa-control system. [22]
Long had succeeded with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But the furor over his inaccurate testimony helped end his control of refugee policy. Publicity about his remarks crested in late December, at the same time as the Treasury Department's showdown with him over the Riegner license. These developments played their part in a State Department reshuffling that saw Long relinquish his refugee and visa responsibilities, although he continued as an assistant secretary until he left the department a year later. [23]
While all groups concerned about rescue deprecated Long's misstatements, the Emergency Committee worked almost alone for passage of the Rescue Resolution. Zionist leaders, acting through the American Jewish Conference, even hampered its progress. When they first learned that the Emergency Committee planned to introduce the resolution, they pressed its sponsors in Congress to replace it with one closer to their own specifications. After that failed and the Emergency Committee's proposal was introduced, they maneuvered behind the scenes for addition of an amendment calling for opening Palestine to Jewish refugees. When this attempt foundered, they carried the issue to the hearing room of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. [24]
The fifth and final day of House testimony on the Rescue Resolution came on December 2. Spokesmen for the AFL and the CIO appeared and urged approval of the measure. The main witness that day, however, was Stephen Wise, representing the American Jewish Conference. Wise criticized the legislation as "inadequate" because it proposed no concrete program for rescue. Most important, he emphasized, it failed to call for immediately opening Palestine to Jewish refugees. He advocated amending it to that effect. [v] [25]
Will Rogers, Jr., who was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, doubted "the wisdom of injecting this ancient and acrimonious Palestine question into a resolution specifically involving ... rescue." He pointed out that the Palestine issue had been intentionally omitted from the legislation because it was so controversial. (In fact, leaders of the Emergency Committee, after consultation with their friends in Congress, had purposely excluded all specific plans from the resolution because almost any particular recommendation could alienate some potential supporters. Concrete proposals could come after the battle for a commission was won. Most of all, they wanted to keep issues as politically sensitive as Palestine out of the picture. Moreover, they were certain that the commission, once established, would quickly discover for itself the crucial need for opening Palestine.) [27]
Wise had based his testimony on policy set by Zionist leaders of the American Jewish Conference. This group, which included Wise, Abba Hillel Silver, Nahum Goldmann, Herman Shulman, and Rabbi Irving Miller, had taken soundings in Congress and must have realized that pressing the Palestine issue could not help the Rescue Resolution and might jeopardize it. Whether they actually intended to undermine the legislation is not entirely clear. Minutes of their meetings show that on the eve of the resolution's introduction in Congress they definitely "did not favor" it. Two weeks later, the position had changed slightly: it "does not go far enough" -- it should be broadened to include the opening of Palestine and other concrete proposals. Miller and Shulman, however, believed that the conference should support the legislation with or without the changes. Yet when Wise gave his testimony, it fell far short of endorsement. [28]
The Emergency Committee, parts of the Jewish press, and even one prominent Zionist, Rabbi Meyer Berlin, publicly accused Zionist leaders of intentionally obstructing the Rescue Resolution. They asserted that the Zionists turned to indirect methods, such as bringing in the controversial Palestine question, because they did not dare openly to oppose a measure to rescue Jews. This view took on added cogency in late December when the American Jewish Conference, in a stinging press release, disparaged the Rescue Resolution but stopped short of outright opposition. [29]
Senator Gillette, a dedicated friend of Zionism, candidly discussed the obstruction he encountered from Zionist leaders:
Gillette also disclosed a comment made by one of his colleagues the day the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was to vote on the measure:
Zionist leaders insisted to Gillette and others that they did not oppose the resolution but were convinced it was inadequate because "there could be no concrete and constructive approach to the problem which did not include Palestine." Yet, even if it were granted that they did not work against the Rescue Resolution, the fact would remain that they publicly criticized it very harshly and lent it no support whatever. Why? [31]
The key reason was their extreme animosity toward its sponsor, the Emergency Committee. By October 1943, Zionist hostility toward the Bergson group was already nearing the flash point, and plans were under way for a scathing public attack on the Emergency Committee. Then Zionist leaders learned that the Emergency Committee intended to introduce rescue legislation. This placed them in a dilemma. They could not openly and directly oppose a step for rescue. But it was impossible to assist, or even to refrain from interfering with, the project of a group they viewed as virtually an enemy. They recognized that success for the resolution would bring prestige, additional popular support, and more strength to the Bergsonite faction. If they could have replaced or amended the Rescue Resolution, and thus claimed it as their own, they would probably have supported it. But their attempts in that direction failed. [32]
As December passed, it became clear that neither Long's testimony, Bloom's maneuvers, nor Zionist criticisms had stopped the Rescue Resolution. Instead, it picked up additional backing in the Jewish press. And one of the seven Jews in Congress finally endorsed it. Emanuel Celler wrote to the House committee, "I am in favor of this Resolution. . . . While [it] is limited in scope, it is nevertheless a step in the right direction." In a Christmas message, eight prominent religious leaders called for rapid adoption of the proposal. And over the weeks, the Emergency Committee kept pressing the issue in large newspaper advertisements carrying such titles as "HOW WELL ARE YOU SLEEPING?" "TIME RACES DEATH -- WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?" "ONE VICTORY FOR HITLER?" and, in Yiddish, "FROM THE NAZI VALLEY OF DEATH OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS CALL WITH THEIR LAST STRENGTH: AMERICAN JEWS, WHY DON'T YOU SAVE US?" [33]
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee saw no need for hearings, but waited to act on the resolution until shortly before Christmas. The delay stemmed from reservations held by committee chairman Tom Connally (Dem., Tex.). When Connally was absent from a meeting, Gillette and Thomas brought the issue up, and committee members approved it unanimously. Their report to the Senate penetrated to the heart of the issue:
The resolution was scheduled to come before the full Senate in January, shortly after Congress returned from the holiday recess. The New York Post predicted "practically no Senate opposition." Gillette forecast passage "without a dissenting vote." Thus, as 1944 closed, pressures were mounting on the White House. The Senate was poised to act on the resolution. And, although Sol Bloom had bottled it up in his committee, it could break onto the House floor at any time. [35]
Bloom's obstruction had drawn angry reactions from some constituents and the threat of a campaign to block his reelection. A bitter editorial that appeared in Anglo-Jewish newspapers assailed him as a tool of the State Department, both at the Bermuda Conference and in his recent collusion with Long. It left its sharpest thrust for last: "We would not be happy in your place, Mr. Bloom.... We would feel blood, Jewish blood on our hands." In mid-January, Celler tried to persuade Bloom to act on the resolution. He also asked him to publish the testimony given at the hearings. Bloom met neither request. [vi] [36]
Sol Bloom, despite his influential position in Congress, attempted next to nothing for the Jews of Europe. True, he arranged for several individual Jewish refugees to enter the United States. And he assisted the Orthodox rescue agency, Vaad Habatzala, in some small ways. But when possibilities for major action arose, he consistently allied himself with the State Department. He seemed most of all concerned to use his post as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee to win the esteem of the State Department elite. Three decades later, Celler concluded that "Sol Bloom did a great deal of harm because of his attitude. He was a mere sycophant of the State Department." [37]
In the case of the Rescue Resolution, Bloom's actions probably were also motivated by loyalty to the Roosevelt administration. If the resolution had reached the floor of the House, it could have touched off an embarrassing debate on the administration's record concerning the European Jews. In addition, Bloom's own prestige was at stake. For him to acknowledge the need for a new· rescue commission would amount to repudiation of his role at Bermuda and his long-standing claim that the Bermuda Conference had exhausted all practical avenues of relief. [38]
Late in December, while the Rescue Resolution hung in the balance, the American Jewish Conference released to the press its long-planned attack on the Bergsonites. The widely distributed statement castigated the Emergency Committee as a sensationalist faction whose activities accomplished nothing of value and only interfered with the work of responsible organizations. A case in point, the press release declared, was the Rescue Resolution, which had been introduced "in complete disregard" of the rescue programs that the authorized Jewish groups were pressing in Washington. [39]
This assault may have slowed the momentum of the Rescue Resolution. But it came too late to blunt its impact, for pressures in Congress were far advanced by then. Treasury Department officials, along with Oscar Cox of the Foreign Economic Administration, were keeping a close eye on the situation. They noted that Bloom was having "to do everything he can possibly do" to prevent his committee from reporting the resolution to the House floor. They were convinced that if it came before either house it would pass or, at the very least, precipitate a debate in which the State Department's record and Long's testimony would "be ripped open." [40]
Although intensely committed to the idea of a rescue commission, Cox and the group around Morgenthau worried that Roosevelt might be hurt by a congressional airing of the question. They were also anxious for the President to move before Congress approved the resolution and forced his hand. Otherwise, sponsors of the legislation who were not on his side -- such men as Taft, Gillette, Van Nuys, and Ferguson -- could claim credit for the rescue agency. [41]
The obvious solution was for Morgenthau to go to Roosevelt and press him to, create the commission: Their strongest leverage on the President, as Morgenthau himself pointed out during a staff conference, was "the imminence of Congress doing something." Acknowledging the key importance of the Rescue Resolution, Morgenthau added:
On January 15, two days after his staff handed him its comprehensive "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews," Morgenthau decided to see the President. [vii] The following day, a Sunday, he, Pehle, and Paul met with Roosevelt for twenty minutes in the early afternoon. They brought a shortened version of the "Report to the Secretary." They also had a proposed executive order, provided by Cox, that would establish a rescue commission headed by Morgenthau, Hull, and Leo Crowley, director of the Foreign Economic Administration. [43]
The President did not read the memorandum but listened attentively to an oral summary of the facts. He glanced at the executive order, suggested that Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson replace Crowley, and consented to the plan. [45]
Roosevelt's quick agreement indicates that he had already appraised the pressures in Congress and recognized that he could no. longer sidestep the rescue issue. The recent negative publicity over Long's misleading testimony may also have influenced his decision. Morgenthau's disclosures concerning the scandal in the State Department furnished the last push. [viii]
At that, the President acted at the final moment. The Rescue Resolution was scheduled to go before the Senate on January 24. All signs, including a mid-January poll of both houses, pointed to ready passage. On January 22, Roosevelt issued the executive order establishing the War Refugee Board. Gillette then removed the resolution from the Senate calendar, explaining that "the president's action attained the goal we were seeking." Roosevelt, in the opinion of experienced Washington news correspondents and lobbyists, had seized the initiative and "forestalled certain action in Congress." The American government stood at last on the threshold of a genuine commitment to rescue. [47]
The War Refugee Board resulted from the convergence of two sets of developments. One revolved around the Treasury Department's persistent steps for action once it was drawn into the rescue issue; The other was the long campaign for a rescue agency waged by the Emergency Committee and, earlier, by the Committee for a Jewish Army. Several other groups, mostly Jewish, contributed vitally over the months by publicizing the extermination news and creating a limited, but crucially important, amount of public concern and political support for rescue. In the forefront were the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress, and the Joint Emergency Committee on European Jewish Affairs. Others included the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, Agudath Israel, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the American Jewish Committee.
Contrary to views expressed by many journalists and political leaders, spokesmen for the American Jewish Conference denied that the Emergency Committee or the Rescue Resolution had any connection with the President's action. Rather, they claimed, their organization's efforts had brought the War Refugee Board into existence. Actually, American Jewish Conference leaders had backed a behind-the-scenes plan for a rescue commission that was to operate under the thumb of the State Department. State Department officials and Congressman Bloom had devised it in a last attempt to undermine the Rescue Resolution. [48]
The Rescue Resolution's central role in the establishment of the War Refugee Board emerges clearly from the records of private discussions among the men most closely involved. John Pehle, who became the WRB's executive director, consistently maintained that the resolution had led to the formation of the board. This view was shared by his colleagues in the Treasury's Foreign Funds Control unit. And Morgenthau agreed completely, as shown by comments he made at meetings with his staff in March 1944:
Why did it take fourteen months from the time Stephen Wise announced the news of extermination, in November 1942, until an American commitment to rescue was won? Three interrelated explanations stand out. First, State Department officials did what they could to choke off the growth of public pressure for rescue, This was seen, for instance, in their attempts' to suppress extermination information and in their cunning use of the Bermuda Conference and the Intergovernmental Committee. Second, the indifference of most Christian leaders, secular and religious, along with the inadequate media coverage of Holocaust news, greatly weakened all steps to enlist American popular support. Finally, American Jewry, by failing to forge a united and sustained movement for rescue, substantially diminished the influence it might have exerted on the general public, Congress, and the Roosevelt administration.
***
During the last months of the struggle for an American rescue initiative, Allied military forces were advancing, slowly but steadily, on all fronts, In November 1943, the, Russians took Kiev, As the new year opened, they crossed the pre-war frontier into Poland. In March, they would break into Rumania.
In Italy, winter rains and harsh terrain retarded the Allied drive north. But in January the main offensive reopened, though determined German resistance delayed the capture of Rome until early June. Two developments with important ramifications for the European Jews emerged from the Italian campaign before 1943 ended. Seizure of the Foggia airfields, which exposed central European and Balkan targets to Allied heavy bombers, brought the Auschwitz gas chambers and railways leading to them within striking range. And small boats began ferrying thousands of Yugoslav refugees across the Adriatic to Allied-occupied Italy, opening an escape route that could conceivably be extended to reach the Jews in east central and eastern Europe.
From England, great fleets of American and British bombers were pounding Hitler's strongholds. Meanwhile, preparations went forward for the long-expected cross-channel attack. Pre-invasion air strikes on France commenced as early as January.
In the Pacific theater, the slow march toward Japan continued. Late in 1943, American forces subdued the Solomon Islands stronghold of Bougainville. In the Central Pacific, marine and army units seized vital points in the Gilbert Islands and prepared for a January invasion of Kwajalein, the key to the Marshall Islands.
The War Refugee Board was born, then, at a time when the Allies had unmistakably established predominance and the Axis satellites and bordering neutral nations recognized that Allied victory was certain. The favorable military situation brightened the prospects of the new rescue drive. It might even help offset, to a small degree, the many precious months that had been lost.
(For additional information on the conflict between the regular Zionists and the Bergsonites, see appendix B.)
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[b]Notes:[/b]
[i] The resolution, introduced on November 9, 1943, declared that Congress "recommends and urges the creation by the President of a commission of diplomatic, economic, and military experts to formulate and effectuate a plan of immediate action designed to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany." [1]
[ii] Other Senate cosponsors, all Democrats, were: Bennett Champ Clark (Mo.), Sheridan Downey (Calif.), Allen Ellender (La.), Joseph Guffey (Pa.), James Murray (Mont.), George Radcliffe (Md.), and Frederick Van Nuys (Ind.). Clark, Gillette, Guffey, Murray, Thomas, and Van Nuys were members of the Foreign Relations Committee.
[iii] Bloom's motivation was undoubtedly related to his long-standing animosity toward the Bergson group for its widely publicized characterization of the Bermuda Conference as a "mockery." Bloom had been a delegate at Bermuda and had publicly endorsed its actions.
[iv] Long neglected to mention that the figure of 580,000 included all visas, permanent and temporary, whether actually used or not, for people from all countries that eventually fell under German control, for all the years since Hitler came to power. [21]
[v] Wise twice stated that the American Jewish Conference favored the resolution. But each time he immediately hedged the endorsement. The whole thrust of his testimony was opposition to the legislation unless the Palestine issue were added to it. [26]
[vi] Bloom had already released Long's remarks. He suppressed the rest of the testimony. It did not become available until 1976.
[vii] There is some evidence that Morgenthau finally agreed to press Roosevelt because Josiah DuBois threatened that if he did not do so he, DuBois, would resign from the Treasury, call a press conference in Washington, and rip the lid off the entire State Department refugee scandal. [44]
[viii] Sensitivity to the Jewish vote might also have been a factor. Syndicated columnist Edgar Ansel Mowrer thought the reason for the President's sudden interest in rescue was obvious. "That's right," Mowrer reminded readers, "1944 is an election year and even Jews have votes." Ben Cohen had earlier hinted that the question of the Jewish vote would carry weight with Roosevelt on this issue. But solid evidence is lacking. It seems most unlikely that American Jews would have turned against Roosevelt in any case. [46]
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