Part XI

In an effort to unite American Jewry, the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee announced in December 1939 that a “rescue rally” would be held at Madison Square Garden in New York on December 13. Co-sponsoring the event was the Independent Order of B’rith Abraham, the Jewish men’s fraternal order, the Independent Order of B’rith Sholom, the Zionist Organization of America, Young Israel and the Federation of Polish Jews of America. An impressive number of representatives and organizations of all faiths and prominent leaders of American public opinion also actively participated in this demonstration.

According to the “Congress Bulletin”, the sponsors expected the rally would reflect America’s outrage at the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Germany, which were “unrivalled even by the Dark Ages,” and would lead to “practical help” to save these victims.

Only a united protest could affect a change in Nazi conduct, the “Congress Bulletin” opined. “The reaction of indignation after the November pogrom (Kristallnacht, November 9 –10, 1938) carries a promise that even now the voice of America will not be ignored by Wilhelmstrasse (center of the Nazi government).”

In spite of the “pretended indifference to the outside world, the Nazis recently displayed more than casual interest in what the U.S. Congress planned to do with the embargo. The public opinion still carries weight.”

The U.S. and Germany

In “Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939-1941”, historian Saul Friedlander wrote that since 1933, racial persecution had been one of the primary reasons for tension between the U.S. and the Third Reich. Americans were repulsed by the “idea and practice of racial persecution as a basic form of fascism,” which they viewed as a “violation of primary moral laws.”

The Nazis did not heed American remonstrations and warnings about the racial laws and other injustices designed to remove Jews from all areas of German life and forced them to leave Germany. After Kristallnacht, during which dozens of Jews were murdered and Jewish stores and synagogues were burned, the Jews were compelled to pay a collective fine of nearly a billion marks, and the U.S. recalled Hugh R. Wilson, its ambassador to Germany.

On November 15, 1938, “The New York Times” reported that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, “I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century civilization.” The extremely severe reaction by the American public expressed by leading Catholic and Protestant leaders produced concern in Berlin about the possibility of Washington imposing additional economic sanctions.

Friedlander wrote that Hitler wanted to prevent any enmity between the U.S. and Germany, lest the U.S. provide a justification to enter the war in Europe on the side of the Allies. The German Ministry of Propaganda continually warned Nazi polemicists to refrain from attacking Roosevelt, their favorite target. A September 18, 1939, Ministry directive stated: “You are expressly instructed to treat all questions concerning the United States with even more caution than hitherto….Even statements made by Mrs. Roosevelt are not to be mentioned.”

The German Ministry of Propaganda also prohibited the publication of information about the policies and efforts of Roosevelt’s enemies. Aside from not wanting to upset the president, the Nazis feared that publicizing and reprinting articles by isolationists and U.S. “senators favorable to Germany,” would “provide the warmongers with ready-made arguments with which to attack those people.” The vitriolic response to Kristallnacht convinced the Germans that Roosevelt was entirely under the influence of the Jews.

Result of the Rally

The rally did not produce any practical solutions to rescue the Jews of Eastern Europe. Yet, the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee interpreted the more than 30,000 people who attended the protest, and the over 8,000 who could not enter Madison Square Garden for lack of space, as an expression of profound concern. This outpouring was “an indication of the great mass power that can be mobilized for coming action.”

The American Jewish Congress viewed the presence of non-Jewish leaders as the most significant cause for optimism. The support of former President Herbert Hoover; William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor; the Honorable Alfred M. Landon, the former Governor of Kansas and the Republican Party’s nominee in the 1936 presidential election; New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Dorothy Thompson, a journalist, radio broadcaster and in 1939 “Time” magazine recognized her as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt; Samuel McCrea Cavert, Secretary of the Federation of the Council of the Churches of Christ. Dr. Charles H. MacFarland of the American Committee on Religious Rights and Minorities indicated “that neither the war in general nor such appealing chapters in it as the glorious defense of Finland overshadow the Jewish tragedy in American public opinion.”

Without American public opinion, American Jews recognized they “will accomplish very little in the way of defending the Jews abroad.” With this in mind, Jacob Fishman, editor of the “Jewish Morning Journal”, criticized the American press for its inadequate reporting of the devastation of European Jews, and for failing to acknowledge their being singled out had nothing to do with the war.

Most of the speeches of indignation at the rally were directed at the Nazis. In the December 15, 1939, edition of the “Congress Bulletin”, Hayim Greenberg, head of Poalei Zion and co-editor of the American Zionist journal “Jewish Frontier” and Joseph Baskin, General Secretary of the Workman’s Circle, asked whether the protest had been properly channeled. He argued the condemnation should have been directed against the “progressive and honorable sections of the world, who had suppressed their sense of duty to actively resist the murderers and to rescue the victims.”

“Hitler would not have embarked on his policy of extermination against the Jewish people to the extent he had,” Greenberg asserted, “if he had known from the beginning that he would meet with the active resistance of many peoples, with political and economic sanctions, if he had not known that even the best government of the majority of democratic countries could content themselves with expressing sympathy for the persecuted Jews and at best, with doing him the favor of admitting to other countries a small number of his persecuted Jewish subjects.”

Baskin claimed that from the beginning, the democracies should have openly declared that they would hold Germany responsible “for the lives and safety and for the elementary human rights” of the Jewish people. The Nazis should have been warned that if these rights were not upheld, then effective means would be found to change this policy. In place of such a declaration, the democracies were “content with an occasional sigh.”

Much of the responsibility for the atrocities rest with those who remained silent, Baskin claimed. He called upon the millions of Christians who preach brotherly love “to give vent to their indignation,” and warned that “the blood of the millions of Jews will know no retreat until all mankind will find some way of ending this barbarism.”

Was This Approach the Most Effective Way to Affect Change?

In “Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945”,McDonald, chairman of Roosevelt’s advisory committee on refugees from May 1938 until nearly the end of the war, had a different perspective about the efficacy of the methods employed by the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee.

“Nothing counts these days except money with which to carry on your work of relief, of emigration, and of service to your fellow Jews,” McDonald claimed in 1938. “Mass meetings, parades, demonstrations, resolutions, getting nice letters from friendly Christians, are all very well, but they don’t actually save a single Jewish life, feed a starving Jewish boy or girl, train a single Jewish youth, pay for his emigration or enable him to start life anew anywhere else.”

By Alex Grobman, Ph.D.