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Kristallnacht without Jews

(Jerusalem Post) Dr. Rafael Medoff - Imagine if the president had responded to ISIS atrocities against the Yazidis by issuing a condemnation which did not mention either ISIS or the Yazidis. That's essentially what former President Franklin D. Roosevelt did in response to Kristallnacht, the nationwide anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany. On the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, Nazi mobs torched hundreds of synagogues, smashed the windows of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes, and murdered nearly 100 Jews. Another 30,000 were dragged off to concentration camps. At his press conference on Nov. 11, Roosevelt was asked if he had anything to say about the violence. "No, I think not," he replied. In the face of widespread public revulsion against the German horrors, the president's aides decided a statement might be prudent. In the statement he made on Nov. 15, Roosevelt did not use the words "pogrom" or "violence," or make any reference to Adolf Hitler, the German government, or their Jewish victims. Roosevelt gave 348 press conferences between 1933 and the autumn of 1938. He never once brought up Hitler's oppression of the Jews. Drawing attention to the Jews' plight would have increased the pressure on the Roosevelt administration to accept more refugees - something FDR strongly opposed. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes was invited to participate in a post-Kristallnacht broadcast on CBS Radio. As was customary, he submitted the draft of his speech to the White House. Ickes wrote in his diary, "the President wanted us to cut out all references to Germany by name as well as references to Hitler, Goebbels, and others by name." The writer is founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of The Jews Should Keep Quiet.
2019-11-08 00:00:00
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