• From the film, GENOCIDE: "Raoul Wallenberg"
• The Righteous Who Helped Jews Sybil Milton
• The Holocaust: Failure in Christian Leadership? John T. Pawlikowski
• The Importance of Wartime Priorities in the Failure to Rescue Jews Henry L. Feingold
• Could American Jews Have Done More? Henry L. Feingold

Raoul Wallenberg

It all seemed futile. Nobody cared about us. We were the world's extra baggage. We had given up hope until one day we heard this fantastic story about a prominent Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, who had come to Hungary on a mission to save the Jews. Soon this man became our Moses. Every day, at great personal risk, he delivered people from the hands of the Nazis. He talked to us, and showed that there was one human being who cared-one angel in this hell. "I came to save a nation," he said. He would print hi's own Swedish passports, and then run off to the train depots-the trains that were leaving for Auschwitz-and he would reach out to the desperate group of outstretched hands, giving them their tickets to life. He saved thousands of people-one man!-and then, after the liberation of Budapest, the Russians kidnapped him. This is the irony of it all: This noble being who did so much for others may be roth . ng there somewhere-all alone.

The Righteous Who Helped Jews
SYBIL MILTON

It is generally assumed that an individual was powerless against the Nazis. It is true that there were genuine limitations to what could be done to thwart the Nazi aim of mass murder. Nevertheless, many ordinary men and women in every country of occupied Europe showed great courage and compassion in helping the Jewish victims of Nazi terror. For the most part, these individuals did not plan to become heroes; the names of the rescuers are largely unrecorded and their good deeds remain anonymous and unrewarded, except in the emotions of those they saved. They helped by providing hiding places, false papers, food, clothing, money, contact with the outside world, underground escape routes, and sometimes even weapons. Their decency exposed them to the dangers of discovery and denunciation. If caught, they faced torture, deportation to concentration camps, or execution. Their behavior was atypical even in their own communities, where the attitude of the majority was characterized by inertia, indifference, and open complicity in the persecution and mass murder of Europe's Jews.

It is impossible to analyze the multiple reasons for individual heroism and ethical behavior under Nazi occupation. Explanations for heroism and creativity rest in the individual psyche and character; however, it is clear that compassion and simple decency played as large a role as bravery. Impartial and reliable information about the number of rescuers and the number of Jews aided or saved is not available. Very rough statistics indicate that about 2,000 non-Jews participated in the rescue of Jews and that they saved between 20,000 and 60,000 children and adults. There is no postwar institution specializing in either World War 11 or the Holocaust that has collected systematic data about the righteous or about Christian Jewish relations during the war years. Postwar historiography has given scant attention to this subject, except for biographies of heroes like Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest. Individual episodes are recorded in numerous published memoirs or hidden within the histories of the Jewish communities under German occupation. Others are found in some survivor testimonies, oral histories, and depositions.1

The rescuers can be broadly divided into two categories: 1) individuals acting autonomously in haphazard isolation, and 2) individuals acting as part of organized groups-for example, Christian clergy, Socialists, and Communists, among others. Both groups of rescuers faced certain common problems. They were dependent on the general political and military situation. Helping Jews was thus more successful as liberation approached than in the early days of the war. Later in the war, the time required in hiding was shorter, support from local resistance movements was better organized, and the degree of popular hostility to rescue was muted by imminent military defeat.

The geographical patterns of local hostility to Jews influenced receptivity to their rescue. Thus, western Europe (France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), Scandinavia (Denmark and Finland), and southern Europe (Italy and Greece) adapted rapidly to the problems of hiding and rescuing Jews, whereas eastern and central Europe (Poland, the Ukraine, and Austria) remained a more hostile environment to rescue efforts. As the war continued, the rescuers learned to adapt and work around the Nazi network of informers and collaborators. However, they were never able to develop effective strategies to combat the Nazis' rapid organization of mass deportations and population transfers. As the war progressed, rescuers were able to identify sympathetic local groups, individuals, and organizations in every country of occupied Europe: for example, low-level clergymen, Socialists, Communists, and nationalist antiNazis. At all times, however, the success of Jewish rescue depended upon fate and chance.

Individuals faced greater pressures than did groups. Many Christian professionals (writers, artists, doctors) saved their Jewish colleagues; Christian employees aided Jewish employers; Jewish employees were helped by Christian bosses; and Gentile wives helped save their Jewish husbands and children. Despite the overwhelming odds, individual rescue sometimes succeeded, especially if the Jewish fugitives could pass as natives in language, manner, and appearance; if the hideout was skillfully camouflaged; if the local population was sympathetic; if geography and distance from neighboring homes aided concealment; and if organized groups or sympathetic friends provided additional safe houses and forged ration papers for essentials like food and clothing. Notwithstanding the mortal risks, many individuals became "their brothers' keepers," were able to overcome their realistic fears, and forged an ethical and practical identification with the persecuted.2

Despite the Vatican failure to act, many priests, nuns, and laymen hid Jews in monasteries, convents, schools, and hospitals and protected them with false baptismal certificates. However, as Saul Friedlander's memoirs show,3 many Catholic priests proselytized and converted their "guests." Moreover, after the war, many Jewish children were never returned to Jewish families, even after lengthy court battles. Nevertheless, some clergymen went to great lengths to protect the Jewish education and observances of their wards. Catholic, Protestant, Quaker, and Unitarian relief organizations cooperated with the Catholic church in France to rescue 12,000 Jewish children; they arranged safe houses and smuggled small numbers into Switzerland and Spain.

In Lvov, the Metropolitan Andreas Sheptitsky defended the Jews against the Nazis, and he and his Ukrainian compatriots hid about 150 Jews in monasteries in eastern Galicia. Furthermore, the French Huguenot Pastor Andre Trocme converted the small French Protestant village of Le Chambon into a mountain hideout for 1,000 Jewish persecutees. Le Chambon was as unique as the mass rescue of Danish Jews, because the entire town supported the rescue and accepted arrest and torture rather than betray the Jews they hid. The tradition of French Catholic persecution of the Huguenot minority led to absolute identification with the Jewish fugitives, and unambiguous anti- Nazi behavior was identified with moral survival and ethical integrity in the town. The Confessing Church in Germany also provided temporary asylum for Jews, becoming, in effect, stations on an underground railway leading to the safety of neutral Switzerland.

Lay Catholics, such as the German Dr. Gertrude Luckner, who headed the Caritas Catholics, also extended help to Jews and nonAryan Christians in Germany. She was deported to Ravensbruck for her aid to the persecuted. After the war, Dr. Luckner was honored for her courage by the Israeli government. It must be noted that much of this Christian help was actually rendered to fellow Christians (converted Jews), who were classified as Jews due to their descent under Nazi racial laws.

In addition to active help, many clergymen also protested the mistreatment and deportations of Jews as violations of divine and human laws. The Catholic pastor of St. Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin, Bernard Lichtenburg, prayed publicly for the Jews until his arrest and death on the way to Dachau. The rescue work of priests of all Christian denominations is well-documented in postwar literature.4

Spectacular rescues by mass resistance also occurred, as for example, the rescue of 7,000 Danish Jews in October, 1943. The combination of a mass resistance, the proximity of receptive neutral Sweden, advance warnings of Nazi deportations, and identification with the persecutees by a whole nation made this episode almost unique. Similar smaller rescue operations occurred in Greece, where Jews were hidden in the mountains or on islands. Later, Greek Jews were smuggled into Turkey. Similar popular aid to the Jews was rendered in Finland and in Holland, there was a protest strike in February, 1941, against the deportation of Dutch Jews. The Italian army also helped Jews in their occupation zones in France and Yugoslavia, and they played an important role in rescuing Italian Jews before the Germans occupied Italy in September, 1943.

Even policemen aided the persecuted against their Nazi oppressors. Dr. Giovanni Palatucci, the chief of police in Fiume, was deported to Dachau and killed there for having helped Jews. He was posthumously honored, when the town of Ramat Gan dedicated a street in his name in 1953. The Roman police officer Mario di Marco was arrested and beaten by the Gestapo for helping the Jews of Rome. Sympathetic policemen in Greece issued false identity papers for almost 6,000 Jews, helping them escape the Nazi deportation dragnet.

Resistance movements also helped Jews. Sometimes, this aid was intended to help the Jews; often it was rendered in the context of the general anti-Nazi resistance. In Yugoslavia, Serbian partisans attacked a concentration camp near Nish in 1941, freeing a small number of Jews. On April 19, 1943, the Committee for Jewish Defense, aided by Christian railroad workers, attacked a Belgian transport leaving Malines for Auschwitz. Several hundred Jewish deportees escaped with the help of the Belgian resistance. A unique example of anti-Nazi resistance occurred in the Bialystok ghetto, where several anti-Nazi German and Austrian soldiers were sentenced to death for smuggling weapons and wireless sets to the Jewish resistance. One of these men, Otto Busse, survived and settled in the Kibbutz Nes Amin in 1969, devoting his life to Israel as a concrete example of "Christian atonement."5

Many Jews were saved by hiding and also by illegal frontier crossings. Anne Frank's family hid in the concealed annex of an Amsterdam office building with the help of a Christian friend, and the family of Emmanuel Ringelblum (the Warsaw ghetto historian) hid in Warsaw in a specially prepared underground bunker camouflaged by a Polish gardener's greenhouse. Both the Franks and the Ringelblums were caught and perished. About 20,000 Polish Jews, however, did survive hidden in Aryan Warsaw. Likewise, 5,000 Dutch Jews and several thousand German Jews were hidden in the heart of the Nazi Empire, in Berlin and Hamburg. Gentiles, like the teacher Joop Westerweel, smuggled about 100 Jewish children (Palestine Pioneers) across the Dutch border through the French Pyrenees to safety in Spain. He worked alongside Yehoyahim Simon ("Shushu") in the Zionist Halutzim (pioneer) movement. Both Shushu and Westerweel were eventually caught by the Germans and executed. Spontaneous gestures by supportive Christian neighbors and friends led to aid for Jews in hiding and on the run. Although the Jewish underground railway to Palestine continued with difficulty throughout World War II, some Jews did escape the European arena and made it to safety in Palestine, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland, and Spain.

Although Yad Vashem (Israel's Memorial to the Six Million) has honored over 1,200 "righteous of the nations" since 1953, it is impossible to generalize about the motives, deeds, and actual numbers of these rescuers. Some rescuers acted within the planned context of guerrilla units and resistance movements; others used the buildings and funds of the Roman Catholic church to aid Jews. The rescuers were able to use the national humiliation caused by the German occupation to build limited popular support and help the Jews. They were few in number but ethically and morally strong. Although the number of Jews they saved was small, they provide a beacon of victory for posterity, a victory over the capitulation and collaboration of the majority of their compatriots.

Notes

1. Philip Friedman, "Righteous Gentiles in the Nazi Era," in Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, by Philip Friedman, (New York and Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society and Conference on Jewish Social Studies, 1980), pp. 409-421.

2. Philip Friedman, Their Brothers' Keepers (New York: Holocaust Library, 1978); Arieh Baurninger, The Roll of Honour (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1970).

3. Saul Friedlander, When Memory Comes, trans. Helen Lane (New York: Avon Books, 1980).

4. Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980); Philip Friedman, "Was There an Other Germany During the Nazi Period?" in Roads to Extinction, pp. 422-464.

5. Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe (New York and London: Barnes and Noble, 1974), pp. 898-899.

For Further Reading

Ainsztein, Reuben. Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe. New York, London: Barnes and Noble, 1974.

Baurninger, Arieh. The Roll of Honour. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1970.

Bejski, Moshe. "The Righteous Among the Nations and Their Part in the Rescue of the Jews." Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, eds. Yisrael Gutman and Efrairn Zuroff. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977.

Bertelsen, Sage, October 43. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1973.

Bierman, John. Righteous Gentile. New York: Viking Press, 1981.

Chary, Frederick B. The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972.

Friedlander, Saul. When Memory Comes. Translated from the French by Helen Lane. New York: Avon Books, 1980.

Friedman, Philip. Their Brothers' Keepers. New York: Holocaust Library, 1978.

Gross, Leonard. The Last Jews in Berlin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.

Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980.

Hellman, Peter. Avenue of the Righteous. New York: Atheneum, 1980.

Keneally, Thomas. Schindler's List. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.

Leuner, H.D. When Compassion Was a Crime: Germany's Silent Heroes, 1938-1945. London: Oswald Wolff, 1966.

Yahil, Leni. The Rescue of Danish Jewry. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1969.

The Holocaust: Failure in Christian Leadership?
JOHN T. PAWLIKOWSKI

Since the end of the Nazi era, there have been continual reassessments of the roles played by Christian leaders during that tragic period. The actions of Pope Plus XII have been scrutinized in a special way. Generally speaking, Jewish scholars have tended to place considerable responsibility on many of the heads of the Christian communities inside and outside of Germany for the success of the Nazi effort. This has elicited rather uncritical defensive responses from postwar church representatives, but has also led an increasing number of church historians and theologians to probe the issue more deeply. An annual series of scholarly conferences, involving both Christians and Jews, has developed around the theme, "The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust."

By and large, the Christian scholars who have seriously studied the churches' stance during the Holocaust wind up with a reasonably critical evaluation of their Christian witnesses. They, of course, acknowledge the heroic efforts of righteous Gentiles, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer But, while these figures remain sources of Christian hope today, their miniscule number only serves to dramatize the general indifference to, and even cooperation with, the Nazi destruction of the Jewish people. Father Edward Flannery and Professor Franklin Littell are two such critical Christian voices. While recognizing the complexity of any investigation of the root causes of the Holocaust, Flannery clearly affirms that:

. . . in the final analysis, some degree of the charge [against the church] must be validated. Great or small, the apathy or silence was excessive. The fact remains that in the twentieth century of Christian civilization, a genocide of six million innocent people was perpetrated in countries with many centuries of Christian tradition and by hands that were in many cases Christian. This fact in itself stands, however vaguely, as an indictment of the Christian conscience. The absence of reaction by those most directly implicated in the genocide only aggravates this broader indictment.1

Professor Littell speaks in similar terms about the general state of the churches and their leadership in Germany. "It is quite wrong," he says,

... to assume that tire Church Struggle was a battle to defend Christian Germany against the false teaching of neobarbarians. . . . The tragedy is the wholesale apostasy of the baptized-their eagerness, in the name of "saving the world from atheistic communism" and "reestablishing law and order" to countenance the most brutal and anti- Christian of political measures to reconstitute a lost age of religious monism.2

None of the new generation of church historians dealing with the Holocaust in any way desires to whitewash the actions of Christian leaders. But a general consensus has also emerged that no simplistic blanket indictment of the churches will stand the test of historical evidence. Hence, we have slowly moved to a more balanced approach In the discussion of the Church Struggle from the situation several years ago, when unqualified accusations and equally uncritical defenses tended to predominate. There is also an additional caution that is now sounded by most Christian interpreters: Substantial archival materials still remain to be examined. Until many of these relevant church archives are made available by the churches themselves, the assessments of direct and indirect collaboration with the Nazi effort must remain open to future judgment. Furthermore, differences have emerged among those Christian scholars who have taken the Littell/Flannery challenge to heart. In part, these differences of opinion lie in disagreements as to how effective the churches could have been, even if their leaders had taken a much more outwardly hostile stance towards nazism.

One perspective that has gained acceptance from most church historians involved with this subject is that the Church Struggle in Germany cannot be evaluated without some understanding of the prior half- century of that nation's history and the churches' reaction to it. This is true with respect to both the Protestant and Catholic communities, even though their social roles were somewhat different. The churches, more than any other major component of German society, had become conscious that their continuing social role could no longer be upheld by mere appeals to tradition. It was commonly believed by many Christian leaders that the loss of faith following the debacle of World War I could be counteracted only by a vigorous and vibrant engagement with the social order. The Weimar Republic, despite its constitution, which granted the churches greater self-rule in their internal affairs, was viewed more as a foe than as a friend. There was the need to preserve Christian society in a social setting where the state apparatus was indifferent or even hostile to religion. This was certainly the feeling which prevailed within the principal Protestant community, the Evangelical church of Germany. As the church historian John S. Conway has noted:

. . . the emphasis on the need for unity, continuity, and nationalistically conditioned conservatism was inimical to the idea of the growth of alternatives. Indeed, strong opposition was raised against the idea of pluralism in society, which was presumed to lead to a false sense of freedom and to encourage immorality. Like other prominent figures in society, the ecclesiastics were wholly convinced of the danger of Bolshevism, which threatened both the institutional and spiritual heritage of German Christianity. Consequently the appeal of a political movement which combined nationalistic devotion to das Volk, a popular relevant social activism, and a strong aversion to Bolshevism achieved rapid growth among wide sections of the Evangelical churches.3

... fearful of the threat from the left they welcomed the Nazis as a strong force which might be able to end economic and social chaos. As Niemoller stated after the Ruhr crisis, "we lacked leaders, we lacked a real goal, and above all, we lacked the inward and moral urge to national action."4

Like their Protestant counterparts, the Catholic leaders had no sympathy for a pluralistic society. They looked with favor on a movement that promised national renewal and restoration, and readily indulged in the wishful thinking that the more radical and revolutionary elements of the Nazi creed would be jettisoned once the accession to power brought with it an acceptance of responsibility.5

From the Protestant side, the basis for opposition to nazism was developed in the 1934 Barmen Theological Declaration approved at the first synod of the United Evangelical church (or Confessing Church) in Germany. Its aim was to counteract the errors of the so called "German Christians" (those Christians who positively identified themselves with the Nazi programs on religious grounds) and the Reich church government. There have been varying analyses of the effectiveness of the Barmen Declaration.7 They have been conditioned by various expectations of what opposition was possible by the churches and by evaluations of the churches' protest based on Barmen in isolation or together with other social groups. Frederick Bonkovsky's assessment of the opposition it engendered within the Confessing Church is rather positive. He feels that the indigenous Confessing Church (far more so than the "foreign" Roman Catholic church) was the only effective opposition group in any sector of German society during the height of the Nazi period. That I t could not do more was due to the fact that it no longer held the kind of total sway over its membership that was true for the church in previous times.8 Eberhard Bethge9 is somewhat more critical in his judgment, as is john Conway. Conway does agree with Bonkovsky that members of the Confessing Church resisted Aryanization more than any other professional group in Germany. But he faults the Barmen Declaration for lacking any specific response to the Jewish Question and the proposed Final Solution:

Defense of purity of doctrine was stressed over concrete Christian action. Later on [Karl] Barth [the famous theologian], the Barmen Confession's principal author, admitted that he had failed to make the Jewish Question a decisive issue at that time.10

Zahn notes that official Catholic resistance appeared less than a year after the signing of the Concordat. The June, 1934, pastoral letter of the combined German hierarchy meeting at Fulda was a public and formal protest against the restrictions on the Catholic press and the church's organizational activity. This pastoral letter served to galvanize Catholic opposition in a way similar to the Barmen Declaration for the Protestant churches. It provided the justification for a steady, albeit unsuccessful, campaign of opposition to the growing attacks of the Third Reich against the Catholic church. Zahn criticizes the Fulda pastoral letter and subsequent Catholic pronouncements, including the papal encyclical Mit brenneder Sorge (1937), for the same reasons Conway objects to the Barmen Declaration: The Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question is scarcely mentioned. Zahn feels that the Catholic protest failed because it could not match the power of the Third Reich and it was unwilling to push its supporters into total resistance and mass martyrdom.

Beate Ruhm von Oppen, another leading Christian interpreter of the Holocaust who has worked extensively on German records, believes both Zahn and Lewy are far too negative. She argues that the meaningful survival of the church today demands giving greater attention to the Catholic resistance that did exist. She is not urging a manufactured defense or the dismissal of significant collaboration and indifference, but she insists that a mere examination of the response of Catholic bishops must yield to a study of Catholic (and Protestant) military chaplains whose resistance, attitudes, and influence increasingly worried Nazi leaders like Goebbels.13

One must also consider the behavior of the Christian clergy in the rest of Europe. There are instances where priests, nuns, and pastors helped in the rescue of Jews (see Sybil Milton's article, "The Righteous Who Helped Jews" in this volume). But the possibilities of further organized and effective opposition to the anti-Jewish decrees, on the part of the clergy, must also be considered. The Chief Rabbi of Palestine posed this option to Monseignor Hughes (a representative of the pope) in 1944, in Cairo, when the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the extermination camps commenced in earnest:

CHIEF RABBI: If Hungarian Bishops were to go into the camps and announce publicly that, if deportation of Jews went on, they [the Bishops] would go and die with them, I think it would be difficult for the Germans to continue the deportations.

MONSEIGNOR HUGHES: The Bishops in France and other countries have carried out demonstrations of that kind. When the Germans began deporting Jews, they [the Bishops] went into the streets wearing a yellow star. This action made a considerable impression and, in some places, rendered deportation impossible. But Your Honor will understand that realization of your proposal would require "unity of action."14 As Saul Friedlander notes: "Now there never was such a demonstration by French Bishops, as Monseignor Hughes must have known. The Chief Rabbi ... had no means of judging whether or not these details were true."15 We really do not know of any public protests on the part of Catholic or Protestant clergy, anywhere in Europe, during this period, including protests directed to the local population.

One must also consider the cooperation and complexity of clerical involvement in the destruction of European Jews. An example is Slovakia, "a heavily Catholic country with a priest as president and prime minister who prided himself on being a practicing Catholic,"16 and who finally cooperated in the persecution of the Jews, leading to their deportation to the Concentration Camps. Before Passover in 1942, Rabbi Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel, a leader of the Jewish underground, approached his old acquaintance Archbishop Kametko. He begged the archbishop to intervene with the latter's former personal secretary, President Tisso, regarding the expulsion of the Jews from Slovakia. The archbishop replied:

This is no mere expulsion. There-you will not die of hunger and pestilence; there-they will slaughter you all, young and old, women and children, in one day. This is your punishment for the death of our Redeemer. There is only one hope for you, to convert to our religion. Then I shall effect the annulling of this decree. 17

It is interesting to note that a number of Jews did convert to Christianity in order to save their lives. As Raul Hilberg observes:

[Even though] ... the Jews were primarily concerned with the protection, such protection could best be tendered by the Catholic Church. The Jews were not interested in theology just then. But therein, precisely, lay the reason for the imbalance of conversions-the Catholic Church was not primarily interested in the saving of lives; it wanted to save souls. Of course the Church protected its converts. The priesthood was angry when the state presumed to nullify the sacred baptism and turn Christians into Jews. But for exactly that reason the Catholic Church did not bestow lightly. The applicant had to be "sincere. " If it took a catastrophe to make him "see the light," well then, all right, he could be admitted. However, if he was suspected of merely wanting to save his life, perhaps to revert to Judaism after the end of the war, he was turned away. When the wave of deportations overtook the Jewish community in Slovakia, there was little time for religious instruction, preparation, and meditation. That is, Orthodox Churches converted a disproportionately large number of Jews.18

The role of Pope Pius XII has also long been the subject of controversy among scholars. Earlier works by Jewish and Christian writers tend to be highly critical. Saul Friedlander,20 Rolf Hochhuth,21 Friedrich Heer,22 and Nora Levin23 are especially so. Few would accuse Plus of outright hatred for Jews. But a combination of a long-standing Catholic antisemitic tradition, coupled with his desire to preserve the Catholic community in Germany and to fight the onslaught of Bolshevism, rendered Jews unfortunate expendables," in the pope's calculations.

Official Catholic responses to these charges tend to be highly polemical and defensive. Some have urged the canonization of Pius as a rebuff. Some Jewish defenses of Plus also surfaced, mainly Joseph L. Lichten's A Question of Judgment: Pius XII and the Jews.24 Based on personal experiences and conversations, Lichten maintains that Plus did more in behalf of Jews than someone like Rolf Hochhuth allows. He quotes Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, who offered a positive assessment of Plus' activities on the Jewish Question on the occasion of the pope's death. Whether a formal condemnation of the pope, as opposed to diplomatic initiatives, would have curtailed the mass murder of Jews, remains an open question for Lichten. Most critics of Pius assume that it would have, with the evidence leaning against any real results.

Beate Ruhm von Oppen and Father Flannery also believe that the focus on Plus has been to the detriment of a wider investigation of the Catholic church's role. Flannery says that "the centralization of the charge on the pope has unfortunately deflected attention from the scope of a silence that affected many churches, governments, and people."25 Even Rolf Hochhuth, in a later interview, indicates that Pius' silence and consequent guilt on the Jewish Question was no greater than that of other religious and political leaders like Churchill and Cordell Hull.26

Recently, the controversy over Pius' papacy has once more received widespread attention. Father John Morley, in a recent study of Vatican diplomacy, argues that, generally, in all the important countries of Europe where mass Jewish deportations were occurring, the interventions by Vatican diplomats and papal nuncios were sporadic and reluctant, at times apologetic, and lacking the force of condemnation that the circumstances required. Yet, they had acted forcefully when church rights were at stake . . . . 27 And while not directly a response to the new evaluation by Morely, a recent volume by Father J. Derek Holmes of Great Britain has been used by some as a response to Morley. Holmes speaks of Pius' efforts in behalf of the Jews of Rome and feels that a public denunciation of the Nazis might have endangered the Vatican's work to save Jews.28

The case of Pius XII is still far from closed. Catholics and other scholars need to probe further, with an open mind, into his activities and those of the Vatican bureaucracy. It may be that the final judgment on the pope's stance will never reach a consensus, for how does one finally prove or disprove the possible effect of a hypothetical public stance by Pius? It is my contention, however, that the whole concept of the church that dominated the thinking of Plus XII and his associates, especially how it related the security of the Catholic church to the well-being of non- Catholics, needs to be studied far more thoroughly. Ultimately, Pius' accomplishments and failures were buried with him. There is no way we can change his record. But contemporary Christians are in a position to change their understanding of the church's relationship to Jews and others outside its community and beliefs, especially in times of profound social crisis.29

Despite the different interpretations, a few directions seem clear: (1) an overwhelming majority of Christian clergy acquiesced in the destruction of European Jews; (2) church leaders were unable to mount a successful effort against the Nazis. This bears serious reflection for the continuing struggles which the churches face in the contemporary world; (3) the church's self- understanding and its own sufferings under the Nazis were far too isolated from the sufferings of non-Christians, Jews in particular, to whom suffering meant death. Why did the churches raise the issue of Nazi murder of "baptized" Jews to the exclusion of the Jewish people at large?; (4) the churches were far too connected with the dynamics of German society to really stand in Judgment against it; (5) the Jewish Question could not be adequately addressed because of the long-standing theological tradition of anti-Judaism in the churches. This tradition must be obliterated once and for all by the post-Holocaust Christian community; (6) the churches, which will never regain the kind of control over society they once had, must reflect anew on how to combat totalitarian power. Where are their primary resources in such a context?; and, finally, (7) the churches' fear of communism blinded them to all other forms of totalitarian oppression. Is there danger of repetition in our day?

Notes

1. Edward Flannery, "Anti-Zionism and the Christian Psyche," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 6 (Spring 1969): 174.

2. Franklin Littell, "Church Struggle and the Holocaust," in The German Church Struggle, eds. Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974), p. 16.

3. John S. Conway, "The Churches," in The Holocaust, eds. Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton (Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1980), p. 200. See also John Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1968).

4. Frederick 0. Bonkovsky, "The German State and Protestant Elites," in Littell and Locke, The German Church Struggle, p. 130.

5. Conway, "The Churches," p. 201.

6. See Gordon Zahn, "Catholic Resistance? A Yes and a No," in Littell and Locke, The German Church Struggle, p.228.

7. For one evaluation, see Arthur C. Cochrane, "The Message of Barmen for Contemporary Church History," in Littell and Locke, The German Church Struggle, pp. 185-202.

8. See Bonkovsky, "The German State."

9. Eberhard Bethge, "Troubled Self -Interpretation and Uncertain Reception in the Church Struggle," in Littell and Locke, The German Church Struggle, pp. 167-184. See also Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Man of Vision (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

10. Conway, "The Churches," p. 205.

11. Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964); Zahn, "Catholic Resistance," in Littell and Locke, The German Church Struggle, pp. 203-240.

12. Gordon Zahn, "Revolutionism and Counterrevisionism in the Historiography of the Church Struggle," in Littell and Locke, The German Church Struggle, pp. 56-68.

13. Zahn, "Catholic Resistance?" p. 233.

14. Saul Friedlander, Pius XII and the Third Reich (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966).

15. Friedlander, Pius XII, p. 235.

16. John Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust: 1939-1943. (New York: Ktav, 1980) p. 101.

17. Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel, Min Hamezar, in Faith After the Holocaust, Eliezer Berkovits (New York: Ktav, 1973), pp. 16-17.

18. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quandrangle Press, 1961), p. 466.

19. Eliezer Berkovits, Faith, pp. 16-17.

20. Friedlander, Pius XII.

21. Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy (New York: Grove Press, 1964).

22. Eric Bentley, ed., The Storm Over The Deputy (New York: Grove Press, 1964), p. 173.

23. Nora Levin, The Holocaust (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), pp. 687-693.

24. Joseph L. Lichten, A Question of Judgment (Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1963).

25. Flannery, Anti-Zionism, p. 175.

26. Bentley, The Storm, p. 43.

27. John Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, p. 201.

28. J. Derek Holmes, The Papacy in the Modern World (London: Burns & Oates, 1981).

29. See John T. Pawlikowski, The Challenge of the Holocaust for Christian Theology (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1978), and "Method in Catholic Social Ethics: Some Observations in Light of the Jewish Tradition," in Formation of Social Policy in the Catholic and Jewish Tradition, eds. Eugene J. Fisher and Daniel F. Polish (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), pp. 162-192.

For Further Reading

Bentley, Eric, ed. The Storm Over The Deputy. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Man of Vision. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Conway, John. The Nazi' Persecution of the Churches: 1933-1945. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1968.

Friedlander, Henry, and Milton, Sybil, eds. The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide. Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1980.

Friedlander, Saul. Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.

Hochhuth, Rolf. The Deputy. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

Holmes, J. Derek. The Papacy in the Modern World. London: Burns & Oates, 1981.

Levin, Nora. The Holocaust. New York: Schocken Books, 1973.

Lichten, Joseph. A Question of Judgment: Pius XII and the Jews. Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1963.

Littell, Franklin H., and Locke, Hubert G., eds. The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974.

Morley, John. Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, 1939-1943. New York: Ktav, 1980.

The Importance of Wartime Priorities in the Failure to Rescue Jews
HENRY L. FEINGOLD

In any study of the Holocaust, the role of the bystander is questioned. "Why did the witnessing agencies not do more to rescue the Jews during the Holocaust?" For those emotionally involved with the Holocaust, there can only be one response: The witnesses failed to properly play their historical role. This response assumes that nation- states and international agencies like the Red Cross were able to make humanitarian responses in situations like the Holocaust and that they had an interest in doing so. If we make the question more precise, the answers are more revealing of the complexity of the role of the witness. In this essay, we ask the following question: Considering the growing significance of Auschwitz in the lexicon of the West today, why was the rescue of the Jews given such a low priority during World War II? The response is often deeply troubling.

We must first determine what priority the rescue of the Jews had during World War 11. Even to say that rescue had a low priority may be an overstatement, for, in fact, it had no priority at all. Some would even say that it had a negative priority. They would agree with Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels that the Allies were actually relieved to see Berlin liquidate the Jews. They might note, for example, that the Jewish Question was never discussed at any of the wartime conferences: Cairo, Teheran, Yalta, or Potsdam. It was also not mentioned in the Atlantic Charter of August, 1940, which declared the war aims of the Allies. In addition, the several agencies established to rescue the Jews (the Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, the War Refugee Board) never mentioned the word "Jew" in their titles. The charter of UNRRA (the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), headed by a Jew (Herbert Lehman), never made any special reference to the Jews, even though its mission concerned relief and rehabilitation. To this very day, nations under Soviet hegemony do not acknowledge the high priority Berlin gave to the liquidation of the Jews. There is no reference to Jews in the Soviet memorial at Babi Yar, or at any of the thousands of war memorials in that vast country. In Poland, the main arena for the slaughter of the Jewish people, the murdered Jews constituted 10 percent of the population of Poland; they have become in death what they were never allowed to be in life-honored citizens of that nation. Rescue, an agonized preoccupation for students of the Holocaust, was barely considered by the would-be rescuers at the time. Is there any way we can explain the low priority and reluctance to save lives? The question deserves our attention because the answer has inherent in it a bitter lesson regarding the nature of the nation-state.

The most obvious reason for the low priority given to the rescue of the Jews is Antisemitism, but this is strangely unsatisfactory. Of course, there were antisemites in the State Department and in the Foreign Office. Antisemitism was undoubtedly a sine qua non in Stalin's's Kremlin. The plight of the Jews in the ghettos and the extermination camps did not make the antisemite contrite. He did not see the Final Solution as the end-product of such hatred. Men like Breckinridge Long, the undersecretary of state who controlled the programs which made up the meager American rescue effort, or Richard Law, who headed the British delegation to the Bermuda conference, and others who found themselves involved in a movement to save lives for which they cared little, rarely gave public expression to their distaste for Jews. They were also sincerely appalled by Nazi behavior, but their class background somehow inured them from fully sensing the agony of the mass slaughter. They were probably incapable of the rage and the passion necessary to save lives that the inoment demanded. Antisemitism served as background noise to the indifference and inertia of the witnessing governments and agencies. While it has always been present, its existence is almost impossible to detect in laws or regulations. There are no government edicts or statutes that ordered Jews specifically to be kept out or ignored. Rather, Jews were simply not mentioned. This silence could be juxtaposed to Nazi propaganda, which never stopped talking about Jews.

Directly connected with that silence was the fear among Allied decision-makers to focus on the Jews lest the war be converted into one to save the Jews. This would have only confirmed Berlin's propaganda line which perpetually sought to link the Jews and the war together in the hope that the residual Antisemitism in the Allied camp would be aroused and thus interfere with mobilization for victory. Washington, Moscow, and London went to great lengths to conceal the fact that within the general war there was a separate "war against the Jews," which, for Berlin, often took precedence over the physical war. This war within the war slaughtered millions and spent millions implementing the Final Solution, human and financial resources that might have contributed to the hard-pressed German war effort. Roosevelt insisted on calling a "refugee" problem what the Nazis called the "Jewish" problem. He changed the name and therefore the nature of the problem as easily as the Nazis changed his name to "Rosenfeld."

Another reason for the low priority given to the rescue of European Jews stems from the nature of large modern bureaucratic institutions like the nation-state, or agencies like the League of Nations or the International Red Cross. There is a tendency to forget that they are man-made institutions, not man himself, and possess no human characteristics like conscience or soul or a sense of morality or even the ability to feel concern. Sometimes, such a coloration can be given to them by the men who run them, but that is very rare, especially in wartime. There is only one human attribute which such Institutions have. It is the will to exist, to permit nothing to interfere with their institutional survival. Sovereignty cannot only not be divided; perpetuating its life takes precedence over the lives of its subjects.

During the Holocaust, which was itself implemented by a government apparatus, the governments called upon to rescue Jews felt that their own survival was in danger until well into 1943, after the battle of Stalingrad broke the back of a seemingly invincible Nazi juggernaut. Their first priority was to save themselves, then to win the war. If the rescue of the Jews could be accommodated to that objective, it could be achieved. But everything suggested by rescue advocates, whether sending packages to Concentration Camps, bombing the camps and the rail lines leading to them, or simply facilitating the admission of those in danger to receiving countries, was judged as militating against the first priority of winning the war. Jews were considered so much excess cargo on an overloaded lifeboat. They were allowed to drown while everyone averted their gaze. Jewish leaders who dared to argue against these priorities ran the risk of facing accusations of disloyalty or lack of patriotism. Most American Jews did not want special pleading on such terms and accepted the oft-repeated notion that the most practical way of saving their brethren was to win the war as quickly as possible. Those who accuse American Jews of not doing enough would do well to keep in mind that all government agencies involved with the Holocaust held their own survival to be the first order of business. In the Soviet Union, the war was dubbed "the Great Patriotic War," and among the Allies it would ultimately be called "the Great Crusade." It was never a war to save the Jews.

The pope's position in relation to the Final Solution did not depart from these normal priorities, despite the fact that in his person he embodied the moral spirit of much of the Christian world. The survival of the temporal institutional body of the Church received the highest priority. The Catholic flock of Europe had been split by the war. Catholics were fighting on both sides and calling upon the pope for succor. Moreover, 42 percent of the SS and much of the Nazi leadership were at least nominally Catholic. The Church had ample evidence of the threat posed by Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism to its existence. The Communists and the Nazis had demonstrated considerable ability to "persuade" millions of believers to abandon the Church. The Russian Orthodox church was but a relic of its former self. During the crisis, the Vatican walked a delicate tightrope. Pius XII did not dare speak out on the crucible of the Jews, which he knew to be the bete noire of Nazi leadership. Those priorities were echoed in Geneva, the home of the International Red Cross. Here, too, the leadership became convinced that the effectiveness and the survival of the agency depended on absolute neutrality and balance. Thus, little things which today seem of little importance but then might have saved thousands-insistance on inspection of the camps, the sending of food packages to inmates the change of designation of certain inmates to prisoner-of-war-were either not attempted at all or were so reluctantly and tardily implemented that their promise was never fulfilled.

Evidence of these priorities can also be gleaned from the posture of the neutral con n tries -Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. These nations simply did not feel that what was happening to the Jews in the extermination camps had any relationship to their wellbeing. Although Sweden, Portugal, and Switzerland were limited havens of asylum for over 20,000 Jews, they felt it was not a momentous enough issue to risk the neutral posture. The Allied belligerents had, after all, not made the rescue of the Jews a wartime priority.

The inability to sense that the Final Solution had some bearing on their own existence is, in fact, a major question which the student of the Holocaust must confront. How were the witnessing governments and agencies able to so objectify the victims and the murder process that what was happening simply did not seem to matter? Had six million cattle been slaughtered, a rabbi once explained to Representative Emanuel Celler of the House judiciary Committee, there would have been some outcry, at least from animal lovers. But, in the case of fellow human beings, there was only an eerie silence. They simply refused to believe that the inversion of the industrial process to produce death on a mass production basis, if allowed to proceed without objection, could mean the doom of their own systems as well. The Nazis had discovered a secret in the extermination camps: Those for whom society was organized-the weak, the vulnerable, the dependent, those who required the protection of the herd-could henceforth be liquidated rather than cherished, and organized society would not cry out. It is a fact that is now understood by every powerless group. It is no longer necessary to live in harmony with those who are different-they can be eliminated. But men like Roosevelt were not only unable to understand the implications of the Holocaust, they were also confined by the priorities of the state. The first priority was to win the war. Roosevelt, who was an assistant secretary of the navy in the Wilson administration, was fully aware of what could happen when a president forgets that first priority. Wilson tried to be both a belligerent and a peacemaker at the same time and ended by confusing his friends and the electorate and signaling to the vanquished Germans that they had not really lost the war.

Students of the Holocaust cannot fully understand the indifference of the witnesses without a good grasp of the domestic political situation. In the case of the Roosevelt administration, for example, its indifference during the crucial refugee phase (1933-1941) reflected a popular consensus. The American people were opposed to the admission of refugees during the Depression and, thereafter, were so preoccupied with the war in Europe and the Pacific that they did not believe or understand what was happening in the extermination camps. In order for Roosevelt to take some action, popular pressure was required; but mass support was not available to rescue advocates. Roosevelt's superb political antennae informed him that the division within his own administration and within Congress on the refugee issue reflected a public opinion that did not favor a more active rescue policy. This was obvious in public reaction to attempts to adjust the quota system or circumvent the immigration law; in the reaction to the admission of Jewish refugee children in 1939 and 1940 outside the quota system (the WagnerRogers Bill); in the opposition to admitting refugees to Alaska; in the establishment of other temporary havens in the American interior; in the issuing of threats of retribution against the Nazi anti-Jewish depredations; and, finally, in the adamant opposition of the military to the proposed bombing of the camps and the rail lines leading to them. All these proposals faced strong opposition from within the administration and often considerable opposition from the public.

In retrospect, it seems clear that American Jews simply did not possess sufficient political power to overcome all opposition to rescue efforts. It is surprising how much they did achieve. The distribution of life- saving visas went from a rejection of over 98 percent of the applicants in 1933 and 1934 to almost 50 percent approval in 1938 and 1939. In April 1944, the impossible was achieved. The American ineffective in halting Nazi war production. Moreover, Jewish rescue advocates were late in picking up the signals coming from Slovakia and Hungary which suggested bombing the rail lines. There was little agreement on its effectiveness. A. Leon Kubowitzki, the representative of the World Jewish Congress, which made the request for bombing to the Roosevelt administration, had strong reservations about it. Others believed that German fanaticism on the Jewish Question would render precision bombing of the gas chambers insufficient to halt the killing. The Einsatzgruppen, the special killing squads that roamed behind the German lines after the invasion of Russia, killed greater numbers in less time than the extermination camp process. The Germans could always revert to that more. primitive method. Auschwitz, moreover, was only one place where killing took place.

The alternative of bombing Auschwitz, an option so highly touted today, did not effectively counter the threat that Berlin would escalate the terror and involve the Allies in a contest of barbarism. It was a contest in which the Nazis held all the cards. since their made in Berlin was not shared by Allied leadership or by Jewish rescue advocates. Had they conceived of it, it is possible that the fear of disaffection among the German populace, spurred by the terrible casualties, would have convinced more rational Nazi leaders that the Final Solution was simply not worth the physical destruction of German cities. If priorities could not be changed on the Allied side, the high priority in Berlin given to the destruction of the Jews could probably have been altered. German), could have been coerced into abandoning an insane and unjustifiable war aim. We will never know if that scenario was possible, because the idea of retaliatory bombing was not picked tip by rescue advocates, and by the time the notion of bombing the camps and the rail lines leading to them was picked up in March, 1944, millions of Jews were already in ashes. That is why the twelve-point rescue program which came out of the giant Madison Square Garden rally in March, 1943, is as startling as McCloy's later response to the request for bombing. It was silent on the question of bombing and on the more practical possibility of linking the bombing of German cities, which was already occurring, to the destruction of European Jews. Stranger still is the notion, put forward by high-echelon Allied leaders, that linking the bombing of German cities to the extermination camps would expose the Allies to charges of illegality and war atrocities. It seems clear that future researchers into the role of the witnesses will have to place failure of mind next to failure of spirit in accounting for the indifference of those years.

Clearly, the establishment of priorities during World War 11 was linked to a preceding perception of what that war was all about. The saving of Jewish lives was simply not very important to the principal decision - makers, who were chiefly preoccupied with saving their own governmental instruments and then their communities. During the Holocaust, there existed no legal sovereignty whose primary objective was to protect and nurture Jewish communities, just as the American government did for America. Had there been one, Jewish leaders would not have been compelled to go, hat in hand, to world leaders to implore them to intercede for their coreligionists in Europe. They did not do so at Entebbe.

For Further Reading

Abella, Irving, and Troper, Harold. None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982.

Bauer, Yehuda. American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish joint Distribution Committee, 1939-1945. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981.

Feingold, Henry L. "The Witness Role of American Jewry: A Second Look." In Human Responses to the Holocaust, edited by Michael D. Ryan. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1981: 81-91.

Morley, John F. Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, 1939-1943. New York: Ktav, 1980.

Wasserstein, Bernard N. Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. London: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1979.

Could American Jews Have Done More?
HENRY L. FEINGOLD

One measure of the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish consciousness and self-image can be gleaned from the controversy about the role of American Jews during the Holocaust. The lengthening indictment includes everything from the charge of indifference about the fate of their European brethren to outright betrayal. Is there substance to these charges, or are they an example of self-laceration commonly found when communities have experienced great losses?

Historians are not immune from such traumas. While they feel despair that more was not done, they are obliged to consider the realities of the political and social context. There is little agreement on the possibility of rescue at any given juncture. More importantly, we soon learn that the Holocaust is a catastrophe of such immense scale and such tragic proportions that enough could never have been done. What was done was overshadowed by the fate of those who perished.

In this essay, the role of American Jews during that agonizing period will be discussed. Many who view their actions from a contemporary perspective are convinced that they failed. They see American Jews wielding considerable organized power in Roosevelt's New Deal. American Jews, after all, were members of Roosevelt's ,,inner circle." Some belonged to the "Brain Trust": one was an outstanding cabinet member-Henry Morgenthau, Jr.-and Felix Frankfurther and Louis Brandeis were building substantial judicial reputations on the Supreme Court. For some, Jews had become so prominent in the administration, especially the upper reaches of the federal civil service, and the new regulatory agencies, that they labeled the New Deal the "Jew Deal." In addition, Jews chaired the three congressional committees directly concerned with immigration, which could have provided the most direct method for rescue in the early phase of the Holocaust: Representative Sol Bloom, House Foreign Affairs; Representative Samuel Dickstein, House Immigration and Naturalization; and Representative Emanuel Celler, House judiciary Committee. American Jews also boasted of greater experience in influencing foreign policy, since they had a great need to do so from the time of the Damascus Blood libel of 1840, in which members of the Syrian Jewish community were falsely accused, and subsequently tortured and killed, for the murder of a Catholic monk, evoking worldwide Jewish outrage. American Jews also helped to make the cumbersome democratic system work by the type of citizens they were. They showed a relatively high interest in political issues, were better informed than other ethnic voters, and were more generous in supporting the candidates they favored. Most important of all was their loyalty and support of the New Deal. Jewish support went beyond other ethnic constituencies, especially after the election of 1936, when the enthusiasm of these minority groups began to wane.

On the surface, it appears that the American Jews of the thirties possessed considerable political leverage, so that their responsibility for rescuing their European brethren could be matched by their power to do so. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. The problem of how to measure the power of a subgroup in the pluralistic American society is surpassed only by the still more difficult problem of defining what power is and where it is located. For example: How necessary is cohesiveness and coherence for the maximum exercise of power? We can assume that at least a modicum of unity is necessary. Yet, we find that during those agonizing years, the delicate bridges which tenuously bound together the different factions of American Jews collapsed. Everything, from a boycott of German goods to the priority of rescue over the homeland in Palestine, became the source of bitter acrimony. Each faction, each division, based on cultural differences as well as political sentiment, felt compelled to send its own delegation to Washington to plead separately for its clients. Only in the minds of antisemites were Jews a unified people conspiring to rule the world. In reality, the Jews were divided on every conceivable issue and could never unite long enough to act for their European brethren, whom they all wanted to help. Those who blithely speak of the "Jewish community" must ultimately recognize that there was no one Jewish community in America of the thirties. Such a community did not develop until 1948, partly as a result of the Holocaust, and even then, it was united only on certain crucial issues like the centrality of Israel.

We have mentioned the prominence of Jews in the Roosevelt administration, but that did not necessarily translate into power. Shtadlanut (the tradition, originating in the Middle Ages, of having influential Jews, sometimes known as "court Jews" intercede for their fellow Jews during periods of trouble) in the American polity was a risky business. It was dangerous to express a goal which seemingly served an ethnic interest at the expense of the "American interest." Pleading for the special needs of European Jews was often made to appear as unpatriotic by the legions of minor bureaucrats who were antisemitic or simply unsympathetic. The rapid decline of the political fortunes of Henry Morthenthau, Roosevelt's secretary of the treasury, after he submitted the hard-nosed "Morgenthau plan" for the postwar treatment of Germany is a good illustration. The changes in the diplomatic career of Lawrence Steinhardt, the Jewish ambassador in Moscow and Ankara, whose anti refugee posture was used by State Department officials to convince the president that the gates should be locked, is another example.

Even the loyalty which American Jews felt towards Roosevelt, so powerful that some called it a "love affair," militated against their ability to influence policy. So powerful was Roosevelt's hold on the Jewish voter that not only could Jewish leaders not threaten Roosevelt with the loss of the Jewish vote, they felt themselves dependent upon the approval of Roosevelt even to hold their own positions. The archives are full of letters from Jewish leaders requesting such letters of support from the White House. Jewish leadership throughout the crisis was compelled to depend on these less certain rewards for political loyalty.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Jews were a relatively small minority, totaling perhaps 3.2 to 3.5 percent of the total population of the United States. They could not, with such a minor political voice, hope to have an impact on policy. The admission of refugees and, later, their physical rescue was, moreover, major policy. The former impinged on immigration policy during a depression; it was highly sensitive and there was a clear opposition. The latter related to wartime priorities, in which the rescue of Jews from the gas chambers was not only not considered, but for some-like Undersecretary of State Breckinridge Long, or Secretary of War Henry Stimson-was viewed as a deterrent to quickly defeating the Nazis, the major aim.

In order to influence policy, American Jews, somehow, had to find the means to amplify their political voice. Although Jewish leaders had some experience with the media, they were unable to use this vehicle effectively because the war muted the special cry of pain emanating from the Jewish world. For some, especially before the war turned in the Allies' favor after the battle of Stalingrad in February, 1943, the Jewish request for special attention to its plight sounded like "Jewish moaning" or "playing the air for the Jew string." The problem of being heard above the din of war was compounded by the failure of rescue advocates to prove the systematic murder of European Jews. More than any other single factor, this muted the Jewish political voice. Moreover, most Americans did not believe stories that sounded suspiciously like the atrocity tales of World War 1, which also spoke of cadavers being processed into soap; they also never remotely understood the meaning of the murder techniques employed by the Nazis. The significance of using modern technology, which had given European civilization dominance throughout the world and which was now literally consuming its own people, was totally lost on Allied leaders like Roosevelt. The American people, who were busy winning the war and making considerable sacrifices towards this end, understood the significance of the catastrophe even less.

Jewish interests have customarily been heard by the skillful practice of coalition politics, achieved by linking Jewish group interest to similar- minded groups in the political arena. But the tense climate of the thirties deprived Jews of ethnic Allies, especially the American Irish. The popularity of American Jews during the thirties was minimal, attributable, in part, to the dislocation and intergroup tensions triggered by the Depression. The emergence of Jews from the depths of the Depression at a more rapid rate than other groups created hostility and envy. Tensions were intensified by professional antisemitic propagandists like Gerald Smith, Fritz Kuhn, and Father Coughlin, whose pronouncements were similar to those of the Nazi Reich. Under normal circumstances, these voices from the lunatic fringe would have been fairly harmless, but during the thirties, the Depression, the resonances of Nazi Antisemitism among like-minded American groups, and the possibility of gaining legitimacy by riding the tall of isolationist/restrictlonist sentiment was ever-present. When, in September, 1941, Charles Lindbergh, the most popular man in America, linked Jews to those who would drag America into way, it seemed to many that the Antisemitism of the radical right had been legitimatized.

Finally, a word needs to be said regarding American Jewish political culture. When social scientists speak of political culture, they are referring to the basic assumptions about society and those habits and styles that a group brings into the political arena. It is like a political fingerprint. American Jewish political culture is very distinctive and easily recognized. Jews assign a heavy moral responsibility to politics. They expect it to usher in a new and better day. They want politics to improve mankind's lot on earth and, through it, man himself. Jews, especially those of the postemancipation era, speak of Justice, righteousness, and humanitarianism. They assume that there is a "civilized spirit of morality" at work in the world. Its locale varies. Sometimes it is located in the Oval Office, or the Vatican, or the United Nations; sometimes it is embodied in a single individual like Franklin Roosevelt or Pope John. The Jewish community calls upon that spirit to intercede on its behalf. It calls upon a "reluctant" world to behave better than it wants to behave. Yet, while such assumptions are perhaps the most noble part of the Jewish political personality, they are strangely inappropriate for the game of politics as it is played on the grass-roots level in America. The Irish-Americans, perhaps the most successful practitioners of politics, viewed it simply as a form of individual and sometimes group aggrandizement. Jews were relatively slow in mastering the earthy quid-pro-quos of American politics. More importantly, the nature of Jewish power was long-range and ideological. But until such an elevation in the moral spirit occurred, the Jews were destined to remain insecure and vulnerable. Their power proved singularly ineffective in the face of a demonic force such as nazism. What was required against such a force was physical armed power, as the Israelis have exhibited-precisely what Jews did not possess during the Holocaust. As it turned out, not even the much-touted Jewish political influence in the Roosevelt administration was able to be translated into a more active rescue effort.

Those that charge that American Jews did not do enough during the Holocaust continue to hold to the old assumption. They assume that in the thirties, there was a concerned spirit in the Oval Office, and in Roosevelt, that could have been mobilized to rescue Jews. "If only Jews had been more energetic and mobilized that spirit" is the belief. Yet, there is ample reason for those Jews who lived in the time between the Ki shinev pogrom (the antisemitic riot of 1903) and Auschwitz to doubt the existence of such a spirit of concern. That so many Jews still blame American Jews for having failed to arouse and mobilize a spirit which may not have in fact existed at all is perhaps the latest exercise in self -flagellation.

What can we conclude? That not enough was done is a self evident truth for which there are six million pieces of evidence. But it was also a time in which enough could never have been done. Although American Jews were more vigorous and more successful than other subgroups in pressing their political interest in the corridors of power, that power did not match their awesome responsibilities during the years of the Holocaust. Moreover, it was the wrong kind of power, since both American and Nazi politics were peculiarly immune to the human side of the Jewish crucible. From an historical perspective, reading the notion of betrayal back into American Jewish history serves neither the truth of history nor the interest of American Jews today.

For Further Reading

American Jewish History. "America and the Holocaust" I and 11. Vol. 68 (March 1979), and Vol. 70 (March 1981).

Feingold, Henry L. The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938-1945. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970.

Laqueur, Walter. The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth About Hitler's "Final Solution.- London: Morrison & Gibb, Ltd., 1980.

Marrus, Michael R., and Paxton, Robert 0. Vichy France and the Jews. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

Martin, Gilbert. Auschwitz and the Allies. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981.