I am extremely grateful to Joan Swirsky of Great Neck for her recent enlightening letter regarding FDR and the Jews during the Holocaust.
Every word of her letter is true and proof of it is available in the National Archives.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not personally like Jews.
He was a product of America at a time when anti-Semitism was rampant in the USA, when quotas existed for school admissions, when jobs were restricted to Jews, when neighborhoods, including Great Neck, prided themselves that theirs was a Jew-free community, when students of medicine had to study in European universities because most of the American medical schools were closed to Jews or at best, accepted only 5 percent of Jewish students.
In 1943, a Polish diplomat, a religious Roman Catholic, named Jan Kozielewski (best known as Jan Karski) was sent to the USA by the Polish Government in Exile in London to appeal to FDR to save the Jews of Poland.
He was introduced to FDR by Felix Frankfurter and he provided documents, maps and secretly made films to the president to substantiate his claim of the mass extermination of the Jews in Poland.
Karski had been smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and the Treblinka death camp where he filmed the horrible scenes of death and destruction. These he presented to FDR on his two separate visits to the White House.
Karski begged the president and the British allies to bomb the railway tracks leading to the Auschwitz death camp in the hope of saving more than 1 million Jewish lives.
FDR refused the appeal, replying to Karski only “after we win the war, we will punish the Germans responsible for these heinous war crimes”
FDR was friendly with Ibn Saud, the first king of Arabia and founder of the Saudi dynasty.
As a result of their friendship FDR promised that he would oppose mass Jewish immigration to Palestine and would not support the creation of a Jewish state in their ancient homeland.
Unlike her husband, Eleanor Roosevelt was a very warm friend to the Jewish people and worked feverishly to support the creation of a Jewish state. She was living proof that “behind every man stands a great woman”.
As Joan Swirsky rightly states, “FDR was no friend of the Jews”.
In 1981, Jan Karsky was honored by the State of Israel as a righteous Gentile, and was presented with a certificate of honor and a gold medal for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust. I
n 1984, he was made an honorary citizen of the State of Israel.
The world is in need of more Karskis and fewer FDRs.
Rabbi Esor Ben-Sorek
Great Neck
