by Jay Winik
What lay behind Roosevelt’s silence, his seeming refusal to see, hear, or speak evil of the death camps? In fact, Eden’s logic, and Roosevelt’s reticence, reflected the prevailing wisdom at the State Department in the spring of 1943. As though the death camps were a passing phase, the department’s R. Borden Reams wrote, “There is always the danger that the German government might agree to turn over to the United States . . . a large number of Jewish refugees,” overwhelming America’s ability to absorb them. In that case, he argued (ludicrously), the problem of “their continued persecution would have been largely transferred from the German government to the United Nations.” The implication seems to have been that the gas chambers or work camps were preferable to placing any burden on the United Nations. Reams’s attitude called to mind the startling observation by the British parliamentarian Sir Thomas Moore, early in the war, that he had been unable to find any trace of abuses by the Nazi regime. (“If I may judge from my personal knowledge of Herr Hitler,” he declared, “peace and justice are the key words of his policy.”)
To be sure, there remained almost insuperable practical problems, but these were a matter more of military capability and imagination than of anything else. Saving the Jews from the Nazi saturnalia of blood was the challenge: whatever the Allies decided to do, it was quite clear that Hitler had no intention of releasing a single Jew, let alone tens of thousands. At this point, the Allies had no means of rescuing the Jews who had not yet been deported. As it turned out, however, they weren’t even trying.
In truth, if a deal had somehow been negotiated, the Jews could simply have walked across the mountains and the Balkans en route to Turkey. Moreover, just ten days after the meeting in Washington, the British announced their intention to move more than twenty thousand Polish refugees—non-Jews—to a safe haven in East Africa. And later in the year, similar help would be extended to thirty-six thousand non-Jewish Yugoslavs.
Why, the frantic Jewish leaders asked, couldn’t the same be done for Hitler’s Jewish victims?
IN THE EARLY SPRING of 1943, Stephen Wise contacted the White House requesting a meeting with Roosevelt. Ominously, the White House turned down the request.
For now, any hope of rescue for the Jews lay in the coming Anglo-American Bermuda conference on refugees. Meanwhile, four huge new crematoriums were put into operation at Auschwitz, and the slaughter of the Jews continued.
TRAINED TO HANDLE FOREIGN affairs with grace and subtlety, the diplomats convening in Bermuda were in the right place. For twelve days, they stayed at Horizons, a luxurious plantation built in 1760. It was perched on a rise amid twenty-five acres of exotic gardens, a profusion of swaying palm trees, spreading, manicured lawns, and hibiscus, with breathtaking views of shimmering turquoise water. Here, in sunlit reception rooms and sumptuous suites cooled by ceiling fans, the delegates would do their work. Bermuda had particular advantages. Originally, it was suggested that the conference be held either in Canada or in Washington, but both venues were vetoed as being too vulnerable to the hue and cry of pressure groups. By contrast, wartime regulations curtailed all access to Bermuda, which meant that the delegates were far from the prying eyes of the press—and from what the State Department considered noisy, showy humanitarian groups.
Roosevelt had hoped that Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts would be the chairman of the American delegation, but Roberts demurred because of his schedule. Roosevelt had replied: “I fully understand but I’m truly sorry that you cannot go to Bermuda—especially at the time of the Easter lilies!” Instead, he appointed Princeton University’s president, Dr. Harold W. Dodds, to serve as chairman. Dodds would be buttressed by the influential chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Sol Bloom; and the straight-talking future majority leader, Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois. Wise and other prominent Jews had hoped Jewish groups could be heard at the conference; instead, the administration only allowed George Warren, executive secretary of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, to serve as a technical adviser. In hindsight, the critics were right—the conference was doomed from the start.
On its face, it seemed as though London and Washington were competing for public recognition of their concern for the Jews, and that the conference started out strong. The participants agreed that there should be steps to encourage neutral European states to take in refugees; to secure transportation for moving refugees to sites in Europe and Africa; and to call on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees to carry out the conclusions arrived at in the conference. Yet from the outset, any specific emphasis on Jews was “strictly prohibited” because of fears that the Allies would object to any “marked preference” for any “particular race or faith.” Moreover, the delegates were warned that the Roosevelt administration had no power “to relax or rescind” immigration laws (ignoring the fact that the administration had yet to even fill its legal quotas).
Once the conference began, it was clear that the administration was moving, as the historian James MacGregor Burns so aptly put it, “with wooden legs.” Congressman Bloom suggested that the Germans be approached to see if they would free an agreed-on number of refugees “each month.” But this only raised indignant shouts and went nowhere. A stickler for propriety, the State Department insisted it would oppose any negotiations with Germany. But what about approaching the satellite Axis countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, which might be willing to make separate deals? This wasn’t even discussed. How about providing food to the half-starved victims of the Germans? Delegates quickly scrawled a line through this proposal; it was rejected outright. As to the possibility that Germany might release a sizable number of refugees of its own accord, again, the delegates stuck their hands in their pockets and pushed their glasses to the ends of their noses: this proposal was rejected for fear that Hitler might “send a large number of picked agents” into Allied territory, or because the Allies lacked the ships to accommodate a sizable exodus of Jews.
The reality, of course, was more complicated: a good number of ships that carried military supplies and men eastward across the Atlantic were actually empty on their return to the United States, but no one pointed this out with any conviction. What, then, were the conferees willing to agree to? Today, it is almost startling to read the recommendations, as freighted as they are with impediments. First, there was Spain. The British argued early and extensively that the estimated six thousand to eight thousand Jewish refugees there—these were the lucky ones who had escaped the mass roundups in neighboring France during the previous summer and managed to cross the Pyrenees mountains to safety—should be transported to a reception camp in North Africa. For the most part, they were currently in prisons and camps, where the conditions were wretched. In a rare moment of insight, it was pointed out that some three thousand of them were healthy enough and able enough to perform military work for the Allies. Yet the Americans were still hesitant, arguing that their ships were already overburdened. Again and again, the conferees came back to the view that the refugees might somehow compromise military operations; the Americans even insisted that North Africa could become a field of future military operations. But as they muddled along, the British felt strongly that if the conference could not find a way to accept at least this proposal, then an enraged public opinion throughout the world “would come to the conclusion that the allies are not making any serious endeavor to deal with the refugee problem.”
Confronted with this taunt, Dodds, the chair of the American delegation, dispatched a hasty note to Breckinridge Long, asking him to give the proposal a second look. Speaking frankly, he added that the concept of a “refuge in Africa” under American administration “appears to be the only new contribution we can make that would impress public opinion.”
War needs now jostled uneasily with humanitarian objectives, strategic considerations with a desire for public approval. Regarding the British proposal, public approval won out. Long passed the proposal on to the War Department, which rejected it,
fearing that a significant mass of European Jews would raise the ire of the local Jordanian population. General Eisenhower, however, had no such objections and eagerly approved the plan. The conference followed Eisenhower’s lead—“subject to military considerations.” But when the proposal made its way back to Washington, Roosevelt expressed hesitation, describing the policy as “extremely unwise.” Only after extensive discussions with the British did Roosevelt give his go-ahead: in July. In the end, only 630 Jews found a haven in North Africa.
For the most part, among these highly educated and well-connected delegates, plan after plan was raised and rejected. Plan after plan was quibbled over and endlessly dissected. Plan after plan was put off, pending future study. The conferees would not pledge funds, would not commit ships for the transportation of refugees, would not promise any changes in immigration laws; it was a collective failure of imagination.
But as the conference itself hurtled toward adjournment, the delegates were keenly aware they needed to have a list of “concrete recommendations.” Those that they did have were few and modest. The first stated their objection to approaching Hitler about letting out potential refugees. The second asserted the two governments’ desire to secure neutral shipping for “transport” of refugees. The third was that the British weigh the possibility of allowing refugees into Cyrenaica in eastern Libya. The fourth was a proposal to take Jews from Spain to depots in North Africa. The fifth recommended a declaration by the Allies about the postwar status of refugees. The sixth was a plan for reorganizing the largely inconsequential Intergovernmental Committee.
There were no serious dissenting voices. George Warren, the technical expert, later remarked that he had been “shocked by the strong resistance” to rescue action. In retrospect, it was as if the delegates were dealing with the nonviolent anti-Semitism of 1933 rather than the death mills of 1943; a time not of Treblinka and Dachau but when signs were displayed in Germany’s motion picture theaters and restaurants reading “Juden unerwünscht” (“Jews not welcome”); a time not of deportations and the Warsaw ghetto but when placards hung outside butcher shops saying “Für Juden kein Zutritt” (“Jews not admitted”); a time not of Auschwitz, but when Jews could not enter dairies to buy milk for their infants or pharmacies to fill their prescriptions. Perhaps for this reason, though the conference had arisen out of a desire to assuage public opinion, the delegates surprisingly agreed to keep the recommendations secret. They would release a one-page bulletin to the press, but the bulletin would announce only that they had carefully analyzed a range of possibilities and were making confidential suggestions to their governments.
Before going back to Princeton, the Americans’ chairman, Dodds, publicly announced that the best way to help the refugees was to “win the war.”
BAFFLED HUMANITARIANS EVERYWHERE WERE shaken and angry. The Jewish Outlook despaired that the conference had “destroyed every hope.” In the House of Representatives, Congressman Samuel Dickstein angrily insisted that “Not even the pessimists among us expected such sterility,” while in the Senate, an independent-minded Republican, William Langer, said that “two million Jews in Europe have been killed off already and another five million Jews are awaiting the same fate unless they are saved immediately.” The renowned Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned President Roosevelt about the “deep pessimism” that followed the conference. And Rabbi Israel Goldstein, normally known for his moderation, blasted: “The job of the Bermuda conference apparently was not to rescue victims of Nazi terror, but to rescue our State Department.”
The fact was that the president had been troubled about the plight of the Jews ever since Hitler took power in 1933. When pushed and prodded, he had verbally attacked the Nazis numerous times for their crimes and warned that the guilty would be sorely punished. It was clear, however, that at least thus far the deterrent effects of his warnings had been small.
And now, it was the president’s circumspection, rather than any unwavering moral indignation, that set the tone of administration policy over the next crucial months. Little wonder that the State Department took weeks, even months, to deal with issues, or simply to answer correspondence. And every month, every week, tens of thousands more innocent lives were lost in Hitler’s machinery of death. Why then, was Roosevelt not shocked into creative action? How was it that he seemed incapable of confronting the crux of the problem—the millions of Jewish men, women, and children held hostage by the Nazi regime and slated for the gas chambers?
Lacking answers, it fell to the Jews themselves to act. They did so, heroically, in Warsaw.
BY JULY 1942, THE Nazi death machine was in full operation in the Polish city of Warsaw. Already, Jews from the city and surrounding communities had been herded into the Warsaw ghetto, a space of ten blocked-off streets backing up to the Jewish cemetery on one corner and the rail yard on the other. When the war began, 350,000 Jews, roughly one third of the city’s total population, lived and thrived in the Polish capital. Warsaw’s Jewish population constituted the largest Jewish community in Poland, and in Europe. After New York City’s, it was the second-largest single Jewish community in the world.
Within one week of the fall of Warsaw in late September 1939, the Germans established a Judenrat, a Jewish Council. Within two months, all Jews had to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David. Their schools were closed, their property was confiscated, and Jewish men were rounded up for forced labor. The ghetto was established in October 1940. Some 400,000 Jews from the city and surrounding towns had one month to move into an area of 1.3 square miles. On block after block, buildings overflowed; a single room was now home to seven people. The conditions were brutal. The ghetto was surrounded by a ten-foot wall, topped with barbed wire. There was to be no passage between the ghetto and the rest of the city: Judenfrei Warsaw. Inside the wall, there was never enough food; children starved to death, their emaciated bodies curled in doorways and on stoops. In less than two years, 83,000 Jews died of hunger and disease. Still, the Jews maintained their dignity, secretly praying and studying.
Then the first mass deportations began on July 22, 1942, as train after train pulled out of the station, bound for the killing center at Treblinka. By September, 265,000 Jews had been forcibly removed from the ghetto and sent to this death camp. And despite the Nazis’ efforts to isolate the Jews of Warsaw, those who remained now knew where they were going. On September 11, an underground newspaper published an account by an escapee from Treblinka. It concluded, “Today every Jew should know the fate of those resettled. . . . Don’t let yourself be caught! Hide, don’t let yourself be taken away! . . . We are all soldiers on a terrible front!” Death was waiting—the only alternative was to fight. Confronted with these harsh truths, two Jewish underground organizations began to act. They formed armed resistance groups, numbering about 750 men. Their weapons were simple pistols and explosives, smuggled in from contacts in the Polish Home Army.
But the Nazis were moving equally fast. It was Heinrich Himmler who gave the order to liquidate the ghetto in the fall of 1942. Able-bodied residents were to be sent to forced labor camps near Lublin. The rest were to be destroyed. On January 18, 1943, after a hiatus, deportations resumed. However, this time the resistance was ready. Jewish fighters armed with pistols maneuvered their way into a transport group. They waited until the signal came; then they opened fire on the German escorts. The Germans quickly fired back, but in the confusion, the remaining Jews fled. Three days later, the Germans halted deportations. Now the preparations inside the ghetto began in earnest. Jews started building underground bunkers and shelters, ready to hide and fight if the Germans tried to make good on their promise to fully liquidate the ghetto.
Months passed, and the Germans set a date for the liquidation: April 19, the eve of Passover—a symbol that could not be mistaken. They planned for their final operation to take only three days. Yet when Nazi SS units and police stormed the ghetto, they found the streets silent and the buildings deserted. Nea
rly all the Jews still alive had retreated to hiding places or underground bunkers. Then the Jewish fighters struck; in the words of one, “We suppressed our emotions and reached for our guns.” They trained their pistols and their most lethal weapons, an assortment of homemade bombs, on the stunned Germans, who, unprepared, hastily pulled back outside the ghetto walls. Six Germans and six Ukrainian auxiliaries had been killed. When the Nazi forces returned, this time their task was total destruction: to raze every building and to demolish the ghetto block by block. To do so, they used flamethrowers. As flames overtook the walls and smoke billowed from the windows, Jews hiding inside were forced to jump to their deaths. The Germans, seeing them, began firing, riddling their victims with bullets as they stood on balconies to jump or as they plummeted helplessly through the air. If any made it to the ground alive, the German forces opened fire there. Yet despite the appalling carnage, small groups of Jews managed to elude the Germans and to fight them for nearly one month. In the unyielding words of one combatant, “We fight like animals for naked life.”
They did. It wasn’t enough. By May 16, the ghetto had been liquidated, and the German commander ordered the Great Synagogue on Tlomacki Street to be destroyed. Over fifty-six thousand Jews had been captured; most were sent to the Majdanek camp outside the city of Lublin. The Germans recorded that seven thousand Jews were killed in the uprising—among them the escapee from Treblinka who had brought news of the death camp and its gas chambers. Another seven thousand from inside the ghetto were sent to Treblinka. Nearly all were gassed immediately on their arrival.