Heather Voight has written an eye-opening book about America’s cavalier effort regarding the attempted immigration of European Jews to America (Britain as well) during WWII. The book focuses on the apparent anti-semitism of America’s State Department and the general anti-semitic stance of the public. Did we really believe that if we brought victimized Jews from Europe to America that most would be Nazi spies? Obviously, we believed the Japanese-Americans on the west coast were spies because we took their homes and businesses away and sent them to internment camps in the midwest. I guess you had to live in 1940s America to get the full flavor of what was going through the average American citizen’s mind. Lets be real, nobody knew that we were going to win the war in Japan or Germany. My review in no way is making a judgement of any kind...like I said, you had to be there. As I read Heather Voight’s book, I kept thinking…"With hindsight, It’s easy to make the right decision.” The Japanese-Americans would have remained on the west coast and the Jews would have been welcomed with open arms in America and Britain (at least one would hope so). As I read her book, I also thought about the scuttlebutt I read in other books about Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh being Hitler sympathizers in the 1930s (both received The Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle by Hermann Goring in 1938 on separate dinner parties). Several weeks later the infamous Kristallnacht broke out throughout Germany. Ford and Lindbergh kept their medals.
Everything considered, Heather Voight, a successful freelance writer and history blogger, did her homework with due diligence with the known facts. This is not a novel, this really happened. Normally, pure history books put me to sleep. That’s why I’m a big fan of Erik Larson, who writes nonfiction that reads like fiction. He recently said in AARP Magazine that his way of writing nonfiction changed when he read David McCullough’s, The Johnstown Flood. He now calls his style of nonfiction...narrative nonfiction. I only mention this because Voight’s book, while not a cliffhanger nonfiction work, was not dry or tedious. Maybe because it was short and precise, I’m not sure, it worked. I know that I fell asleep many times reading William L. Shirer’s 1,280 page tome, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Regardless, I learned a lot about our belated attempt to rescue the European Jews. Again, I’m not passing judgement either way.
So how did The War Refugee Board (WRB) get started? Not easily, based on the prejudices I mention in the first (lengthy) paragraph. But the two heroes have to be, first of all, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, friend and old neighbor of FDR. By the way he was the only Jew on FDR’s cabinet, so he was walking on eggshells. He had to convince FDR that America had to help the Jews overseas. Not easy when, “Although the British stated their position more bluntly, the Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department both saw Jews as garbage that needed to be disposed of elsewhere.” Ouch! The second hero was the head of the WRB, John Pehle. So what were some of their obstacles? Well first of all, “The failure of the Roosevelt administration to fund the WRB showed the world that the United States government was not committed to the Jewish rescue.” Secondly, by the time the WRB was established, four million Jews were already murdered. Thirdly, “Throughout the war, the British resisted Jewish immigration to Palestine and they responded similarly to the Hungarian government’s proposal (to save Jewish lives). Fourthly, “Although there is no way to know how many Jews could have escaped under the various ransom proposals or which offers would have proved successful, the reluctance of the Allies to supply the Nazis with Allied goods should have been overridden by the desire to preserve human lives.” In other words, the Nazis made many offers to exchange Jews for goods that America and England both refused.
So, how did this rescue effort end? It’s a matter of history, but the best way to find out is to buy this factual history book. I must say that I was impressed with Heather Voight’s style and prose, although there were edit problems that were not the fault of the author. Buy it and learn.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: What are the best Holocaust books written by Jews who actually experienced the nightmare? Let’s examine a few. Probably the best know book is Anne Frank’s, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947). Amazon.com states, “Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic-a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short.”
Another profound book is Elie Wiesel’s, Night (1958). Goodreads.com states, “Night is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944-1945, at the height of the Holocaust and toward the end of the Second World War. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father-child relationship as his father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver. Penetrating and powerful, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.”
A more recent publication is Thomas Buergenthal’s, A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy (2007). Goodreads.com states, “Thomas Buergenthal, now a judge in the International Court of Justice in the Hague, tells his astonishing experience as a his memoir, A Lucky Child. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life. Now dedicated to helping those subjected to tyranny throughout the world, Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship.”
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