Holocaust: Where Were the Americans? Research Paper

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It is again easy to see how citizens might be overwhelmed with daily reports of violence and despair, and unable to truly grasp the ramifications of what was happening to the Jews.

Wyman presents a persuasive case that even if the American citizenry might be forgiven for their disbelief, the political leadership has no viable excuse. Jewish organizations consistently reported first-hand accounts of the atrocities and American Congressional leaders were privy to high-level intelligence that confirmed those versions of events. Wyman argues that outright anti-Semitism was likely a factor in the overwhelmingly Protestant legislature, but also points to the deadly force of indifference at all levels of the federal bureaucracy. He reserves his harshest criticism for Roosevelt, a President who is remembered for his heroism: "In the end, the era's most prominent symbol of humanitarianism turned away from one of history's most compelling moral challenges," (Wyman, 1984: 313).

Additional Accounts

Hayim Greenberg, a Zionist labor spokesman in the 1940s, was outraged at what he saw as contented disregard by American Jews. Those Jews, living comfortable lives, could not be bothered to pressure their Congressmen to take action. Greenberg concludes that "American Jewry has not done -- and has made no effort to do -- its elementary duty toward the millions of Jews who are captive and dommed to die in Europe!" (Greenberg, 1943: 85). Thus, according to Greenberg, American Jews had a particular responsibility to heed the calls for help from their families across the ocean. Ignoring those pleas, or choosing disbelief, was "shameful."

Elie Weisel, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, corroborates Greenberg's and Wyman's arguments. Rather than examining the role of American's Jews, however, Weisel focuses on the willful ignorance of the political elite. He notes that "high officials had up-to-date information about every transport carrying its human cargo to the realm of ashes … in 1942-1943, they already possessed photographs documenting the reports," (Weisel, 1968: 110). He concludes that the lack of response must mean that "the Allies could not have cared less" about the fate of the Jews.

Not all scholars agree with the writers profiled here.

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Indeed, William Rubinstein's famous response book was entitled the Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis, and it offers a direct rebuttal to Wyman's central argument. Rubinstein focuses on the determination of the Germans and the unlikelihood of the Nazis responding to American pressure. Thus, he concludes that the prospects for successful rescue were "impractical, irrelevant, or not proposed by anyone at the time," (Warnes, 2010). This argument, pitted against Wyman's, remains a hotly contested question in academic departments around the world.

Conclusion

Arguing that American citizens didn't fully grasp the scale of the Holocaust is believable. It is, indeed, a basic function of human psychology to avoid information that contradicts our carefully constructed reference points. Shipping millions of Jews from their already horrific ghettos to concentration camps where they were killed in ovens defies the imagination. However, political leaders have no excuse. Reliable intelligence and first-hand reports were consistent. Rather than present this information to the American people and seek political cover for a risky rescue operation, they chose to classify it. By denying Americans full access to information, they increased their own culpability. Elected officials cannot be said to represent their constituents if they withhold information and refuse to act on it for their own cowardly reasons. While blame for the Holocaust undeniably rests with the Nazis in Germany, American political leaders participated in the process by refusing to act.

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