The Marques family fought in the Revolution and before the War of 1812 moved to South Carolina. Bernard Baruch’s mother, Belle Wolfe Baruch, was a member of both the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the Confederacy. Bernie was eleven when his family moved to New York, and his mother became regent of the Knickerbocker Chapter of the DAR and president of the Washington Headquarters Club and the Southland Club of New York. Still, Baruch understood that his Jewish heritage limited his opportunities. He might have been president, he told Coit, if he had not been a Jew—and had not Jew hatred become again a major political theme after World War I.
The twisted history of race and racism, of passing and power, causes one to pause long enough to consider the concept of Dr. Simon Baruch’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Margaret Coit explained the “terrible secret” his sons unfolded proudly after his death by dismissing the 1870s Klan as a redemptive order “created to free the South from the Reign of Terror of Reconstruction, where order was nonexistent.” Simon Baruch’s Klan rode against “carpetbaggers and scalawags,” not against blacks, Jews, or Catholics. It “bore no resemblance,” she argued, “to that mongrel outfit of the 20th century, which burned a fiery cross” to express its contempt of that few Baruch.
During the 1920s, when Henry Ford launched his “paper pogrom,” Baruch was his chief target. Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, printed as truth the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a vicious hoax that purported to prove that an international capitalist Jewish conspiracy ran the world’s business. Ford’s lurid Jew-hating campaign lasted until 1927. But his popular articles were published in a four-volume work, The International Jew, reprinted ih several languages, and quoted extensively by Hitler in Mein Kampf.*
According to Ford, Jews in America controlled banks, cotton, sugar, industry—especially the fashion and film industries. They were the most dangerous people on earth. And the worst, in Ford’s fantasia, was Bernard Baruch. Banner headlines vilified him as a munitions profiteer, chief of the “Jewish Copper Kings,” “the most powerful man in the world.”
Baruch read the headlines in his office, and left for home. His wife and children, astounded, were in tears. Neither Baruch nor his wife, Annie Griffen, ever recovered emotionally.
Nevertheless, as Ford’s violent rhetoric became Hitler’s brutal policy, Baruch remained mysteriously silent, and managed to ignore the refugee issue entirely. On the other hand, Baruch in America and Churchill in England were virtually alone in the early years of Hitler’s remilitarization when they called for urgent defense spending, concerted opposition, mobilization.
Each was reviled for his efforts; Churchill was out of step with Britain’s “appeasement,” and Baruch with America’s “isolationism.” In addition, Baruch received letters labeling him a meddlesome, dangerous “dirty Jew.” Headlines during the 1930s again screamed “International Banker,” “Jewish Warmonger.”
Baruch never understood why he was so widely regarded as a Jew first. He never understood society’s rejection of his Episcopalian wife, Annie Griffen Baruch, and their children, raised in her church. But he believed in assimilation, and scorned group identification.
Like Baruch, the Morgenthaus were assimilationists by custom and family tradition. In 1917, Woodrow Wilson appointed Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Faced with the future of Turkey’s crumbling interests in Palestine and Britain’s mandate over the area, Morgenthau rejected Zionism as “wrong in principle and impossible of realization.” He considered it an “East European proposal,” which would hurt “the Jews of America.”
As FDR’s secretary of the treasury, Henry, Jr., shared his father’s views. According to Henry Morgenthau III, “there was a very strong drive for total Americanization.” Zionism suggested a “dual alliance.” The Morgenthaus, and most Jewish friends in the Roosevelt orbit, “certainly, until Hitler, were really moving away from Jewish things.” And they all “would have told Mrs Roosevelt, ‘You don’t want to have anything to do with these Zionists.’ She accepted the Jewishness of her Jewish friends, and certainly when it came to Jewish matters probably would have accepted whatever they had to say.”
Unfortunately, during the early years of the Nazi era, they had virtually nothing to say.
When ER proposed her for membership to the Colony Club in 1937, Elinor Morgenthau was blackballed: Jews were not members. ER, who with Mary Harriman had been one of the founders of the Colony Club, resigned in silent protest. Months after, when the press asked about her resignation, she said only that she had no time for membership. Elinor Morgenthau did not want the First Lady to make a fuss. Every slight was an agony, and she did not want to embarrass or hurt ER.
Whatever Elinor Morgenthau privately thought about Hitler’s intentions, throughout the 1930s she publicly ignored them. An outsider with no sense of privilege or expectation of justice, Elinor Morgenthau was determined to protect her friend the First Lady from suffering any political abuse on her account. When, therefore, ER asked which Jewish group to address, Elinor Morgenthau was eager that she limit her appearance to the least controversial, the most secular and philanthropic federation.
Louise Wise, wife of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, had invited ER to address the Women’s Association of the American Jewish Congress, which had grown significantly from 200 member organizations. It was, Mrs. Wise wrote, “eminently now worth your while to address this group.” She assured ER that the “theme could be one of your own choosing, but your coming would strengthen our movement and would make us feel that even if you do not wish to discuss the subject which engrosses us now, that your mere presence would hearten us in the very difficult crisis we are facing.”
Because the American Jewish Congress, and the Wises, were identified with public protest, including the growing German boycott movement, Elinor Morgenthau urged ER to speak instead to the Federation of Jewish Women’s Organizations. She drafted a letter for ER to send to Louise Wise, along with a note to Tommy that she needed to explain “the matter to her personally.” In her draft Elinor Morgenthau “purposefully” omitted the name of the organization “I think Mrs. R should address,” leaving it to Mrs. Wise “to do that, or if she doesn’t want to do so, to turn down Mrs. R—rather than have Mrs. R turn her down.”
ER sent Morgenthau’s draft exactly as she wrote it:
I am sure you realize that I must limit myself in regard to the number of addresses that I can give, particularly outside of Washington. On the other hand, I would very much like to address a large group of Jewish women. Is there no one organization which embraces, so far as possible, all Jewish women’s clubs or organizations? If there were such a group or Federation, it seems to me that it would be most fitting for me to make my first address to Jewish women, since I have been in the White House, to an organization of this type.
Louise Wise deliberately misread the implied message and replied: “I need hardly tell you how glad I am to have your acceptance of my invitation to speak to Jewish women in New York. Acting upon your suggestion and in glad compliance,” she invited “other large Jewish women’s groups in order that we may have the widest possible hearing for your valued word….”
According to the press, ER’s speech, before three thousand members and guests of the Women’s Association of the American Jewish Congress, “crowded into the grand ballroom of the Hotel Commodore,” was a great success.*
Although ER did not wish, in Mrs. Wise’s words, “to discuss the subject which engrosses us now,” she was not criticized for her failure to do so. According to Florence Rothschild in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, as ER stood “in that huge room decorated with the Stars and Stripes and with the blue-and-white banner that bears the Shield of David,” every woman in the room felt honored:
Some of the First Lady’s listeners may have felt disappointed that… she avoided making any statements on specifically Jewish questions. Personally, however, we regard it only as an additional instance of her ta
ct that at the very beginning of her address she emphasized that she was speaking not as a non-Jewess to Jewish woman but as an American to fellow Americans.
ER spoke about the New Deal, and urged her audience to consider the desperate plight of the “40 [to] 60 percent of the population … living on relief, or starving.” She urged women to be “even ahead of the men, in their attitude toward recovery.”
ER’s very presence at the Hotel Commodore was interpreted by other speakers as a “repudiation of propagandists’ attempts to set up racial, religious, political and class divisions in this nation.”
Whenever ER spoke to Jewish groups she was greeted both by fervent gratitude and an avalanche of protest filled with race hatred, anti-Semitism, and occasionally personal threats. Stunned by the depths of the problem in America, by 1935 she spoke out against anti-Semitism and race hatred wherever she found it in the United States.
She wrote letters to recommend Jewish students to various colleges and supported a wide variety of causes, including Jewish orphanages, philanthropies, and aid societies. On one occasion, she wrote the president of Wheaton College:
I understand you take a certain number of Jewish girls and I am wondering if there is a chance of your taking Ruth Liberman. I have met the child and she impresses me as a thoroughly nice person. Of course, I would not think of asking you to do anything you do not feel you would do ordinarily.
Since ER’s private acts of domestic concern contrasted with her public international silence, it is important to consider FDR’s policy, and his own silence. In addition to regular diplomatic correspondence, FDR received vivid descriptions of events and personalities from Felix Frankfurter, who was visiting professor at Oxford in 1933 and 1934. He had close friends throughout Europe, and relatives in Vienna.
Frankfurter’s letters to FDR from Oxford were filled with information, clippings, suggestions for specific things to do. Forever the teacher, in his letters he was instructive and pertinent. On 17 October 1933 he sent clippings from the London Observer.
[They contained] illuminating glimpses into the violence and madness now dominating in Germany. Developments make it abundantly clear that the significance of Hitlerism far transcends ferocious anti-Semitism and fanatical racism. Dr. Alice Hamilton is right in insisting that the attack against the Jew is merely an index to the gospel of force and materialism that explains the present rulers….
Frankfurter suggested FDR broadcast in German to say “some plain things that need to be said.” Because of strict propaganda controls, German citizens were completely “barred from knowledge of the outside world…. No other voice in the world would carry such weight as yours…. By such an act you would become the rallying center of the world’s sanity.”
FDR did not answer that part of Frankfurter’s letter. A month later, on 23 November 1933, Frankfurter sent FDR an urgent appeal from James McDonald, the League’s high commissioner for German refugees: McDonald had received evidence that Germany intended to issue a formal decree establishing “a second-class citizenship for German Jews:”
Such action once taken would not only further humiliate and degrade 100s of 1000s of men and women; it would make much more difficult any softening in the German government’s attitude later. Such retrogression to the inhumane and unChristian practise of an earlier age should, I think, be forestalled if there is any-conceivable way of doing so.
McDonald considered the situation dire. Refugee problems were already “too large to be handled satisfactorily.” If conditions worsened there was “grave danger that something like an exodus—panic in practice and proportions—may be precipitated. This would create a situation in the bordering countries beyond the possibility of ordered control. You will at once sense the tragedy of such a situation….”
On 22 December 1933, FDR wrote a long chatty letter in which he answered virtually every point his friend and mentor had raised in several letters, except those dealing with Europe and refugees.
Perhaps they spoke on the telephone. In any case, Frankfurter continued to send FDR urgent European information. On 20 February 1934, he telegrammed:
London advises from Vienna indicate serious danger of excesses particularly anti-Jewish. Deeply hope it will commend itself to you to make appropriate representations to Austria if indeed you have not already done so. International usage and our own precedents amply support such action. We joined in protest to Roumania in 1872. In 1891 President Harrison declared “suggestions of humanity” warranted protest to Russia. In 1902 TR invited Powers to make representations to Russia. None in better position than you to make such appeal. Time of essence…
For all the historical precedents to condemn anti-Jewish pogroms, FDR made no such appeal. Two days later, Frankfurter sent him a clipping from the Manchester Guardian concerning events in Vienna, and a long historical lecture:
I need not tell you that Austria is really the football between the rivalries of Hitler and Mussolini…. The victimization which the Germans have made so familiar is proceeding and will continue to proceed in Austria….
In March, to Frankfurter’s relief, FDR appointed George Messersmith, a known antifascist, to the embassy in Vienna.
After a month of correspondence from Frankfurter, FDR wrote another long gossipy letter. Again he answered every one of Frankfurter’s points, paragraph by paragraph, except those which referred to the situation in Germany or the plight of Jews.
The spring and summer of 1934 were seen by many observers as a turning point. Hitler now bellowed his determination to rearm, solidify his forces, pursue his expansionist goals, eliminate his opponents. On 30 June he initiated a massacre of his earliest supporters, the Brownshirts of the SA. During the “Night of the Long Knives,” Hitler’s new storm troopers brutally murdered five thousand to seven thousand of his former political allies.
Winston Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm that it showed beyond doubt “that conditions in Germany bore no resemblance to those of a civilised state.” He continued:
A dictatorship based upon terror and reeking with blood had confronted the world. Anti-Semitism was ferocious and brazen, and the concentration-camp system was already in full operation for all obnoxious or politically dissident classes. I was deeply affected by the episode, and the whole process of German rearmament, of which there was now overwhelming evidence, seemed to me invested with a ruthless, lurid tinge. It glittered and it glared.
Then, on 5 September 1934, the annual Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg turned into another ominous show—as Leni Riefenstahl and her crew of hundreds worked to immortalize Hitler’s “Triumph of the Will.”
In that overheated and tense climate, with Klanners and Nazis organizing in the United States, FDR decided to send a letter of greeting to a well-publicized Nazi rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Ignored by his biographers, associates, and staff, that decision created for history a profound sense of confusion. Although fully reported, it was quickly forgotten and failed to become an abiding controversy.
On 7 October 1934, The New York times ran a four-tiered headline: “Germans Here Ask Place in Politics / 20,000 at Madison Square Garden Hear Pleas for Greater Recognition / GATHER IN NAZI SETTING / Flags and Uniforms Abound—Message from Roosevelt and Hitler’s Name Cheered.”
According to the Times, swastikas and Nazi bunting mingled with U.S. flags at a mass meeting attended by thousands of cheering “Friends of the New Germany.”
Outside, six hundred police officers guarded Madison Square Garden for fear of disturbances, which “did not materialize.” “Several hundred” protesters, “mostly” men and women of the Young People’s Socialist League, marched up and down Eighth Avenue with placards. They were kept far from the event, and there were no “outbreaks, no arrests.”
Inside, the scene “resembled the news photographs of a rally somewhere in Germany. At one end of the arena a huge platform had been erected. At each side of the platform stood pylons, fifteen feet high,” one topped by a Nazi
swastika, the other bearing black, white, and red German pennants. Atop each pylon were illuminated red papers symbolizing Germany’s “eternal flame.” Signs in German and English ordered: “Germans of America, Awake.”
Over a thousand ushers, men and women in Nazi costumes and adornments, served with military precision.
Various speeches and a chorus of two hundred men electrified the crowd—as did FDR’s greeting, sent, Dr. Griebl explained, because the president was unable to attend. Before he read FDR’s words, Griebl urged Germans to “help our President in carrying out his program of reconstruction and recovery.” He also warned: “Those who fight us must perish—socially as well as economically—because of our determination to destroy our enemies completely and without any consideration whatever.”
Dated 27 September, FDR’s letter was a nonpolitical celebration of the contribution made by “persons of German blood to the upbuilding of this country.”
The arrival in Philadelphia of the first company of German settlers on Oct. 6 1683 [marked] the beginning of the great German immigration movement to this country. … soon spread to the South & West. …
By their quiet courage, their great industry, and their knowledge and skills in the arts and crafts, these German settlers contributed greatly to the wealth and prosperity of the country. Dr. Benjamin Rush … recorded the excellent qualities of the German farmers, [and they] “produced in their children not only the habits of labor but a love for it! …” [Their contributions and qualities] have become a valued part of the common heritage of the American people.
Received with great swells of cheering enthusiasm, Dr. Griebl “called for three ‘heils’ for ‘The Leader, Adolf Hitler,’ and also for the President of the United States.” That ceremony was followed by “The Star-Spangled Banner” and other speeches, several emphatically anti-Semitic.
Eleanor Roosevelt Page 47
