Eleanor Roosevelt

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  These fines had another, more sinister purpose. Hitler had announced: “If there is any country that believes it has not enough Jews, I shall gladly turn over to it all our Jews.” Now, if they left, they left penniless. Moreover, most countries had closed their doors, and those who would accept Jews would not accept paupers.

  It was a major challenge for FDR, whose policy was to do nothing to involve the United States in European affairs, but who wanted to respond somehow to the thousands of refugees who stood for hours before the U.S. embassy seeking asylum, only to be routinely turned away.

  Within days, Jews were stripped of their remaining human rights. They were no longer permitted to drive cars, travel on public transportation, walk in parks, go to museums, attend theaters, or concerts. Passports and visas were canceled. They were stateless and impoverished. Charged for the violence and fined for the damage, the Jewish community now owed the Reich, collectively, one billion Reichsmarks. For a time, they were not molested in their homes. But there was nothing to do, no work to be had; no place to pray; no recourse from agony. Many committed suicide; most tried to leave.

  ER wrote:

  This German-Jewish business makes me sick and when FDR called tonight I was glad to know [U.S. Ambassador to Germany Hugh] Wilson was being recalled and we were protesting. How could Lindbergh take that Hitler decoration!

  ER’s formerly private protests against bigotry were increasingly for public attribution. Although she had resigned in silence from the Colony Club for its discrimination against Elinor Morgenthau, she now canceled a speaking engagement at a country club in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a statement of distress that it excluded Jews.

  While she counseled complete assimilation and urged Jews to “wipe out in their own consciousness any feeling of difference by joining in all that is being done by Americans” for justice and democracy, she also spoke on behalf of support for refugees in Palestine. In 1937 she helped spearhead a drive for a home for immigrant girls in Jerusalem, and was perceived as so supportive that an Eleanor Roosevelt Vocational Training Classroom in the new home was dedicated in her honor.

  On 6 December 1938, ER appealed to fifteen hundred people assembled at the Hotel Astor under the auspices of a national committee for refugees chaired by William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, to help promote the Léon Blum colony in Palestine for the settlement of one thousand Jewish refugee families. ER urged all Americans to celebrate the democratic vision of the nation’s founders and by “thought and example” to help restore “kindness, good-will and liberty” to the world.

  While ER called for demonstrations of “thought and example,” little was done, or said, by FDR’s administration to indicate official outrage at Hitler’s violence. No message of protest warning of boycott or economic reprisal was sent. Yet history abounds in such protests on behalf of victimized peoples. In 1903 and 1906, Theodore Roosevelt protested against Jewish pogroms in Russia, after Jacob Schiff lobbied for an official U.S. condemnation of the massacre of Jews in Odessa. In 1902, TR ordered his secretary of state, John Hay, to send an official U.S. protest to Romania:

  The political disabilities of the Jews in Romania, their exclusion from the public service and the learned professions, the limitations of their civil rights and the imposition upon them of exceptional taxes … [are] repugnant to the moral sense of liberal modern peoples…. This government cannot be a tacit party to such an international wrong. It is constrained to protest against the treatment to which the Jews of Romania are subjected … in the name of humanity.

  FDR sent no similar message to Germany.

  FDR did respond to the pitiless carnage and massacre in China. In December 1937, Japan destroyed Nanking in a vicious episode of rape, horror, and death. Half the population, an estimated 300,000 people, were tortured and killed. Whether the details were immediately known to FDR, even of Japan’s 12 December sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay, remains controversial. But on 11 January 1938, FDR sent a memo to Cordell Hull and Admiral Cary T. Grayson, head of the American Red Cross. He called for additional relief funds for the “destitute Chinese civilians” and for medical aid. “I think we could raise $1,000,000 without any trouble at all.” On 17 January, the U.S. Red Cross launched an appeal for aid to the Chinese people, initiated by FDR’s formal request for such a drive.

  No similar appeal was made by FDR to the Red Cross on behalf of Europe’s Jews.*

  Since he was considered by many the best friend American Jews ever had, FDR’s reactions to the European events of 1938 are unexplainable. He wrote nothing to Mussolini after he issued his summer 1938 decrees expelling Jews who had settled in Italy after 1919 and removing all Jews from schools, universities, businesses, and the professions. On 15 September 1938, however, FDR sent a crass note to William Phillips, the U.S. ambassador to Rome: “What a plight the unfortunate Jews are in. It gives them little comfort to remind them that they have been ‘on the run’ for about four thousand years.”

  Subsequently, FDR told Phillips to confer personally with Mussolini on “the Jewish exile question.” According to Ickes:

  [FDR wanted to cultivate Mussolini and] drive a wedge between him and Hitler and at the same time use his good offices to prevail upon Hitler to ameliorate the economic condition of the Jews who are being driven into exile. Mussolini agrees that it is not fair to the rest of the world for Germany to strip her Jews bare and then exclude them. They ought at least be allowed to convert enough of their property into money to take them to other lands and establish themselves there.

  For all moral and political purposes, Kristallnacht was the terminal event. Civility in the heart of western Europe lay in ruins, surrounded by broken glass, bloodied streets, desecrated temples, burned Torahs, ripped books of prayer to the one shared God. Hitler’s intentions were flagrant, and the whole world was invited to witness. Twenty thousand Jews were removed to concentration camps, which the Anglo-American press named: Dachau near Munich, Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen north of Berlin, Buchenwald near Weimar.

  These great centers of learning and high culture had been transformed into locations of unspeakable humiliation and agony.

  Except for Father Charles E. Coughlin, who hailed the violence against “Jewish-sponsored Communism,” the press was unanimous in its condemnation. Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, British counselor in Berlin, wired Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax: “The Jews of Germany are, indeed, not a national but a world problem, which, if neglected, contains the seeds of a terrible vengeance.”

  FDR told his 15 November press conference: “The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the U.S…. I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a 20th century civilization.” FDR agreed to allow all German aliens on visitor visas to remain in the United States for six months “and for other like periods so long as necessary.” At the time there were between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand political refugees covered by his order, and “not all Jews, by any means,” the president assured the press. “All shades of liberal political thought and many religions are represented.”

  Anti-Semitism in FDR’s State Department increased after Hitler’s November atrocities. Breckenridge Long now dedicated himself to keeping refugees out of America. Curiously, FDR continually promoted Breckenridge Long, who had life-and-death control over visas and passports. Nevertheless, in 1938, for the first time, the United States filled its refugee quota.

  ER and her asylum-seeking circle faced the urgent refugee crisis in a lonely political environment. Thousands of the earliest refugees who left in 1933 were still wandering Europe seeking safety and political asylum. After 31 January 1933, over 30 percent of Germany’s 500,000 Jews had become refugees. After the March 1938 Anschluss, Germany’s annexation of Austria, when the Nazis began to expel Austria’s 190,000 Jews, the situation became critical. The flight of Czech Jews compounded the problem, and Kristallnacht ignited refugee panic.

  FDR expanded his s
earch for underpopulated and suitable lands upon which to place the world’s unwanted Jews. He ordered Myron Taylor, the U.S. representative on the Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees, to return to London for further discussions with George Rublee, director of the committee. But again FDR told his press conference that he had no intention of asking Congress to alter existing immigration quotas. He acknowledged Hitler’s determination to send Jews out of his territories, on luxury ships if necessary, by searching the world’s waste spaces for possible places of sanctuary.

  During her own press conference, ER called for temporary emergency measures to do whatever was possible “to deal with the refugee problem, and at home, for renewed devotion to … the American way of life.” Wary of her husband’s strategies, she hesitated to criticize him directly and said: “Of the international issues involved, or existing conditions abroad, [she] would not speak.” But this was “a special situation” which required “special and speedy relief methods … of an emergent and transitory nature. For ourselves, I hope we will do, as individuals, all we can to preserve what is a traditional right in this country—freedom for different races and different religions.”

  FDR appealed for special emergency asylum in the United States for temporary residents. He urged Congress not to introduce “new legislation, to force the deportation of the unfortunates who have sought temporary asylum here, any more than it sought to force the deportation of white Russians to face certain death at the hands of the Soviet Union.”

  But antirefugee feelings were virulent, and Congress wanted no part of any refugee liberalization schemes. New York Congressman William Sirovich planned to introduce one, and also a resolution to call for the United States to break off diplomatic relations with Germany. Martin Dies said any such proposal would receive fewer than a hundred votes.

  FDR cast about for some alternative to carnage. After Kristallnacht, FDR appointed geographer Isaiah Bowman, president of The Johns Hopkins University and formerly territorial adviser to the U.S. delegation at Versailles, to scout the globe for potential areas for settlement. Given the failure of the Evian Conference, FDR was particularly interested in undeveloped lands or weak colonial centers. Bowman’s mandate included a study of resource-rich areas for future investment and development. From 1938 to 1940, Bowman and a State Department team explored possibilities in underpopulated areas of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Central Africa. This amazing investigation revealed FDR’s early interest in British and French colonial territories as well as nominally independent and sovereign nations.

  On 21 November 1938, Henry Morgenthau reported his conversation with Dr. Bowman “on colonies” to FDR: The “only country in Central America which offers possibilities for colonization is Costa Rica.” But Morgenthau wanted “to remind” FDR that the president of the United Fruit Company “informed you” that Costa Rica required “$5,000,000 to put them on their feet financially.”

  Costa Rica was particularly suited for refugees because of its “excellent” climate and the fact that it was “democratic and sympathetic toward immigration.” Perhaps 100,000 refugees could be accommodated.

  Honduras had a sparse population. There were good mining possibilities in gold and silver, but the “attitude of government toward immigration doubtful.”

  Nicaragua was “sparsely inhabited but capable of sustaining two or three 10,000 groups by subsistence agriculture….”

  Guatemala offered “good prospects in certain areas.” But these areas were already inhabited by “some influential English and American Farm Owners,” and there were many German plantations. “Government likely to favor immigrants, but some foreign [especially German] land owners likely to oppose.”

  British Honduras (Belize) was unsuitable, since additional settlers “would strengthen Britain’s hold on the territory.”

  Panama was a possibility for “several 10,000 groups.” Salvador was impossible, “due to dense population and intensive development.”

  South America varied widely: The underpopulated areas of Venezuela failed from every point of view. Brazil had geographic possibilites but political drawbacks. Paraguay, while not a “paradise,” did have space. But politically the entire region was disastrous.

  Bowman cautioned FDR against the whole idea. He objected to the impact of “a large foreign immigrant group” upon these countries, and particularly worried that FDR’s interest in their presence would “seriously” involve the United States in “European quarrels.”

  Why not keep the European elements within the framework of the Old World? Even if we do not favor migration to Latin America, but allow it, difficulties will arise….

  FDR evidently agreed. In any case, no further steps were taken by the United States—except subsequently for economic investment. Sumner Welles briefed FDR on the resettlement situation worldwide. It was grim.

  Australia would admit five thousand a year, but wanted no publicity. South Africa had refused to participate in Evian and was not interested: There was “strong and increasing anti-Semitism in the Union.” Canada would not discuss the subject.*

  Welles had one bold idea: Appropriate Lower California (Baja) for a Jewish homeland in partial settlement of the U.S.-Mexican oil controversy over the nationalization of PEMEX. But the State Department thought Mexico would be averse to any further “alienation of its national domain.”

  Britain admitted refugees from Germany at the rate of seventy-five a day, but wanted “to avoid any publicity concerning it.” Britain also planned to settle two hundred refugees in Tanganyika and considered settlements in other African territories. Regarding Palestine, Britain’s policies became more restrictive. Jewish immigration into Palestine from 1933 to 1936 varied from 30,327 in 1933 to 61,854 in 1935. But in 1937, Britain restricted immigration to 10,536, although emergency provisions were made after Kristallnacht.

  No other government represented on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees created at Evian indicated a willingness to consider colonization. France rejected a community in Madagascar or French New Caledonia, and neither Belgium nor the Netherlands would discuss the subject. Most countries in Latin America agreed to accept refugees, although some introduced greater restrictions after Evian.

  ER was staggered by the contempt for human suffering expressed at Evian and revealed in the Welles and Bowman reports. In the bitter time before the burning time there was hope for rescue country by country. But there was no official objection to Hitler’s intention to remove Jews from Germany and all his new territories. ER increasingly bypassed State Department restrictions; she worked, often covertly, with private groups and individuals. She campaigned for a less restrictive refugee policy, pursued visas for individuals, and answered and passed on to government officials every appeal sent to her.

  Revolted by world events, ER called for entirely new levels of action. Her speeches became more pointed and vigorous, and she spent more time in the company of radical activists, especially members of the American Youth Congress whose ardent views now coincided most completely with her own.

  For ER, AYC leaders represented hope for the best of liberal America. Christian theology students, Jewish children of immigrants, black and white activists from the rural South and urban North imagined a nation united for progressive antifascist action.

  A week after Kristallnacht, ER contemplated her future and her new allies. On 18 November, she defended the AYC at the annual luncheon of New York’s branch of the American Association of University Women and spoke of the need for courage and fearlessness in perilous times.

  Helen Rogers Reid, vice president of the New York Herald Tribune, introduced ER as a woman who had “the qualities of mind of the great scholars—‘flexibility and complete free-mindedness.’ ‘’ ER’s speech was bold: She rejected the current Red Scare tactics which branded the AYC communist and her a dupe or fool: Such name-calling had destroyed democracy in Europe, and she wanted democracy to survive here.

  “Peo
ple whose opinions I respect” had warned her not to attend the AYC convention.

  [But] I didn’t think that those youngsters could turn me into a Communist, so I went just the same….

  I listened to speeches which you and I could easily have torn to shreds. The Chinese listened while the Japanese spoke; the boy from India spoke with the British delegates…. Nobody hissed or left the room. I have been in lots of gatherings of adults who did not show that kind of respect….

  She spoke with many delegates, asked what they thought of the Soviet Union; she left convinced that there was interest in communism, but not domination by communists: “We who have training, and have minds that we know how to use must not be swept away” by fear and propaganda. The urgent problems before the United States and the world required scrutiny, debate, honest disagreement, democratic participation, not a wild and fearful flight from controversy.

  After the luncheon, anticipating future events with her new young friends and co-conspirators, ER went on a shopping spree and decided to change her public image. She had already altered her hairstyle to a more free-fashioned “modified upswing coiffure,” and she now refurbished her wardrobe. According to the press, ER selected unusually glamorous and dramatic styles for both day and evening wear. Among her eight new costumes was a floor-length “evening gown of glacier satin in an ashes-of-roses shade”; a dinner gown “of Bagheera velvet in Lanvin red”; a “black crepe gown cut with V-neck, back and front, worn with a gold cloth jacket.” For daytime, ER selected “a grape-wine ensemble with tuxedo reveres of skunk, and a teal-blue frock adorned with fourteen strands of pearls….”