Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

230 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:221
As is well known and needs no retelling, Jews flocked to the American
armed forces following America’s entry into the Second World War after
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. As the revelations
of the Holocaust/Shoah became increasingly public, Jews worked tirelessly,
often behind the scenes, to come to the aid of their fellow Jews. Yet
those efforts were hampered by the delicate balancing act of a very public
antisemitism during the Second World War itself—not wanting to give the
American public, including its isolationists, excuses to hamper the war
effort by attempting to convince President Roosevelt that it was a “Jewish
war.” 19 Again, J. J. Goldberg:
But to say that most Americans were against saving Jews in 1939 or 1944
is to understate the problem. Opposition to helping Jews was not merely
widespread, it was intense. A sizable faction of the American political
scene was so set against helping Jews that it was willing to pay a price,
even inhibit the war effort, in order to avoid helping Jews. . . .
Similarly, the obstructionist activities of administration officials—
from U.S. consuls abroad who blocked Jewish visas, right up to the assistant
secretary of state in charge of refugee affairs, Breckenridge
Long 20 —are frequently cited by revisionists as evidence that Roosevelt
was apathetic or hostile toward saving Jewish lives. The argument is that
the president should have fired such administrators.
But in America in 1942, hostility toward Jews was not grounds for
firing a public official. . . .
In one important sense, the situation of Jews in America at that time
was so dismal that it is now difficult to recapture. Anti-Jewish hostility
was so widespread, and so respectable, that even a president who was
sympathetic toward Jews had to weigh the formidable risks of helping
them. 21
And thus, it was only after the conclusion of the Second World War
and the increasing public revelations of the Shoah—as Kaplan, Goldberg,
and countless others have written—that the antisemitism of the 1920s,
1930s, and 1940s seriously began to erode and dissipate. Throughout these
three decades, the U.S. State Department charged with administering
19. Today, ironically, Israel’s enemies continue to argue that America’s takedown
of the dictatorial regime of Iraqi Saddam Hussein was manipulated by Jewish
neocons—i.e., Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Lewis “Scooter”
Libby, David Frum, Dov Zakheim, Elliot Abrams, and Joshua Bolten—in response
to Israel’s political agenda to remove a potential nuclear threat to its viability.
20. For one such assessment, see Steven Leonard Jacobs, “Breckenridge Long
and Coming to America,” Journal for the Study of Antisemitism 2, no. 2 (2010):
115-132.
21. J. J. Goldberg, Jewish Power, 115-116.