the post-holocaust world and president harry s. truman

agenda, but asked in all innocence, are there any other places
where these people can go And he said, there are very few,
but then he snapped the interviewer back onto the straight
and narrow. He said, but that’s completely beside the point.
In other words, meaning that even if all the 100,000 of them
could have gone somewhere else, and could have been settled
somewhere else, that was completely beside the point. And
here, his moral clarity comes through. He says, for too long
these people have been pulled around by the nose, and told
where to go. Now it’s time for us to respect their wishes,
and let them go where they want to go. It was a brilliant
moral insight; an insight of moral clarity, really.
PRESIDENT TRUMAN’S REACTION – THE DP
CAMPS
So those were the two seminal recommendations in the
Harrison Report, apart from the ones that we would expect
for purposes of improving the conditions of the Jewish DPs
in the camps. Truman’s reaction was very, very swift, and
very decisive. In his memoirs, he writes, “the Harrison
Report was a moving document. The misery it depicted
could not be allowed to continue”. Harrison, as I’ve
indicated, spent the month of July, 1945, visiting the DP
camps. And his report to President Truman was dated a few
days later, August 8, 1945. Truman acted on the report very,
very swiftly by government standards. Before the end of the
month, 23 days later, on August 31, he wrote a letter to
General Eisenhower. And basically, what he does is, he says,
I have adopted the Harrison recommendations, and I want
you to do everything to ensure that those recommendations
are carried out. That’s the message that President Truman
sent to General Eisenhower in firm, unequivocal terms. It’s
interesting that in the letter itself, President Truman makes it
clear that he’s not blaming General Eisenhower for the
conditions in the camps. He says, in the second paragraph,
that those are the conditions that exist in the field; in other
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