The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

Henry Feingold accused the Roosevelt Administration of “indifference and even
complicity in the Final Solution.” 12 The State Department’s approach, Feingold claimed,
was one of waiting while all would-be refugees “clamoring to come to the U.S. would be
converted into silent corpses,” while at the same time rescue of European Jews was not a
priority of their American co-religionists. 13 He also was critical of the American Jewish
leadership believing that they operated under a critical delusion that there existed in the
Gentile world “a spirit of civilization whose moral concern could be mobilized to save
the Jews.” 14 However, it was important, he believed, to remain cognizant of the world
view held by many Americans at the time; to evaluate Americans “as they were” rather
than “how they should have been.” 15 Saul Friedman has condemned the Western
Democracies for its “complicity” during the Holocaust while “perfidy” and the “yoke of
shame” have stained the accomplishments of FDR and his subordinates. 16
Herbert Druks accused both Roosevelt Administration and the British of
engaging in policies that prevented rescue of endangered Jews and facilitated their
“slaughter” by the Germans and their accomplices. 17 Konnilyn Feig theorized that if the
United States and the other democracies had maintained a “passive” attitude towards
German anti-Jewish policies then a greater number of Jews would have been rescued for
12 Feingold, Politics of Rescue, x.
13 Ibid., 61, 166, 299, 300.
14 Henry L. Feingold, “Who Shall Bear Guilt for the Holocaust: The Human Dilemma,” American Jewish
History vol. 68 no. 3 (March: 1979): 279.
14 Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 273.
16 Friedman, No Haven, 7, 14, 231, 234.
17 Herbert Druks, The Failure to Rescue (NY: Robert Speller & Sons, 1977), 98.
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