American inaction and the Holocaust: examining historical responsibility

Holocaust: Where Were the Americans?

The Holocaust is the most horrific act of genocide in history. Millions of Jews, and hundreds of thousands of others, were killed in cold blood. The Jews were first sequestered in ghettos and walled neighborhoods, where they were forced to wear identifying arm bands and were reduced to a humiliating and degrading status in society. Discrimination and harassment in Europe was routine, and when World War II broke out the chaos of those events seemed to give the Nazis an occasion to seek the "final solution": mass extermination of the Jewish population. But how could so many millions of people be eliminated without objection or interference from the rest of the free world?

Certainly, these events took place in a world that functioned without the technology we have come to rely on for daily communications; without the internet or even reliable ways to transmit photographs across the ocean, we may imagine that those in the United States were simply ignorant of events in Eastern Europe. It is true that in a world without continual news feeds from CNN it is more difficult to grasp the magnitude of events when they are only reported in print by observers. However, in the case of the Holocaust, those reports were consistent, persuasive, and reliable. Why, then, did the United States not take immediate and forceful action to save the Jews?

Citizens in the United States may have had a reasonable excuse for not pressuring their Congressmen to act. News reports were sporadic, the flow of information about many dimensions of WWII was understandably overwhelming, and, most importantly, when no genocide of that magnitude had ever occurred before, Americans were understandably skeptical about the veracity of the claims. However, the United States' elected officials, including members of Congress and President Roosevelt, should have acted even without pressure from their constituents. For those in positions of leadership, the reports of Jewish persecution were loud and persuasive. Not responding to those pleas for help was callous and unimaginably passive.

Wyman's Argument

David Wyman's the Abandonment of the Jews was initially published in 1984 and sparked an immediate and powerful reaction. His carefully researched argument advanced the idea that the United States was notified repeatedly and by numerous reliable sources about the situation in Jewish Europe. Beginning in 1942, newspaper reports from European outlets began to make their way into American newspapers. The New York Times reported that 700,000 Jews had been slain, and speculated that such mass killing must have involved a number of brutal methods (Wyman, 1984). However, and remarkably, suggestions to launch a rescue were overshadowed by larger concerns about the emerging world war. Rather than seek to save the remaining Jews, the United States continued to imply that winning the war was the only path toward salvation.

Despite the nearly constant flow of stories coming out of Europe, many of which detailed the concentration camps, as well as the gassing and mass burials, Americans remained largely in denial. Wyman attributes this reaction to three factors. First, many people simply could not imagine the scale of such a tragedy. Without television, it was difficult for most Americans to believe that what they were hearing could possibly be true. Combined with a distrust of news organizations, "a tendency to see the atrocity reports as at least party exaggerated persisted throughout the war and weakened the impact of the disclosures," (Wyman, 1984: 27). Second, news reports were sporadic and occasional. The blame for this rests firmly on the shoulders of the mainstream media, who may have fallen victim to the same incredulity that plagued the American populace. When the truth seemed so unbelievable, its not a surprise the newspapers were reluctant to cover the horrifying story as it developed. Finally, Wyman notes that the headline news of the day, the emerging Second World War, fast on the heels of a massive economic depression, stole the media spotlight. It is again easy to see how citizens might be overwhelmed with daily reports of violence and despair, and unable to truly grasp the ramifications of what was happening to the Jews.

Wyman presents a persuasive case that even if the American citizenry might be forgiven for their disbelief, the political leadership has no viable excuse. Jewish organizations consistently reported first-hand accounts of the atrocities and American Congressional leaders were privy to high-level intelligence that confirmed those versions of events. Wyman argues that outright anti-Semitism was likely a factor in the overwhelmingly Protestant legislature, but also points to the deadly force of indifference at all levels of the federal bureaucracy. He reserves his harshest criticism for Roosevelt, a President who is remembered for his heroism: "In the end, the era's most prominent symbol of humanitarianism turned away from one of history's most compelling moral challenges," (Wyman, 1984: 313).

Conclusion

Arguing that American citizens didn't fully grasp the scale of the Holocaust is believable. It is, indeed, a basic function of human psychology to avoid information that contradicts our carefully constructed reference points. Shipping millions of Jews from their already horrific ghettos to concentration camps where they were killed in ovens defies the imagination. However, political leaders have no excuse. Reliable intelligence and first-hand reports were consistent. Rather than present this information to the American people and seek political cover for a risky rescue operation, they chose to classify it. By denying Americans full access to information, they increased their own culpability. Elected officials cannot be said to represent their constituents if they withhold information and refuse to act on it for their own cowardly reasons. While blame for the Holocaust undeniably rests with the Nazis in Germany, American political leaders participated in the process by refusing to act.