Similar to the previous posts, I would submit that the denial of what has happening helped cement the inaction of the United States regarding the Holocaust. Many in the nation were gripped with the economic depression and the hard times forced on many. In placing emphasis on Europe, many argued for an isolationist's point of view, suggesting that the United States had no reason to involve themselves in a "domestic matter" in Europe. On some level, the anti semitism that gave rise to the Holocaust was evident on some level in America. This was suggested as much in the previous posts. In a speech delivered at the White House in 1999, Elie Wiesel intimated as much when he asserted that President Roosevelt and others took more than a silent role in seeking to not involve themselves in stopping Hitler:
And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. And the illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader -- and I say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking his death -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945, so he is very much present to me and to us.
No doubt, he was a great leader. He mobilized the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler. And so many of the young people fell in battle. And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history -- I must say it -- his image in Jewish history is flawed.
The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. Sixty years ago, its human cargo -- maybe 1,000 Jews -- was turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that ship, which was already on the shores of the United States, was sent back.
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