Blade_Runner wrote:
FDR was also an anti-Semite, he refused to allow Jews escaping the Holocaust to come ashore in NY. And, he ordered the incarceration of 130,000 Japanese-Americans (Nisei) in concentration camps.
From:
https://www.npr.org/2013/03/18/174125891/fdr-and-the-jews-puts-roosevelts-compromises-in-contextIn summing up FDR's record, Breitman and Lichtman write that "his compromises might seem flawed in the light of what later generations have learned about the depth and significance of the Holocaust." But, they add, "Roosevelt reacted more decisively to N**i crimes against Jews than did any other world leader of his time."
"In some ways, that's a statement about Roosevelt's world and the inadequacies of other world leaders at the time," Breitman tells NPR's Robert Siegel. "But that comparison tells us something: that the world of the 1930s and the 1940s was a very different place, and that Roosevelt had both political constraints and international constraints that we don't often think about today."
In this way, Breitman says, FDR's track record was markedly different from that of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
"I think Churchill has the reputation of being philo-Semitic [or appreciative of Jews and Jewish culture] but didn't often back it up with actions. And Roosevelt has the reputation for being unsympathetic but in fact did a number of things behind the scenes which show at least some concern," Breitman observes.
FDR's father raised him to not be anti-Semitic at a time when anti-Semitism was common to their class. During his presidency, however, Roosevelt feared that expressions of his concern for the Jews of Europe would inflame anti-Semitism in the U.S. According to Lichtman, that fear affected how FDR and other leaders of the era dealt with the Jewish question.
"The 1930s and '40s were a time in America when there was a considerable amount of anti-Jewish, anti-black and even anti-Catholic sentiment and people were worried about upsetting the social order in America," Lichtman says. "But, let me say, this is the poison of anti-Semitism; that the fear of anti-Semitism is often greater than the reality of anti-Semitism. And it was more fear that tended to paralyze key players in the '30s and '40s than necessarily the reality of anti-Semitism."
But it wasn't just FDR who was afraid. American Jews were also nervous about rocking the boat and bringing a wave of anti-Semitism upon themselves. According to Breitman, "The American Jewish community was divided both over how much they could accomplish politically and how they should go about it."