FDR, pictured with his treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, inscribed this photo, "from one of two of a kind." Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York

A few years ago, I attended a discussion at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan about Franklin Roosevelt and the Holocaust. The featured speakers, historians Deborah Lipstadt and Richard Breitman, gave sensitive and nuanced accounts of the period that were steeped in their own research and a deep knowledge of a time that has get one of the most closely examined ever. They discussed Roosevelt'south strengths and weaknesses as he confronted demands that he rescue Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany while preparing America for war in the face of tearing isolationism, nativism and anti-Semitism at home.

Subsequently an hr, the session was opened to questions. An elderly woman stood up and identified herself as a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who had been a prisoner at Auschwitz. She recalled seeing Centrolineal planes in the heaven over the military camp ("niggling silver birds, maybe thousands of them"). Merely the bombs never brutal.

Lipstadt and Breitman had explained earlier that the planes were not able to reach Auschwitz until late in the war and that, in whatever example, bombing the army camp would probably not have stopped the killing. But that did not satisfy the woman.

"If they would have bombed the crematoria, they could have at to the lowest degree stopped them from murdering the Jews," she said, her vocalization rising in indignation. "That'south why I arraign the Allies for it, including the United States. My parents died there—my whole family died over in that location, OK? And I was sixteen, so information technology's non like you lot said that Roosevelt couldn't do nothing."

The audience of several hundred, which had been largely subdued during the talk, of a sudden erupted in applause and shouts of encouragement.

It's a scene that I have seen play out with modest variations many times over the terminal decade at similar public events about the Holocaust. No affair the evidence to the contrary, information technology has become received wisdom among many American Jews that Roosevelt deliberately and coldly abased Europe's Jews in their hour of need.

This marks a dramatic reversal in the image of a president who won more than 80 per centum of the Jewish vote in all four of his successful campaigns, who surrounded himself with Jewish advisers and was portrayed by Hitler's propagandists as Jewish (and not in a proficient manner). Roosevelt brought thousands of Jewish professionals into regime, prevented Hitler from overrunning Britain and Palestine (thus saving their large Jewish populations), chose to fight Frg first afterward the United states was attacked by Japan, and paved the style for New York'southward offset Jewish governor and senator.

Presidential scholars accept consistently ranked Roosevelt as the best chief executive in the nation'south history for his treatment of the Great Depression and World War Two. But fifty-fifty among liberal Jews who still concord him in high regard for those achievements, his reputation has been tarnished as he has been viewed increasingly through the prism of the Holocaust. What started out in the belatedly 1960s as legitimate historical revisionism—looking critically at what the Roosevelt assistants and American Jewry did during the Holocaust—has morphed into caricature, with FDR often depicted as an unfeeling anti-Semite.

This historical debate has a significant gimmicky subtext, one that helps explain the intensity of the passions it still arouses. That subtext is today's contend amongst American Jews near Israel. In contempo years, the distorted view of FDR has been promoted by a small group of Israel supporters who carmine-selection the historical tape to portray his treatment of the Holocaust in the most negative light possible. These scholar-activists deploy like sleight of hand to pigment a picture of almost American Jews as having been disengaged and blah nigh the fate of their European counterparts at the hands of the Nazis, and to bandage every bit heroes a small group of right-fly Zionists who mounted an aggressive public relations entrada to pressure Roosevelt to act. In this narrative, the complexities of history are erased and the passage of time is unimportant. The not-then-subtle message: similar the Jews of Europe in 1939, Israel is under an existential threat and cannot count on anyone for help—even the Usa, even liberals, even Jews in the United States, most of whom are insufficiently committed to Zionism. Betrayal happened earlier, and no affair how friendly a president or a state may appear to be, it tin happen again.

* * *

The nearly recent flare-up in the contend over FDR and the Holocaust, which has been smoldering since the 1960s, surrounded the publication in March of FDR and the Jews, a new volume by Breitman and co-author Allan J. Lichtman. Both are historians at American University, and Breitman is also the editor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the leading academic journal in the field. Their study shows that when it comes to assessing Roosevelt'south role during the Holocaust, information technology is like shooting fish in a barrel to find evidence to support the example that he made the best of a bad hand and merely every bit piece of cake to cite examples of his apathy.

Over the course of his twelve years in function, Roosevelt swayed back and forth every bit the land veered from Depression-era isolationism to reluctant British marry to a nation at war. During that time, many in Congress and the powerful labor motion (including Jewish labor leaders) opposed immigration at a moment of record high unemployment. Though the Country Department made it difficult for Jews to obtain visas, about 132,000, or nearly a quarter of all German Jews, found refuge in the U.s.a.—far more than were taken in past any other land. That same State Department also suppressed news of the Holocaust and frustrated rescue efforts, simply it was ultimately overruled by FDR himself. Breitman and Lichtman write that Roosevelt "had to make difficult and painful trade-offs, and he adapted over time to shifting circumstances." They conclude that he tin reasonably exist credited with saving hundreds of thousands of Jews.

If Roosevelt'south scholarly critics acknowledge this accomplishment, they do so only grudgingly, and they fence he could take and should have done more. Merely and then-chosen righteous gentiles—non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, such as Oskar Schindler, whose famous "list" independent the names of 1,098 people—are not unremarkably criticized for how many more Jews they could accept saved. Instead, they are historic for those they did relieve in the face up of the cruel and relentless determination of the Nazis to murder Jews. The question is why FDR's list is at present more than often noted for the names it left out than for those it included.

* * *

The flip side of the new anti-Roosevelt orthodoxy is the apotheosis of the Bergson Group, the aforementioned band of right-wing Zionists who worked to raise public awareness of the Nazi extermination entrada. Named afterwards their leader, Peter Bergson, these activists have been transformed from a historical footnote into the stars of a counterfactual history in which the Jews of Europe might accept been saved if only the Jewish institution and the Roosevelt administration had listened to them.

The Bergson Group has been the subject of several blessing documentaries and books and even an admiring 2007 play by former New York Times reporter Bernard Weinraub titled The Accomplices, in which Bergson is portrayed as a prophet and Roosevelt appears as a conniving, 2-faced anti-Semite.

By far Bergson'south greatest modern champion is Rafael Medoff, a prolific historian, activist and ardent Zionist who has defended decades to the cause of pushing the Bergson story into the spotlight. Medoff is the founding manager of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which is named afterwards the author of The Abandonment of the Jews, a 1984 book about America and the Holocaust that became a surprise bestseller.

In a blizzard of op-ed articles in The Jerusalem Post, the Forward and other publications, along with books, conferences and letters to the editor, Medoff has been at in one case a relentless critic of Roosevelt and a tireless promoter of the Bergson story. Through his efforts, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington added a mention of Bergson to its permanent exhibit in 2008, and Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, held its first symposium about the group in 2011. In February of this year, Medoff published a baking attack called FDR and the Holocaust: A Alienation of Faith, which appeared a month before Breitman and Lichtman's more than balanced assessment.

For Medoff, the causes of promoting Bergson, supporting Israel and attacking Roosevelt are inextricably linked. Many of his columns describe on events during the 1930s and '40s to illustrate why Israel should exist supported today. For example, in a 2011 piece that appeared in several Jewish publications titled "Why Recognizing the Bergson Group Matters," he wrote: "Jewish political activists in Washington can larn a nifty deal from the activities of the Bergson Group, which was arguably the showtime 'Jewish lobby' in the nation's capital." (Incidentally, during the congressional hearings before his confirmation as defense secretarial assistant, Chuck Hagel was accused of anti-Semitism by right-wing supporters of State of israel for having used the very same phrase.)

In reality, Bergson is a modest figure in the history of the Holocaust. The accomplishments claimed by his champions are disputed by reputable historians, and the lessons of his deportment are unclear. Born Hillel Kook, Bergson came to New York from Palestine in 1940 at the age of 25 as the representative of correct-fly Revisionist Zionism, the biting rival of the more mainstream leftist Labor Zionism and the antecedent to Israel'south ruling Likud party of today. After news of the Holocaust was officially made public in November 1942, Bergson and his colleagues took out full-page ads in The New York Times assailing Roosevelt and demanding that he do more to save the Jews. They put on a pageant featuring Hollywood stars called "Nosotros Volition Never Die." And they organized a 1943 march on the White Firm by 400 Orthodox rabbis.

Bergson clashed with mainstream American Jewish leaders, nigh notably Rabbi Stephen Wise, a dedicated liberal social activist and pillar of American Jewry, whose many posts included leader of the United states Zionist movement. Wise was shut to FDR and regarded Bergson's attacks on the president equally politically reckless. Similar many American Jews at the fourth dimension, Wise saw Roosevelt as an ally—an implacable foe of Hitler and a bulwark confronting American anti-Semitism, which was not insignificant in the 1930s and '40s. Republican alternatives to FDR were not anywhere near as attractive. Wise was also active behind the scenes, lobbying the president to let more refugees into the The states and to pressure the British to allow more into Palestine. (Wise's disagreement with Bergson was magnified by the fact that they represented competing Zionist factions, a bitter rivalry that has for decades fueled attacks on mainstream Zionism both in Israel and the United States for its treatment of the Holocaust.)

To Medoff and other Bergson champions, the group's story provides a powerful counterfactual narrative. Had American Jewish leaders, including Roosevelt'due south closest Jewish directorate, united with Bergson, they argue, Roosevelt would accept been forced to mount a more than serious rescue campaign earlier and tens of thousands more Jews would accept been saved.

(It's a merits that they believe has directly relevance today. When Rabbi Haskel Lookstein visited the White Business firm last June as office of a delegation of Modern Orthodox Jewish leaders, he handed a copy of his book Were Nosotros Our Brothers' Keepers?, a critique of American Jewry's response to the Holocaust, to Jack Lew, President Obama's then chief of staff. Inside Lookstein inscribed the book to Lew, who is Jewish, "June 5, 2012; 45 years to the day when the Six Solar day War began. To Jack Lew: May y'all, unlike American Jewish leaders during the Holocaust, speak truth to power when the opportunity presents itself.")

The Bergson Group did show that American Jews had less to fright from going public with their demands than they thought. It successfully put together a coalition of non-Jewish senators and congressmen that pressured Roosevelt to act. But the Bergson Group was never directly responsible for rescuing a single Jew from Europe.

Yet thanks to the efforts of Medoff and others, journalists now routinely exaggerate Bergson's accomplishments, placing him at the eye of the rescue efforts, while diminishing the good works of the wider American Jewish community. In an interview terminal year with Pierre Sauvage, the manager of the most contempo hagiographic Bergson documentary, Not Idly Past, David Samuels, writing in Tablet mag, described the Bergson Group as having "mounted the most sustained and effective attempt to save the Jews of Europe in the face of widespread communal apathy, and confronting the fierce opposition of the leadership of the American Jewish community."

This is merely untrue. Historians concord that the almost sustained and constructive rescue effort to save Europe'southward Jews was mounted past the American Jewish Joint Distribution Commission, which was an instrument of American Jewish communal concern, not apathy. (Disclosure: my grandfather was a leader of the Articulation from 1940 until his death in 1965.)

According to its supporters, the Bergson Group'south greatest accomplishment was contributing to the constellation of events that led to the cosmos of the War Refugee Board in January 1944. The WRB was an interdepartmental government agency devoted solely to rescue that was created by an executive club from the president. It came into existence nearly the end of the Holocaust, but it cut through some of the cerise tape that had hampered previous rescue efforts to salve as many as 200,000 lives.

Breitman and Lichtman give the Bergson Grouping piddling credit for the creation of the WRB, a position also held by the late Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz and others. Only even if you believe the accounts of their greatest champions, the Bergsonites at almost succeeded in softening up Roosevelt so that when Henry Morgenthau Jr., the president's good friend and treasury secretary, confronted him with bear witness that the State Department was blocking rescue efforts, the president immediately signed off on the idea of the WRB and issued an executive club creating it.

In other words, the Bergson Group'due south biggest feat is something that President Roosevelt created. He should have done it earlier and it could have been more than effective, but doesn't he deserve some of the credit for the 200,000 Jewish lives the WRB saved? Not in Medoff'southward opinion. In the May 30 Washington Jewish Calendar week, he wrote a column refuting this very idea headlined Jews were saved—just not by FDR.

* * *

One of the supposed lessons of the Bergson story claimed by Medoff and others is that "unity" amidst American Jews during the 1930s and '40s would accept saved more than Jewish lives. The implication is that today's American Jews should not permit themselves to be divided on Israel. Merely Medoff's framing ignores the legitimate disagreements at the fourth dimension about the all-time mode to gainsay the Nazi persecution of Jews, simply as it ignores today's disagreements among American Jews regarding the policies of the Israeli regime. Actions such as a boycott of German goods and a proposal to ransom German Jews during the 1930s had their costs and benefits; well-meaning people were on both sides. Which policy should Jews accept unified backside? And which policies should Jews unify backside today? Near American Jews support a ii-state solution. Are correct-fly supporters of Israel prepared to support a settlement freeze and a withdrawal from the West Bank for the sake of American Jewish unity?

Breitman and Lichtman make a persuasive case that Wise and Bergson unwittingly pursued a strategy that pressed FDR from inside and outside, and which accomplished more than than unifying behind a single approach would have done. Perhaps that is true. We'll never know.

And that is the bespeak. By obscuring the context, the benefit of hindsight can actually make history harder to sympathise. During the 1930s, when clearing restrictions prevented more German refugees from inbound the Usa, Roosevelt couldn't accept known that the Nazis were later going to murder millions of Jews. But knowing what happened later, it is like shooting fish in a barrel to portray him as callous. When he did learn about the murders of millions of Jews, he had no understanding of "the Holocaust," which came afterwards and is at present so embedded in our consciousness that it is hard to imagine what it was like to live without such knowledge.

The stakes of this historical debate are high, considering the myths that have been propagated about the actions of the The states during the Holocaust are beingness put to specific political uses today. In a speech to the American Israel Public Diplomacy Commission last year, Israeli Prime number Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the failure of the Roosevelt administration to bomb Auschwitz to back up the case for an attack on Iran. "They say that a military machine confrontation with Iran would undermine the efforts already under way, that information technology would exist ineffective, and that it would provoke even more vindictive action by Iran," Netanyahu said. "I've heard these arguments before. In fact, I've read them before." He and then quoted from an commutation of letters in which the U.s.a. State of war Department said that bombing Auschwitz "would exist of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources."

Leaving aside the fact that historians question whether a bombing would in fact have made a significant difference, the parallels hither are so thin—ane would exist a pre-emptive strike in a time of peace, the other an effort to disrupt a state of war crime in progress—that Netanyahu had to acknowledge in the next jiff that "2012 is not 1944." But by raising 1944 in the style he did, the Israeli prime minister finer equated the Jews of gimmicky State of israel with the victims of the Holocaust and telegraphed what many Israelis and American Jews have come up to believe: that Israel faces anything, and that the last time millions of Jews were similarly threatened, America and its Jewish community allow them down.

Israel is at present threescore-5 years old and a nuclear-armed regional superpower. Information technology has many problems of its ain making. Along the way, the The states has been a loyal ally. Telling a story that casts Israel's Jews every bit perennial victims, and that purports to evidence that Jews must always go it alone, not only misrepresents the past; it also clouds our agreement of the present.

Jana Prikryl's "As They Live" (April 29) tells how lensman Roman Vishniac'south images of Jews were liberated from the lachrymose history he imposed upon them.