Historian: FDR's Anti-Semitism Cost Jewish Lives
He resisted helping refugees for fear of admitting "too many" Jews to the U.S.
Historian Rafael Medoff says Franklin Delano Roosevelt failed to take relatively simple measures that would have saved significant numbers of Jews during the Holocaust, because his vision for America only encompassed having a small number of Jews.
"In his private, unguarded moments, FDR repeatedly made unfriendly remarks about Jews, especially his belief that Jews were overrepresented in many professions and exercised too much influence and control on society," Medoff told The Daily Caller in an email about his new book, "FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith."
"This prejudice helped shape his overall vision of what America should look like — and it was a vision with room for only a small number of Jews who, he said, should be 'spread out thin.' This helps explain why his administration went out of its way discourage and disqualify would-be immigrants, instead of just quietly allowing the immigration quotas to be filled to their legal limit."