Abandonment of the Jews : America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 [Paperback]

David Wyman (Author), Elie Wiesel (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1986

A monumental and damning analysis of America's failure to aid European Jews during World War II. Introduction by Elie Wiesel.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It has long been alleged that officials in the Roosevelt administration knew, in surprising detail, about Adolf Hitler's plans to exterminate all the Jews in Nazi Europe--and that these officials did little to prevent the massacre, refusing asylum to shiploads of Jewish refugees and failing to order the bombing of railway lines leading to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and other concentration camps. David S. Wyman examines the evidence, concluding that senior American officials could indeed have saved many thousands, if not millions, of European Jews by intervening earlier. In this controversial work, he suggests, with good cause, that a combination of anti-Semitism and indifference to anything not perceived as being of direct strategic importance to the United States indirectly led to countless deaths. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

LJ's reviewer dubbed this "a comprehensive and well-written narrative on `America's response to the Nazi assault on European Jews.'" Though Wyman does place blame, he also explains why the country and its leaders responded as they did to the Final Solution. This edition contains a new afterword by the author. It remains one of the "best" titles on the subject.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 444 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; New edition edition (January 12, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394740777
• ISBN-13: 978-0394740775
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,644,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Convincing, painful indictment by a Protestant scholar, April 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (Paperback)

For anyone who has wondered whether there was something the allies could have done to obstruct the Nazi holocaust, Wyman presents the troubling answers. They are very consistent with similar investigations of the British record by Wasserstein and Gilbert. This book had to be written, as part of a truth-telling process essential for a society to understand itself. A person of conscience, as well as a painstaking historian, Wyman does not accept the bureaucratic excuses for inaction at face value. It is an unpopular line of investigation, because it upsets the myths that the USA was on the side of the angels, fighting the war to save the Jews, and that FDR was a near saint. Wyman remains cool and balanced, never forgetting that the Allied culpability was on an entirely different level from that of the Germans and their helpers, but not sugar-coating Allied indifference, obstruction and lack of imagination about trying to stem the extermination program. For example, the simple step of broadcasting to the European countries, where Jews were being rounded up, to tell them what would happen at their destination, might have slowed down the deportations by stiffening the resistance. A healthy reminder that our historical record has plenty of which to be ashamed, and that governments, even in enlightened democracies, often perform in ways that don't stand up to moral inspection. A call to vigilance.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Abandonment" is Probably the Wrong Word, June 2, 2005

By 

David M. Sapadin (Naperville, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (Paperback)

Wyman's choice of a title is indicative of what is wrong with this book. However, there is also much right about it as well. "Abandonment" implies there was some sort of relationship to begin with between European Jews and and the United States. In order to "abandon" someone, you have to "leave." The US was never "there" to begin with. To say that America "turned its back" to European Jewry during WWII implies that it once had its back NOT turned to European Jews...and this simply was never the case. It wasn't even the case within the United States. The U.S. paid lip-service to American Jewry by including a few in the Roosevelt Administration, a couple on the Supreme Court, but there was no truly significant Jewish influence even in the United States at that time. Therefore this is a study of much more than simply the Roosevelt Administration. It is a study of America and any study of America during the time after WWI through the mid 1960's must include an acknowledgement of American anti-Semitism. It reached its peak, ironically, during WWII. FDR was the consummate politician. He may have held sympathy for what was happening to the Jews of Europe - but he was a POLITICIAN! And we all need to remember that. Had the American people demanded it, Roosevelt would have acted. Better put, there was enough anti-Semitism to make rescue a "political impossibility." Politics is, among other things, the "art of the possible." The real tragedy Wyman thus exposes is American anti-Semitism. Most significantly (and unfortunately) in the State Department. Wyman is "nice" (in my opinion) to Breckinridge Long, one of the most destructive anti-Semites in American History.

It is sad to acknowledge that The United States of America couldn't muster the courage to drop a single bomb on the rail lines leading out of Hungary, or into Auschwitz-Birkenau. One bomb would have done nothing to stop the Holocaust - but it would have spoken symbolic volumes about what America supposedly stood for.

Anti-Semitism was bad in the United States at that time. And anti-black racism was even worse. As sad an episode as this was in US History (not simply the US failure to act symbolically or otherwise to rescue European Jewry - but also the internment of Japanese Americans in camps, and the relegation of blacks to driving trucks in the military) it did, in the longer run, finally force America to look itself in the mirror.

I consider this a "must read" for anyone even slightly interested in American History, especially the upheavals of the 1960's. America "ignored" the Jews in Europe as it always had, and as it mostly ignored its own. WWII set in motion events that forced America to live up to what it was supposedly fighting for in "The Good War."

This book is also valuable because it reveals the depth of the split within American Jewry over how to respond the mass killings. That split certainly contributed to the ease with which FDR could concentrate on other issues besides The Jews of Europe...and thereby avoid any hint of a schism with Churchill.

41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing., October 5, 2002

By 

M. D Roberts (Gwent, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (Paperback)

The reader will not want to believe what is being read.

The evil, satanic Nazi regime and it's methods intent on the slaughter and genocide of the European Jews is well documented elsewhere.

Little is written or heard about the passive accomplices....I hesitate in using the latter word, but none other can really suffice in this context. The author has provided an extremely valuable service with this work in bringing this subject to our attention.

It is difficult to estimate how many of the six million murdered Jews could possibly have been saved through a concerted, determined Allied rescue campaign. However, suffice to say no such measures were taken and all the victims perished.

The author documents that the US State Department and the British Foreign Office has absolutely no intention of rescuing large numbers of European Jews from the Nazi genocide machine.

Indeed, the author shows that the Allies actually feared that the Nazi regime would release tens of thousands of Jews into Allied hands and the inherent responsibility that such a move would impose upon them.

Such a move by the Nazis would have inevitably placed immense pressure on the British to open Palestine to increased Jewish immigration, and the US to admit even larger numbers of Jews to their own shores.

A situation that neither Government wanted to face. The British, although allowing virtually unhindered Arab immigration from surrounding Arab nations into Palestine, had their own reasons for refusing increased Jewish entry into what is now Israel. Instead, the British provided concentration camps of their own on Cyprus for those Jews seeking what they perceived as `illegal' entry to Palestine. A damning historical indictment, which being British and a non-Jew, I still find difficult to stomach.

The author shows that there was clear, authenticated documentation available to the US State Department in 1942, that revealed unmistakable evidence that the Nazis were pursuing a systematic extermination of European Jewry. However, it is shown that nothing was done for some 14 months, and only then were limited measures eventually adopted. Even so, the US record of action is still far better than that of the British.

These limited measures of assistance adopted by the US are shown to have been impeded by rampant anti-Semitism throughout US society and the US Congress, plus the mass media's failure to publicise Holocaust details and the virtual near silence of the Church and it's own leadership.

The author also shows that appeals to bomb the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers, railroads and bridges were refused outright amidst claims that such military action would divert essential air-power. Yet, at the very same time numerous heavy Allied bombing raids were still taking place within 50 miles of Auschwitz, only a few minutes flying time away. The value of saving Jewish lives was not worth a single Allied bomb.

This is a disturbing book about a disturbing period of history and a disturbing analysis of the integrity of our leaders together with our foreign policies & agendas during the war years. There is so much information here. Read this and Sir Martin Gilbert's `Auschwitz and the Allies' for differing approaches to the same subject, but which reveal the same conclusions. Recommended.