Roosevelt and the Holocaust [Hardcover]

Robert Beir (Author), Brian Josepher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2006

There is a great debate among historians about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's actions during the Holocaust. Was FDR the hero that defeated the Germans, or did he turn a blind eye to the plight of the Jews as long as he possibly could? In Roosevelt and the Holocaust, Robert Beir analyzes specific actions and legislation to get at the truth behind Roosevelt's role in the Holocaust. Beir has a unique perspective. He is a Jew who was raised during the extreme anti-Semitism of the Great Depression. Having witnessed the fruits of the New Deal firsthand, Beir became a Roosevelt scholar. It wasn't until later in life, when confronted by a student about Roosevelt's role in the Holocaust, that Beir began to research this topic intensely. Beir ultimately concludes that Roosevelt acted not out of anti-Semitism, nor out of moral outrage over the plight of the Jews. Rather he acted in the way he felt was best to navigate the United States and the world through this tumultuous time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Why didn't FDR bomb Auschwitz? Why did he abandon the St. Louis refugees? And why did he allow Breckinridge Long and the State Department to pursue an anti-immigration policy? Aided by novelist Josepher (What the Psychic Saw), Beir, a successful businessman and amateur Roosevelt scholar, grapples with familiar accusations waged posthumously against FDR, intertwining Roosevelt's career with memories from his own long life. Born in 1918, Beir lost a brother to strep throat and experienced anti-Semitism for the first time when he was 14. His parents' wealth from a fabrics business weathered the Depression, and Beir became the first in his family to go to college. After Brown and Harvard Business School, Beir entered the navy and, serving in London, decoded messages from FDR to Churchill. "What did servicemen in Great Britain know about the Holocaust during this time? The answer, simply, was nothing," he claims. Beir compares his father to FDR; both were secretive, imposing, prideful and elusive. Even though "great people are not great all the time," Roosevelt "was not an anti-Semite. He was not responsible for the Holocaust," Beir concludes, in a pedestrian account. (May)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books; 1st ed. 1st ptg edition (April 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569803110
• ISBN-13: 978-1569803110
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #678,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disapointing Bordering on Shameful. Hero Worship to a Fault, January 8, 2007

By 

Valiant S. Vetter (Winnsboro, Republic of Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Roosevelt and the Holocaust (Hardcover)

Before I launch my tirade, I should say that I feel Mr. Beir has done some excellent work and painted a historically accurate picture of President Roosevelt's actions before and during WWII.

He then goes on to make excuses for why Roosevelt "couldn't" help the Jews when they so dearly needed it.

Roosevelt was and is Beir's idol - he freely admits this - then he lists in great detail all of the things that Roosevelt DIDN'T do to lessen the suffering and death of Jews in Europe - EVEN when the chance to do so was dropped in his lap. (The case of the S.S. St. Louis)

Beir makes the excuse that Roosevelt's number one job was winning the war and that he couldn't use up his political favors to save any of Beir's own people. Roosevelt was a man who did what he wanted and didn't really seem to care if it was legal or not. He enacted unconstitutional social(ist) programs, tried to take over the Supreme Court when it dared oppose him, and in one of the most dastardly events of US history - stole American's gold when they needed it most. (Executive Order 6102)

Roosevelt had ample opportunity and demonstrated his ability to act when he desired.

Roosevelt WAS a masterful politician - and a man who had no problem doing what HE felt was right. He is completely undeserving of Bob Beir's defense of his lack of action to mitigate one of mankind's most shameful periods where "civilized" countries allowed 6 million innocents to be ruthlessly and cruelly murdered.

Bob Beir had no problem finding plenty of blame to go around for all of the other players in this tragic period of history. It's just plain shameful that Beir couldn't be as honest when assessing his idol's actions.

Read this book for the history. Toss Beir's personal assessment of Roosevelt in the trash.

A note on that last chapter: True as much of it is - it belongs in another book. Beir is an expert at identifying anti-Semitism - except when it is practiced (or at least apathetically allowed to flourish) in the administration of his hero, FDR.

5 stars for the history.
-3 stars for the intellectual dishonesty perpetrated by the author.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indifference often implies complicity, January 10, 2010

By 

Alter Wiener (Hillsboro OR U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Roosevelt and the Holocaust (Hardcover)

Anti-Semitism was quite rampant in Poland when I was a little kid. Then, under the Germans occupation I was saddled with the most gruesome experiences. I saw the Germans looting, expropriating, mocking, beating, torturing, shooting, hanging, burning alive, babies choked or smashed to death, starving and other unimaginable acts of extreme wickedness carried out against innocent people. As a Jew, I was considered to be genetically programmed as subhuman. I was hated before I was born and tortured by people who did not know me. While being captive in forced labor and concentration camps, I kept asking how was it possible that nobody cares about me, about us? How does an adversary of humanity prevail? We felt a sense of abandonment and powerlessness. We prayed to God and hoped that the admired humanitarian President Roosevelt will come to our rescue; he will stop the ongoing slaughter.

Reading ROOSEVELT AND THE HOLOCAUST, I can see why the expected and deserved help did not come. Roosevelt had a full plate with domestic agenda and the New Deal. Furthermore, some of his closest advisors and members of his cabinet had no affinity for the Jewish people. I was not aware that so many Americans had feelings of enmity or even hatred toward Jews simply because they were Jews. The poisonous weed of Anti-Semitism was apparently transplanted from Europe. It is disheartening to learn from Beir's well documented book that there were very few outcries in America against German mass murder of innocent people. There were no rallies in America to counter the monster rallies in Germany of constant incitement to hatred. In the American Congress, only a few voices of protest were raised against the Nazi dehumanization of Jews while the Holocaust raged. The American leaders and the populace kept mostly silent when victim groups such as "asocials" Gypsies, Homosexuals, Poles, Russians, Jehovah Witnesses were being eliminated by the Nazis.

Beir mentiones Szmul Zygielbojm, who managed to escape to England, was saying on BBC:
"It will really be a shame to live on, a shame to belong to the human race.... The governments of Great Britain and America must be compelled to put an end to this mass murder. [Zygielbojm appealed to governments, because human rights or charitable organizations did not have the resources, as governments had, to stop the Nazis.] For if we do not try to find means of stopping it we shall bear part of the moral responsibility for what is happening. I cannot be silent; I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish population of Poland are perishing... By my death I wish to make my final protest against the passivity with which the world is looking on and permitting the extermination of the Jewish people. I know how little life is worth today, but I was unable to do anything during my life, perhaps by my death I shall contribute to breaking down the indifference of those who may now, at the last moment, rescue the few Polish Jews still alive."
He spoke for millions whose voices were stilled. Ultimately, Zygielbojm committed suicide.

I have often been asked by my life audiences, or readers of my autography: How could such a terrible thing as the Holocaust happen? I respond with Winston Churchill's famous statement, "The Holocaust was not just a Jewish tragedy; it was the world's tragedy, because the world did let it happen." In his well researched book, ROOSEVELT AND THE HOLOCAUST, Robert L.Beir corroborates that great statesman's statement.

Anybody interested in the events and the political environment in the United States during the Holocaust, in Nazi Germany, will benefit from reading this book. A German woman asked her father, in her book, that its title I forgot, "where were you daddy during the Holocaust? Did you resist or at least protest the Holocaust? Are you one of those Germans who claim "We haben nichts gewusst" [we knew nothing]. I have never heard you saying: "tut mir leid" [I am sorry]."

Robert Beir, who was born in New York City, puts the same poignant question to many Americans, including himself. Beir sounds to have qualms of conscience for being somewhat indifferent during the Holocaust. It was not an ephemeral calamity, but an apocalyptic onslaught followed by mass slaughter going on for at least four years. Any person of compassion should feel compunctions about his or her indifference to the horrors during the Holocaust, as well as about other genocides that have taken place, in other countries, since the Holocaust. Compassionate people have no right to remain silent in face of genocide against any people. Silence is actual complicity. If we let the seeds of racism and prejudice to be sown, they will sprout and eventually flourish. The specters of similar holocausts are looming over us, because prejudice and bigotry still prevail in many places all over the globe. In my eyes, when an innocent person, regardless race, nationality or ethnicity is attacked the whole of humanity is attacked.

Beir, a Roosveltian, was asked rhetorically by a student "what about the St. Louis?" Namely, where was Roosevelt, the Great Humanitarian, when the St. Louis with 937 refugees was compelled to sail back to Europe, in ineluctable harms' way! This act gainsays the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.....Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Beir became embarrassed not knowing the answer to that student's question. This incident had prompted Beir to look into it. He did extensive research and in process had realized how vital it was to know thoroughly the history and philosophy of the person he had entranced.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roosevelt and the Holocaust - "A Scholar's Quest", May 3, 2006

By 

Fulbright Scholar - See all my reviews

This review is from: Roosevelt and the Holocaust (Hardcover)

Roosevelt and the Holocaust is a masterpiece! It is a beautifully woven narrative, one that is as much a pleasure to read the second time as it is the first. Robert Beir's book is unique in the way that it creatively and effectively combines personal experiences with an examination of Roosevelt's policies during the Holocaust. Part autobiography, part history, part internal dialogue with Beir's hero, FDR, the book is ultimately a personal journey. But don't just take my word for it. Here's what two preeminent historians and authors of best selling books on FDR had to say about Beir's book.

"Among the many books on FDR and the Holocaust, this one occupies a uniquely powerful position. Having long considered Roosevelt his personal hero, Beir found it painful to confront the question of whether Roosevelt was indifferent to the plight of the Jews. Yet, in this moving story which is both a personal memoir and a scholar's quest, he provides an honest look at his hero, his country and himself." Doris Kearns Goodwin (author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt - The Home Front in World War II)

"A penetrating examination of one of the most haunting problems from World War II, vividly analyzed by a participant in that war, reflecting both his concern over FDR's blind spots and his understanding of the broader problems that Roosevelt faced." James MacGregor Burns (author of Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox and Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom)