While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy 1st Edition

This book was very upsetting to read. Our anti-Semitic state department knew exactly what was happening to Jews in Europe in WWII and what did they do? They made it even more difficult for Jews to come to the U.S. Only 10% of the available visas were given out to Europeans before WWII. The state department and most Christian Americans did not want Europe's Jews to make homes even temporarily in our land. Franklin Roosevelt knew as well and did nothing. He bombed chemical plants 5 miles from the train tracks that took Jews to Auschwitz, but he declined to even make the small effort needed to bomb the tracks. This simple act alone would have saved thousands of Jews from the ovens. Roosevelt knew the state department was anti-Semetic and engaged in obstructionist conduct, but he did nothing about it. It was clear to me that Roosevelt himself was anti-Semetic. We willingly took in 10,000 British children escaping the London blitz, but would not do the same for Jewish children seeking to escape the ovens and certain death.

Other countries were equally guilty. Britain could have used the man power of able bodied adults who could have provided agricultural labor, factory labor, and even soldiers in their time of need. Still other than the Kindertransport which took in 1000 Jewish children, they too did nothing to help the fleeing Jews. Austrailia with its vast lands was always seeking to attract populations to develop them. However,they too closed their doors to the Jews. Latin America which could have benefitted the most from the skills of physicians, engineers, professors, silver and goldsmiths, businessmen, accountants, musicians, composers, artists etc refused them entry as well. The tale of the condemned ship, the St. Louis is a testament to the Cuban betrayal of its promise to a few hundred Jews who paid dearly for entry permits that were not honored. A corollary to the Latin American anti-Semitism has to be that the Catholic church encouraged this discrimination and hatred.

Think of all the inventions, medical treatments, pharmeceuticals, musical compostions, theatrical shows and art that were lost to humanity forever because so many educated and talented people were murdered. Today that anti-Semitism arises in anti-Israeli speech and propaganda. So much of the critisizm of Israel is merely anti-Semitism dressed in different clothes. The bar for Israel is set higher than for any other country. They are supposed to accept rocket attacks on their citizens and issue only a "proportional response." They are not supposed to win the skirmishes. What is that if not anti-Semitism. When a country without provocation attacks another country seeking to destroy it and push its people into the sea, it is the attacked country's right to fight with all its might. Then when the victim country wins territory previously under the perpetrator's control, the attacked country has never before been asked to return the territory. Only Israel is being asked to return to its 1967 borders. Why should it? Has any other similarly positioned country in the history of the world returned territory won in a war it did not start? We must rethink international opinions on Israel through the lens of an anti-Semitic bias. As for the U.S.- Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Hungry Yearning to Be Free... as long as they are white Christians is our true motto. Ironically, this Poem was written by Emma Lazarus, a Jewish American. I wonder how many similarly beautiful poems were lost forever because we did not let their potential authors seek sanctuary in the U.S.

This book should be required reading in any school course on the holocaust. Students should see American history even in this unflattering light. In the past we were always taught that the U.S. wore the white hat. The U.S. was always the hero and the beacon of hope. We were founded on idealistic principals that focused on the good of mankind. We were founded on the ideals of freedom of religion, assembly and speech. It is important to see America in a more critical and realistic light in various areas including our shameful treatment of American indians and Japanese Americans. This book offers a critical look at America's shameful response to the holocaust.

A critical and important work about the Holocaust.

Excellent book. Fast shipping without damage.
Comprehensive view of complex topic. Easy to
read and comprehend. Tears of horror and
shame welled in my eyes when details from that
time in history were revealed. 100% satisfied.

Should be read by every American...very humiliating and sad that our country took no action.

excellent

I won't go into the details of this detailed book, as others have.

I bought this because we had this in Hebrew school so long ago. We might have had an abridged version, as I simply don't remember it being so long. Our version was more like an 8 1/2 X 11 inch hardcover book, with a different drawing on the front.

Meanwhile, it's an excellent book.

The book clarifies questions that I had concerning why, in the case of the Jews, the expression "the conscience of the free world"
can be viewed, from an historical perspectve, as an oxymoron. Unfortunately, things have not changed much. In Europe, the spector of Adolf Hitler can still be seen.

In June 1942, the Germans deported me to enforced Labor Camps. During my captivity of three years, and for 33 months prior to my deportation (from September 1939 to June 1942) I saw Germans and their collaborators (not just Nazis) looting, expropriating, deporting, 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 men, women and children. The Nazis' were enjoying watching their victims suffer (shadenfreunde).

In Klettendorf, one of the five camps that I had been incarcerated, I saw a long train, of cattle cars, filled with guarded human cargo. It passed close by the trench that I was digging. I could hear a pleading for water (Wasser.) That train was heading towards one of the six extermination camps: Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Maidanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, in occupied Poland. That horrifying spectacle still reverberates in my memory. I was unable to strangle the last sight of it; I was strangled by it. I could not understand then, at the age of 17 and I do not understand today, at the age of 84, the logic to send non-combatants to death. Few of the perpetrators have ever been brought to trial, but the character of civilization was! How could such slaughter go on without arousing the civilized world's wrath? By that time, in August 1944, the democratic world undoubtedly was aware of the death camps in Poland. I wondered whether Jews in America were protesting the slaughter of their brethren. Why the United States, a nation founded and populated by the oppressed of different faiths and from many lands did not stop Hitler's genocide? Where were the good Samaritans among the American Christians? They were expected to have compassionate regard for all people, not just some people! Where were the fighters for human rights? Why did civilized nations shirk their responsibilities to show pity for us! I doubted if the faithful, of any religious denomination, said a prayer for our deliverance! Their silence was spiritual poverty! Apparently people of the world put up a wall to isolate themselves from seeing our suffering. Was everybody in the outside world a passive accomplice? Where were the human rights groups? Was it not a betrayal of basic human solidarity? Was it not a failure of the entire moral fabric of society? There was nothing inmates inside the camps could do to alleviate their situation. Help could only come from the outside world, but the outside world failed to respond. I believe now that even mass demonstrations, in the democratic countries around the world would have forced the German to stop or at least moderate their policy of extermination (Ausrottung) of European Jewry. If President Roosevelt had been more vociferous in expressing his and the American people's indignation, the nonchalant world would have been awakened and protested the slaughter of the innocent. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad, it is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good."

I had a painful feeling of being abandoned by the international community. Had the world not been so indifferent, the Holocaust could have been stopped or at least interrupted and not let the dikes of civilization collapse. The widespread oppression didn't always happen in hidden places. The camps were large enough to be seen through the lenses of the contemporary cameras in the possession of the Allies intelligence.
WHILE 6 MILLION DIED reflects how the USA, Britain and other countries were not only apathetic to the fate of innocent Jewish men, women and children. In certain instances they actually obstructed all efforts to save European Jewry. In March 1943.Chaim Weizmann, President of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, stated that "The world can no longer plead that the ghastly facts are unknown and unconfirmed."

The Exhibits in the German Historical Museum, which opened in Berlin in October 2010, are indicative that many ordinary Germans had often celebrated Hitler; they enabled him to carry out his military objectives and the extermination of Jews and others. The German people nurtured and empowered Hitler. We see in many documentaries cheering crowds, marching students and other demonstrations of popular support; images of young and old adoring Hitler. The young visitors to the museum are asking now their parents and grandparents: "Daddy or grandpa where were you? How could you let it happen; why did not you resist Hitler's Holocaust?" This poignant probe should have also been addressed to the leaders of the USA, Britain and other enlightened nations. Why did not they interfere; why didn't they warn the murderers. It was as if the leaders of the nations were afraid the killings might stop." The Allied powers could have saved millions of Jews and chose not to take some responsibility for the Holocaust.

Arthur D Morse, deserve praise for recoding chronologically the tragic events of WWII, making us aware that indifference is a killer. Winston Churchill said: the Holocaust was not just a Jewish tragedy; it was the world's tragedy, because the world did let it happen." WHILE 6 MILLION DIED" should be required reading for students in a history class. Adults in our times and in the future should read it and derive an important lesson and message.