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Back Page: �Would Truman have hidden my grandchildren from Hitler? Yes!�
Ira Rifkin
President Harry S Truman�s record in support of Israel and Europe�s World War II Jewish refugees has won him a special place in the hearts of American Jews. He urged Great Britain to accept additional Jewish immigration in Mandatory Palestine; he allowed Jews from Displaced Persons camps to enter the United States; and he bucked his own State Department and others in his administration to extend U.S. recognition to the new State of Israel. Given all this, the discovery at the Truman Library in Independ-ence, Missouri, of a personal diary in which Truman expressed anti-Semitic feelings comes as a shock.
After a 1947 meeting with Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish former treasury secretary, who sought assistance for an unnamed ship carrying Jewish refugees -- probably the Exodus -- that had been detained by the British on its way to Palestine, an obviously piqued Truman wrote: "He�d no business whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgment on world affairs. The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DPs as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog."
Over the years, writers, colleagues and historians have noted that Truman at least once called New York "kike town," and on another occasion reportedly told his cabinet, "If Jesus Christ couldn�t satisfy the Jews while on earth, how the hell am I supposed to?" Arthur Hertzberg, now 82, is one of the few remaining Jewish leaders who was politically active during Truman�s presidency and who had contact with him. Hertzberg, a former Conservative pulpit rabbi, has served as president of the American Jewish Congress and vice president of the World Jewish Congress. The author of "13 or 14" books, Hertzberg still teaches in the humanities department at New York University. The Report telephoned the ever-feisty, always outspoken Hertzberg at his NYU office to discuss Truman�s comments.
The Jerusalem Report: Were you surprised by President Truman�s diary comments?
Arthur Hertzberg: I was quite surprised, because he had been a business partner of the Jews with whom he was on close terms, and because of his well-known record on Israel and refugees. That underneath all this, there was still lurking enough anti-Semitism that he would express it this strongly is quite a surprise.
You knew Truman. Did you ever detect a hint of this or hear someone else allude to it?
I only knew him slightly, and if I had contact it was always as a junior participant in some Jewish political setting when he would be very guarded. So I had no idea he had this in him. My notion of Truman was that he was a conventional, non-intellectual, Midwestern American non-Jew. Now that I know about his comments, I�d say this is what people like him in his time were like.
He knew the Jews had been wronged.
He thought we overreacted, but he knew we had been done wrong. I knew there was some reluctance on his part to get involved. He simply wished the problem of the Jews would go away. He had enough post-war problems to deal with. There was Stalin, the start of the Cold War, he was very disturbed by the need to use the atomic bomb, his wife hated the whole idea of him being president and living in Washington. He had enough to handle already.
So was he only reacting to stress?
In a way, yes. These were the cross words of someone saying, "I�ve got problems of the survival of the world on my plate, so why are they such a pain in the ass?"
Does that excuse what he said?
Truman said some terrible things, and what he said does him no credit. I don�t forgive this. But does that negate the good he did for Jews? A number of the people who saved Jews during the Holocaust were not exactly full-fledged lovers of Israel or Jews and had anti-Semitic sentiments. They reacted as they did on a practical level because no matter how they felt about Jews, they also felt that what was being done to Jews was something you simply don�t do.
If he didn�t harbor these sentiments, might Truman have done more?
How much more could he have done? He recognized Israel. He was first to do it, and by doing so he pulled the Soviet Union along to do the same. If he had not supported Israel in the way he did in 48 and 49, we would have been in deep trouble very early on. It�s true he didn�t send Israel money or arms, but neither did any president until Lyndon Johnson.
Was Truman�s anti-Semitism less important?
There is no person who is white who does not have a trace of racism in them. There is no Jew who does not have within them a trace of anti-goy, and there is no goy who doesn�t have within them a trace of anti-Semitism. We all have our biases, and it takes a long, hard struggle to get them out of us. I would be telling you less than the truth if I didn�t tell you that growing up in Baltimore in the late 20s and 30s, when the town was as segregated as any Southern city, that as a matter of course I said shvartza. Prejudice is something we pick up from our environment, and presidents are no different. My ultimate test for my non-Jewish friends is, if the likes of Hitler ever showed up again, would they hide my grandchildren? Truman, I believe, would hide my grandchildren. Undoubtedly! It�s not what a person says, but what they do. You have to make the distinction.
What about his linking Jewish behavior with that of Hitler and Stalin and his comment about Jews in power?
There is a Talmudic insight that states: A slave who becomes a king, he is worse than any king born to the throne. It�s an old and universal human insight. Everyone acts one way when powerless, and quite another when powerful. Maybe you hadn�t heard that humans are very inconsistent?
Washington
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