Refugees and Rescue The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 19351945 [Hardcover]

New evidence presented in Refugees and Rescue challenges widely held opinions about Franklin D. Roosevelt's views on the rescue of European Jews before and during the Holocaust. The struggles of presidential confidant James G. McDonald, who resigned as League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1935, and his allies to transfer many of the otherwise doomed are disclosed here for the first time. Although McDonald's efforts as chairman of FDR's advisory committee on refugees from May 1938 until nearly the end of the war were hampered by the pervasive antisemitic attitudes of those years, fears about security, and changing presidential wartime priorities, tens of thousands did find haven. McDonald's 19351936 diary entries and the other primary sources presented here offer new insights into these conflicts and into Roosevelt's inconsistent attitudes toward the Jewish question in Europe.

Following the lauded Advocate for the Doomed (IUP, 2007), this is the second of a projected three-volume work that will significantly revise views of the Holocaust, its antecedents, and its aftermath.

Refugees and Rescue is a remarkable account that sheds new light on the plight of European Jews during the horrific decade from 1935 to 1945.Autumn 2009More than most politicians, McDonald understood the radical nature of Nazi anti-semitism and sought to move not only the international community on behalf of Germany's Jews, but also the U.S. State Department, where he found indifference, if not worse. . . . This is an invaluable document in understanding the period that witnessed the Nazi 'seizure of power.'The papers of James Grover McDonald represent a major resource for the research of one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. . . . The editors of the present volume have . . . considerably illuminated, both for the scholarly community and the public, how Americans and their leaders coped with the Third Reich.Spring 2010The book . . . will unlCx