America and the Holocaust: A Documentary History Rafael Medoff

Abstract

This work is much more than a documentary history. Rafael Medoff, one of the foremost authorities on American responses to the Holocaust, presents an excellent overview of the subject, drawing oncutting-edge scholarship in the field and providing an in-depth analysis of primary sources. Medoff addresses a wide array of convergent issues. Readers at all levels—scholars of the Holocaust, as well as university and high school students encountering this material for the first time—will find much of value on the Holocaust, the Roosevelt administration, World War II, and antisemitism. Few college or high school history textbooks have devoted serious attention to American responses to the Holocaust. This volume’s publication is particularly important because of recent efforts by the American educational system to universalize the Holocaust. The arrangement of America and the Holocaust is roughly chronological, beginning with contrasting views of Hitler advanced by two prominent American journalists during the first months of Hitler’s administration in 1933. Veteran foreign correspondent Dorothy Thompson warned presciently in May 1933 that the Nazi government’s objective was “utterly to destroy German Jewry” (p. 5) within a generation by systematic economic strangulation and deprivation of educational opportunities. By contrast, Anne O’Hare McCormick of the New York Times in July 1933 provided Hitler a platform to justify his antisemitic policies.