Daily Alert Archives

Truman on Underdogs

(New York Times) - William Safire A 5,500-word diary in President Harry Truman's handwriting, unnoticed for decades, recently turned up at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. Three pages were mysteriously loose and interleaved in the journal, with the entry: "6:00 P.M. Monday July 21, 1947. Had ten minutes conversation with Henry Morgenthau about Jewish ship in Palistine [sic]. Told him I would talk to Gen[eral George] Marshall about it." On that day, news reached the world that 4,500 Jewish refugees seeking entry to Palestine aboard the ship Exodus 1947 had been seized by British soldiers. These "displaced persons" had been placed on three vessels ostensibly headed to nearby Cyprus for detention until permitted entry to the Holy Land, where other Jews waited to welcome them. Instead, the homeless families, including a thousand children, were encaged on decks being taken back to a hostile Europe. "He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. Morgenthau, who had served as FDR's treasury secretary, was telephoning Truman as chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, and had an obligation to get through to the president to stop this further atrocity. "The Jews have no sense of proportion," wrote the incensed Truman after he hung up, "nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed." Truman wrongly assumed that the plight of all of Europe's displaced was the same - ignoring the "special treatment" Hitler had inflicted on the Jews of the Holocaust, resulting in six million murdered, genocide beyond all other groups' suffering. The homeless survivors now faced sullen populations of former neighbors who wanted no part of the Jews' return. I asked Robert Morgenthau, the great Manhattan D.A., about Truman's angry diary entry, and he said, "I'm glad my father made that call."
2003-07-14 00:00:00
Full Article