They stopped the Nazi's from killing us all, as I recall, during World War II - so I think they are fine fellows.
Originally Posted by Jewish Lawyer
Certainly, but I'm just sayin' most Americans would have rather not dealt with it until they had to and only did so after they could ignore it no longer. This is far better than the Nazis, but certainly not very laudable behavior.
Many in the Administration and military heard rumors or knew some of the details early on, but no one spent any effort on finding out the full truth or publicizing it until the GIs liberated the camps and then everyone was "horrified". In fact leaders were concerned that if too much was known about the Nazi camps that there could be backlash from fringe groups. The first released news of the Nazi concentration camps was Nov. 1942 on p. 10. Finally, on January 22, 1944, the president issued Executive Order 9417, creating the War Refugee Board (
WRB).
The establishment of the board did not resolve all the problems blocking American rescue efforts. For example, the War Department repeatedly refused to bomb Nazi concentration camps or the railroads leading to them. Estimates indicate that the
WRB may have saved as many as 200,000 Jews. One can only speculate how many more might have been saved had the
WRB been established in August 1942.
The American public discovered the full extent of the Holocaust only when the Allied armies liberated the extermination and concentration camps at the end of World War II. And as historians struggled to understand what had happened, attention increasingly focused on the inadequate American response and what lay behind it.
Again, just sayin'