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MosheFeingold

(3,051 posts)
Fri May 4, 2018, 03:15 PM May 2018

FDR wanted Jews spread thin and kept out of US

Jerusalem Post
May 2, 2018
By: Daniel J. Roth

NEW YORK - New evidence suggests that as the Jews of Europe were being slaughtered across continent during the Holocaust, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want them seeking refuge on American shores. Tucked away in a secret vault inside the White House during his 12 year tenure as commander-in-chief, the newly revealed documents recently made public via the FDR Library paint a portrait of the President’s plan to ‘spread thin all over the world’ the remains of European Jewry.

Among the files in Roosevelt’s safe was evidence of a secret initiative dubbed the “M Project,” a study he commissioned that outlined options for post-war migration of the millions of Europeans, especially Jews, expected to be displaced by the war, according to Tablet Magazine. The project was first proposed in the summer of 1942, with Roosevelt enlisting the assistance of former diplomat and writer John Franklin Carter, who ran an informal secret intelligence service for the President, along with Carter’s colleague Henry Field. “I know that you and Henry Field can carry out this project unofficially, exploratorially, ethnologically, racially, admixturally, miscegenationally, confidentially and, above all, budgetarily,” FDR wrote to Carter in a secret memo authorizing the plan in July 1942. “Any person connected herewith whose name appears in the public print will suffer guillotinally,” the memo added.

The White House plan called for Carter and Field, a trained anthropologist, to seek the assistants of academics and geographers to survey “the vacant places of the earth suitable for post-war settlement,” specifically in Africa and South America, and the “type of people who could live in those places.”

Roosevelt’s initial choice to lead the clandestine resettlement plan was the curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Aleš Hrdlička. A prominent public intellectual and disciple of the eugenics theory - the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics - Hrdlička was convinced of the superiority of the white race and obsessed with racial identity. Roosevelt’s relationship with Hrdlička existed years before the presidency, with the two exchanging letters for more than a decade. The documents show Hrdlička’s zeal for theories on racial mixtures and notions of human racial “stock,” ideas that appeared to strike a chord with the President.

Excerpted. More at link:

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/FDR-wanted-Jews-spread-thin-and-kept-out-of-US-documents-reveal-553336

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FDR wanted Jews spread thin and kept out of US (Original Post) MosheFeingold May 2018 OP
And yet to many Jews FDR is an almost deity. EllieBC May 2018 #1
Little has changed. Behind the Aegis May 2018 #2
'The White House plan called for Carter and Field, a trained anthropologist, elleng May 2018 #3
There is a reason MosheFeingold May 2018 #4
Wish I'd been able to ask Dad about this; elleng May 2018 #5

EllieBC

(2,961 posts)
1. And yet to many Jews FDR is an almost deity.
Fri May 4, 2018, 04:05 PM
May 2018

He didn't care when our families were being slaughtered. Spread us out thin so hopefully we will not have strong ties to our traditions and faith.

Behind the Aegis

(53,833 posts)
2. Little has changed.
Fri May 4, 2018, 04:55 PM
May 2018

It seems many who "support" Israel do so for their own gains, and those who hate Israel do so because of their own bigotries. Frankly, I am convinced the reason so many Jews sat in displacement camps, and were finally allowed to go to Israel, was because the main European governments didn't want them, but also didn't want the reminder of what had happened, and by sending them off to "Palestine", I think they were hoping the "Jewish Question" would get "answered" more completely, just not on European soil this time.

elleng

(130,156 posts)
3. 'The White House plan called for Carter and Field, a trained anthropologist,
Fri May 4, 2018, 06:18 PM
May 2018

to seek the assistants of academics and geographers to survey “the vacant places of the earth suitable for post-war settlement,” specifically in Africa and South America, and the “type of people who could live in those places.” . .

The President outlined a number of questions the study would attempt to answer, such as: “Is the South Italian stock—say, Sicilian—as good as the North Italian stock—say, Milanese—if given equal economic and social opportunity? Thus, in a given case, where 10,000 Italians were to be offer[ed] settlement facilities, what proportion of the 10,000 should be Northern Italians and what Southern Italian?”

Roosevelt “also pointed out… that while most South American countries would be glad to admit Jewish immigration, it was on the condition that the Jewish group were not localized in the cities, they want no ‘Jewish colonies,’ ‘Italian colonies,’ etc.” . .

The M Project would finally be scrapped by President Harry Truman, who took over as commander-in-chief after Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Truman saw the study as a colossal waste of money, which was granted $10,000 a month, and ordered the State Department to pull the funding soon after becoming President.'

elleng

(130,156 posts)
5. Wish I'd been able to ask Dad about this;
Fri May 4, 2018, 07:56 PM
May 2018

wonder if he knew; he kept aware of public affairs, read 3-4 papers/day (in NYC,) and of course served in WW 2.

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