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Franklin Delano Roosevelt


  • Why FDR Turned Away Jewish Students

    by Rafael Medoff

    American immigration policy was governed by a strict quota system, based on national origins. But the law contained three major exceptions: clergy, professors, and students could be admitted outside the quota restrictions.


  • FDR's Token Jewish Refugee Shelter

    by Rafael Medoff

    Granting temporary refuge was a way of addressing the life-and-death crisis that Europe’s Jews faced, without incurring the wrath of those who opposed permanent immigration.


  • Why FDR Wouldn't Condemn Hitler

    by Rafael Medoff

    A few words from the White House directly taking issue with Hitler’s aggressive actions and persecution of the Jews could have helped alert the public to the Nazi danger. 


  • Why the U.S. Bombed Auschwitz, But Didn't Save the Jews

    by Rafael Medoff

    Seventy-five years ago this week—on March 19, 1944—German troops marched into Hungary. The country’s 800,000 Jews, the last major Jewish community to have eluded the raging Holocaust, now lay within Hitler’s grasp.