Roosevelt Receives Jewish Delegation, Promises Aid to End Nazi Massacres of Jews

Assurance that the United Nations are prepared to take every possible step to end the Nazi massacres of Jews in Europe and to save those who may still be saved was given today by President Roosevelt to a Jewish delegation which presented to the President a twenty-page memorandum containing details on the Nazi destruction of European Jews.

The delegation consisted of Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, Maurice Wertheim, president of the American Jewish Committee, Henry Monsky, president of the B’nai B’rith, Adolph Held, president of the Jewish labor Committee and Rabbi Israel Rosenberg, president of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. The five meads of the major national Jewish organizations in the country also presented to President Roosevelt another memorandum asking that “an American Commission be appointed at once to receive and examine all evidence of Nazi barbarities against civilian populations, and to submit that evidence to the bar of public opinion and to the conscience of the world.”

Declaring that ” we are doing everything possible to determine who are personally guilty ” of the death of two million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, President Roosevelt assured the delegation that its proposals would receive full consideration from the United States Government and that he did not doubt that the United Nations will be prepared, as the American Government would be, to take every step to end these crimes against the Jews and other civilian populations of the Hitler-ruled countries and to save those who may still be saved.

“The mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,” President Roosevelt was quoted by the delegation as having stated. He reminded the delegation that when Jewish organizations held a meeting in Madison Square Garden in New York last July to protest against the savagery of the Nazis, he made it clear that all Americans, without regard to religious allegiance, would share in the sorrow of American Jews. He emphasized that at that time he had said: ” The American people do not only sympathize with the victims of Nazi orimes, but will hold the perpetrators of these crimes to strict accountability on the day of reckoning which will surely come.”

The President was profoundly shocked to learn that two million Jews had in one way or another perished in Europe as a result of Nazi rule and crime, the delegation reported.

Rabbi Rosenberg bestowed his blessing upon the President prior to the delegation’s leaving the White House. Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the Synagogue Council of America, who also signed both memorandums submitted to President Roosevelt, was not present at the conference.