Spectators to a Civilization's Destruction

Spectators to a Civilization's Destruction Why We Watched: Europe, America, and by Theodore S. Hamerow, WW Norton, 2008, 520 pp. Reviewed by Lawrence Kohn Theodore S. Hamerow, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin, discusses in this important work the role of anti-Semitism in America's response to the Holocaust and the changing perception of the relationship between the Holocaust and the Second World War. Professor Harnero w begins by smoothly and succinctly summarizing the changes in involvement with surrounding European society from the medieval to modem period, the siren song of Emancipation, and the ineradicable Jewish question. He describes the changing nature of European anti-Jewish feeling from religious hatred to racially based anti-Semitism and with the development of this latter concept the final closure of any doors of escape from the Jewish condition. Hamerow provides the reader with an understanding of the strategic equations which guided the Americans and the Allies in the lead up to and during the Second World War, including Hitler's march to conquest and America's turn from isolationism to neutral belligerence. It was these equations and others which led the Allies to focus on their war efforts rather than attempting to rescue victims of the Nazi onslaught. He closes the book with a review entitled the Twilight of European Jewry, which discusses the period following the war and the emergence of the concept of the Holocaust as we recognize it today. In addition to citing standard sources such as Henry Feingold and David Wyman,1 Hamerow uses diaries, diplomatic memoranda, and extensive polling data throughout the book. By doing so, he draws a detailed picture of the fear of influence prominent among a significant minority of the American population and the near obsession of American officials to avoid creating the impression that the purpose of the war was to rescue Jews. Undergirding the belief in excessive influence and fear of increased anti-Semitism, along with declining support at home for a war strategy of unconditional surrender (with all the sacrifices of American men and resources this would entail) was the overwhelming opposition to changing the quota system, seen as a bulwark against the threat which immigrants posed to American jobs. unchanging existence of anti-Semitism throughout the war is clear from polling data cited by Hamerow results which he brings show more feelings of distrust toward Jews by Americans than almost any other minority group. This distrust only increased as the war continued, even after details about the massacres of Jews in Europe began to become public. Hamerow extends his analysis to Canada and Latin America. He examines the effects of the size of the community and the ratio between it and the local population on willingness to receive refugees, as well as the variety of attitudes demonstrated toward Jews on each continent. Canada, for example, compared unfavorably to Latin America. Hamerow makes it clear that there could have been a significant life-saving effect only before the war, since during the war itself Hitler's accelerated massacres of Jews essentially destroyed European Jewry (apart from in Hungary and the Balkans) before the Allies had turned the tide of the war. However, the attitudes dominating an isolationist, quota-bound America when the Final Solution was yet to be formulated resulted in a lack of urgency that, in hindsight, assured European Jewry's almost total destruction. Hamerow makes it clear how significant hindsight is in the chapter The Emergence of the Holocaust, in which he describes the transformation of the Second World War from a strategic necessity with an element of tragedy for a variety of victims - including Jews, but only on occasion noted as specifically connected to the Jews - to a war that served as a backdrop to the Holocaust. …

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