New research states that FDR was not insensitive to the problems of European Jews trying to get away from the Nazis. This book claims that the US State Department "thwarted" his efforts on their behalf. The book is Refugees and Rescue edited by Richard Breitman and based on the diaries of James G. McDonald, who worked for the League of Nations on the issue and later became the first US ambassador to Israel. The common belief was that FDR "ignored warnings" of Hitler's final solution. The case of the SS St. Louis was always seen as proof of FDR's lack of concern. The St Louis was a ship out of Germany with 900 Jewish refugees that the US refused to allow into the US. Most of the passengers were later lost in the concentration camps. The State Department opposed immigration and issuance of visas while Congress refused to funding for re-settlement. The State Department was also in possession of a 1942 report about genocide in Germany and refused to release it. This last claim is made by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. The issue is still under debate as some historians of the era think the book sheds no new light.
(Source: "Book says FDR pressed effort to resettle Jews fleeing Nazis" by Richard Pyle of the AP. The Record on May 3, 2009)
