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“It may perhaps seem strange, that I treat as often in my
works of the same matter…the contempt of the world, and the meditations of
Death: but if the importance of the subject be considered, and the profit to be
derived thence, a Man will never be wearie of seeing such faire truths under
different presentations.” 

Jean Puget de la Serre, The Mirrour Which
Flatters Not, 1639.

Following up on yesterday’s post on lethal number
(in Japan,
1945) I thought I’d have a quick look at another devastating weapon.  In the arsenal of human weapons, man’s tongue
must rank quite high, right there with ignorance and knowing conceit.  The seven deadly sins must also be considered
lethal weapons, once they turned on themselves, unleashed from the human
condition. 

I’d like to focus on self-deception, the welcoming of not
knowing something, of not wanting to know, of stopping: of doing nothing in the face of something needing to be done.

The destruction of the Jewish people during World War II is a history with many
bearings, a complex of actions that seem to have been both elusively
unstoppable and eminently addressable.  The psychology of why this
occurred is forensically comprehensible; the ultimate question, after
everything is said and done, is why the extermination was allowed to continue
for years on end. There is a considerable catalog of demons of nonactions and deceits
that I just can’t address now in a short post like this. Though I would like to
know why was it so difficult/impossible for the British government (and in
particular, Anthony Eden)
to allow Palestine
as a safe haven for desperate Jews, engaging in torturously long non-decisions
and bureaucratiuc inscrutabiulity to emergency situations?  Why did Franklin Roosevelt
take so long to come acknowledge the documentation of the Holocaust and then
cause almost nothing to be done about it?  Why did Sumner Welles act decidedly against any real
action in presenting the full case of the Holocaust to American leaders? 
Why would the War Department (represented by Assistant
Secretary McCloy) respond in 1944 that  Auschwitz
was both beyond the reach of tactical bombers and not be of sufficient military
interest to divert Air Force resources away from other areas of interest? 
The knowledge of vast extermination of Jews in Europe
was known by early 1943, and yet, there was little action taken to do anything
to stop it.  Not only that, the issue of emigration for Jews to the United
States or any other country that would have them was caustic and slow; it was
in short a history of the use of the word “no”. 

Henry Morgenthau (1891-1967), an old-line politician, was
secretary of the treasury under Roosevelt and
was also the only Jew in the cabinet.  It
was he who produced one of the most compelling, and damaging, documents questioning
the American government’s culpability in doing nothing concerning the
Holocaust, when “officials dodged their grim responsibility,
procrastinated when concrete rescue schemes were placed before them, and even
suppressed information about atrocities.”

Its title left nothing to question:

“Report to the
Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews”

 It starts so:

“One of the greatest crimes in history, the slaughter of the
Jewish people in Europe, is continuing
unabated.

“This Government has for a long time maintained that its policy is to work out programs
to serve those Jews of Europe who could be saved.

“I am convinced on the basis of the information which is available to me that
certain officials in our State Department, which is charged with carrying out
this policy, have been guilty not only of gross procrastination and wilful
failure to act, but even of wilful attempts to prevent action from being taken
to rescue Jews from Hitler.

“I fully recognize the graveness of this statement and I make it only after
having most carefully weighed the shocking facts which have come to my
attention during the last several months.”

The full document is reproduced below.

It is a damning document outlining the power of doing
nothing.