Katie Couric Wasn’t The First: FDR, Truman And The Jews

According to the full text of the Wise memo, FDR claimed that “the Jewish grain dealer and the Jewish shoe dealer and the Jewish shopkeeper” had been undercutting Polish Christian merchants, and it was this alleged Jewish financial subterfuge that was provoking Christian shopkeepers to demand that “the Jew should go.”

According to the memo, Wise protested, “But, Chief, this is pure Fascist talk”—a surprisingly blunt remark, considering that Wise was a passionate supporter of President Roosevelt and his administration. But Wise’s plea had no impact on the president. He wrote that Roosevelt’s remarks were “very painful” and “like a blow in the face.”

Readers of the Breitman-Lichtman book, like readers of Katie Couric’s interview with Justice Ginsburg, had no way of knowing what had been omitted.

President Roosevelt’s image has also benefited from another troubling omission, this one courtesy of the State Department. At the Yalta Conference, in February 1945, Roosevelt mentioned to Josef Stalin that he would soon be seeing Saudi Arabia’s king, Ibn Saud. Stalin asked if FDR intended to make any concessions to Saud. According to the transcript, “The President replied that there was only one concession he thought he might offer and that was to give him the six million Jews in the United States.”

But when the State Department published the transcript in 1955, Roosevelt’s unpleasant remark about Jews was omitted. More than fifty years later, a researcher discovered that then-Assistant Secretary of State Walter Bedell Smith had crossed out the comment about Jews prior to publication, and had written in the margin: “Delete this–it is not pertinent history.”