FDR, the United States, and the Holocaust

FDR, the United States, and the Holocaust – A 3-part lecture series at Anshe Sfard Kehillat Torah (ASKT) given by Dr. Eric Pullin in partnership with HERC.

This lecture series addresses how the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt responded to the Holocaust-the greatest horror of World War II. Although the systematic mass murder or Jews did not begin until after Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, American citizens’ attitudes toward Jews and U.S. immigration policies directly affected the ability of many European Jews to flee persecution. As early as 1942, the U.S. government acquired credible evidence that Nazi Germany perpetrated genocide against Europe’s Jewish population. The program further considers what the United States could and should have done to destroy machinery of death or to rescue Jews from the Holocaust.

Through the examination of select primary sources, the program asks three broad questions:

What did the United States do (or not do)?

What (and when) did the United States know?

What should (or could) have the United States done?

Eric Pullin is Professor of History and Asian Studies at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Professor Pullin’s primary teaching and research interests address the international relations between India and the United States during the 20th century. He teaches courses on the History of India, Twentieth-Century America, International Relations, World War II, the Cold War, and the History of Dictionaries.

He earned a B.A. in History from Rockford College, an M.A. in History from Northern Illinois University, an A.M. in Labor and Industrial Relations from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.