In her fine review of Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein’s documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust” (Television Review, Sept. 15), Dorothy Rabinowitz stresses the anti-Semitism “especially in the State Department” and among “notorious State Department officials.” These point to President Franklin Roosevelt.
He totally controlled the State Department for 12 years, and appointed his friend, Breckinridge Long, a most consequential anti-Semite, as assistant secretary, supervising the State Department’s visa division. To be sure, FDR often ridiculed the State Department, but that was politically convenient, given the nation’s insularity. He could have transformed the department to his liking at any time.
Read More: FDR, the State Department and U.S. Holocaust Failures
