Bearing Witness

Historian Henry L. Feingold probes the haunting question of why the efforts of the American government and Jewish leaders were ineffective in halting or mitigating Germany's genocidal policy during the Holocaust. Focusing on the role of the Roosevelt administration and American Jewish leadership, Feingold anchors the American reaction to the Holocaust, in the tension-ridden domestic environment of the Depression, to the international scene. In these essays, he argues that the constraints of the American political system in the 1930s and 40s and the extraordinary events of the time virtually made it impossible for the administration and American Jews to react differently.--From publisher description.