Holocaust testimony by David Harris might have included AJC’s ‘scant’ concern at the time

I've been meaning to get this post up for a couple weeks: on Israel lobbyist David Harris's testimony about the Holocaust before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration. Harris is the executive director of the American Jewish Committee and the child of a Holocaust survivor. His testimony was apparently in favor of open-border legislation, but it's not about the legislation. It's all about a historical issue that he says "resonates" to this day: the Holocaust and how America didn't do enough to save European Jews, the Roosevelt era's "great failing." I certainly grew up with that understanding. Why didn't we bomb the railroads out of Hungary? But why is this coming up now?

Here is David Harris playing on American complicity in the Holocaust:

Michael Desch of Notre Dame has studied the Holocaust and doesn't fault American conduct to the degree that Harris does. He wrote an important paper on the subject, called "The Myth of Abandonment." (I keep waiting for Yivo to hold a panel with Desch and Larry Zuckerman, who is studying the Joint Distribution Committee and takes a different view). Desch wrote to me about Harris:

Harris's history is not so much wrong but decontextualized (cf. my paper, pp. 123-26).  Yes, the U.S. could have done more, but it did more than anyone else at the time.

And here is some context for Harris's remarks from The Holocaust in American Life, by Peter Novick. Remember what Harris said about "leaders" identifying with the anguish in Europe? Novick:

How much did organized American Jewry do to press for rescue efforts?…in general, rescue was not a high priority item for major American Jewish organizations, or their leaders, during the war. The archives of the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish congress show scant attention to the question.

Or here is another excerpt from Novick's book. In the late 1940s, a Holocaust memorial was proposed in New York City.

On three separate occasions–in 1946, 1947, and 1948–the representatives of the NCRAC [National Community Relations Advisory Council] organizations, including the American Jewish Committee… unanimously rejected the idea–and effectively vetoed the initiative. They were concerned that such a monument would result in Americans' thinking of Jews as victims: it would be "a pepetual memorial to the weakness and defenselessness of the Jewish people

Desch has a smart interpretation of Harris's testimony: