Blowing the Whistle on Genocide ─ Josiah E. Dubois, Jr., and the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust

Well, let's face it. There's no question in my mind that some of the people over there [U.S. State Department]—whose names are in my book—were actually just plain anti-Semitic. It's just that simple. There's no question according to the transcript of Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., during a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library, 1973. Blowing the Whistle on Genocide tells the story of Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., a young treasury department lawyer who risked his career to alert the world to the Holocaust. As Nazism rose in Germany, many countries refused to allow Jewish immigration. The United States, spurred on by the America First Committee, wanted to remain neutral during the early days of World War II. Anti-Semitic influences kept the United States from filling its quotas for refugees, supposedly to keep Nazi spies out of the country. DuBois exposed the inequities in America's refugee policy and forced the United States government to take action to rescue the displaced Jews. Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., was a different kind of hero of the Holocaust. He was not a rescuer, and he did not shelter refugees. He was a whistle-blower and opened the eyes of the global community to Nazi atrocities.

:Dr. Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which focuses on issues related to America's response to the Holocaust (www.WymanInstitute.org). He has served as associate editor of the scholarly journal American Jewish History and is the author of seven books about the Holocaust, Zionism, and the history of American Jewry. Medoff has taught Jewish history at The Ohio State University and at The State University of New York at Purchase.