Review of David Wyman’s The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945

Abstract

How strange it must seem for those who recall the eerie silence at the time of the slaughter of European Jewry to observe the current noisy media events and the proliferation of research on that catastrophe. If only there was such public concern at the time. In the case of the failing role of the American government alone we now have innumerable books and articles, several documentary films, and there is more research in the pipeline. The latest of these is David Wyman’s prize-winning The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945. It is such a tour de force that it cannot fail to have an impact on the uninformed reader. For the historian, however, it raises more questions than it answers.

Though David Wyman was not at the Hyde Park Conference, his book has set the tone for much of the debate over America and the Holocaust. Those familiar with Henry L. Feingold’s work might have expected him to be enthusiastic about Wyman’s approach. But in this review, Professor Feingold spells out what he sees as the shortcomings of Wyman’s work and his often puzzling conclusions.

Michael R. Marrus reviews Wyman’s book and Monty Penkower’s in the following chapter. He concludes both fail “to appreciate how difficult it was to grasp the full horror of the Holocaust.”