The Holocaust and its echoes: The State Department must come clean on the U.S. failure to deport Nazis over the decades
On the Hebrew calendar, today is the 27th of Nisan, Yom Hashoah, day of the Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking when the doomed Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against their German murderers in the spring of 1943 and fought off the world’s most fearsome army for weeks.
As the millions of dead are remembered and mourned and vows of “never again” and “never forget” ring out, too many have forgotten. There is rising anti-Semitism in this country and this city as Jews are targeted for hate and violence. Though in Ukraine, where once the Germans and their local collaborators murdered every Jew they could find, history has turned as a Jew, Volodymyr Zelensky, is the heroic president of the country leading the fight against Russian invaders.
Appropriately today, the U.S. State Department is carefully documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Kremlin. Perpetrators must be brought to justice. So we are perplexed that this is the same State Department that is refusing to yield to the demand of three leading congressmen, Reps. Jerry Nadler, Hakeem Jeffries and Greg Meeks, that State explain why over many years, it refused to deport Nazi war criminals hiding in America discovered by the U.S. Justice Department.
The trio wrote to Secretary Tony Blinken last year and have gotten nothing but an acknowledgement. Why hasn’t the department historian looked into this? Why has there been no response from Deborah Lipstadt, newly confirmed as special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, or Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Ellen Germain?
The spotlight will grow when Ken Burns’ six-hour film, called “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” comes this fall to PBS. But don’t wait for a spotlight. Produce the truth now.
