You might want to start with part 1.
Or you might want to skip this all together and read this wonderful Disney World Travelogue.
I don't have the energy to explain what I've been doing with these posts, so I'm just going to jump in and start looking at what Eleanor Roosevelt said about Jewish people in her My Day column in her United Nation Years (from 1946-1952).
I'm not sure what they mean by United Nation Years.
Was FDR in the United Nations? In an official role? Or was she?
I Googled. It was she not he.
Actually, now I'm remembering that FDR died. I think in office.
Googling again...
Yeah. I'm right. He died in office.
* * *
The search-function of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a little hard to work with. I think it might be a bit glitchy. Because of this, it's hard for me to read the entries in order.
So, I jump around in time a bit.
Sorry about that.
* * *
Before I get into the Jewish-related search results, I want to see what Roosevelt wrote on my parent's birthdays. I'm just curious. Plus, since they're both Jewish...it kind of counts.
* * *
Roosevelt talks about shopping on the day my mom was born.
She took her granddaughter, and her granddaughter's friend, shopping in NYC.
Roosevelt says, I was going to shop, which is a necessity when you shop for yourself but an entertainment when you shop for the young.
I probably don't share her feelings about this. I usually find clothes shopping quite stressful, whether it's for me or someone younger.
I wonder if my mom would agree, though. She takes her grandchildren shopping. Is that entertaining for her?
Roosevelt and her granddaughter also went to the dentist...minus the granddaughter's friend.
I'm reading all of this as a kind of horoscope of my mom's life and seeing the dentist trip as a negative omen.
After the dentist and some other chores, Roosevelt and the granddaughter had lunch with Mrs. Albert Lasker and Mrs. Anna Rosenberg.
It's interesting that Roosevelt refers to the first friend by her husband's name and the second by the woman's own name.
Maybe women chose how they wanted to be referred to and considerate people respected that.
Anyway...the other thing in regards to names. Both sound like Jewish names to me—especially Rosenberg.
Roosevelt says about their lunch:
Mrs. Lasker and Mrs. Rosenberg are always a stimulating pair, and this was an especially interesting luncheon because I had a glimpse of the report on the nation's health which Oscar Ewing is shortly going to make to the President. When this report is released to the public I shall hope to tell you more about the things in it which seem to me important to every individual in the country.
That's some exciting foreshadowing there.
* * *
I Googled.
Oscar Ewing was one of the writers of the New Deal.
You know....reading old diaries like this. It feels very much like time-traveling.
I love arm-chair time-traveling.
* * *
Roosevelt took her granddaughter to see a play called Mr. Roberts.
This is quite prophetic.
My mom (born on this day) married a Mr. Roberts.
* * *
Speaking of....
I'm now going to look at what Eleanor Roosevelt wrote on the day my dad was born.
* * *
I just realized that the Granddaughter adventures didn't happen the day my mother was born.
Roosevelt's column was published that day....which was a Friday
The adventures occurred on Thursday.
Oh well.
It still counts for something.
Probably.
* * *
Back to my dad:
On that day, Roosevelt talked about going to an education meeting. There was a French woman there who was in the United States to examine our school systems.
Roosevelt writes:
She is impressed by the happiness of our children and their freedom in the classroom. She maintains, though, that there is more thirst for knowledge and insistence on study for the sake of knowledge only in the French school system.
Interesting....
Roosevelt also talks about Russia pulling out of the United Nations health agency. She says, That is one of the few specialized agencies to which the USSR has been willing to belong, and the benefits to be derived from worldwide cooperation on health projects seem so very obvious that it is difficult to understand why the Soviets do not wish to keep in touch with the rest of the world.
I bet Roosevelt would be dismayed to know what Russia is up to lately.
* * *
It suddenly came to me that The New Deal was an FDR thing.
Right?
Or maybe he started it and then Truman finished it?
I'm wondering if what Roosevelt wrote about on my mom's birthday was another Oscar Ewing adventure.
Googling.....
Lord Wiki says the New Deal was Roosevelt, and the various parts of it came about between 1933-1939.
So...the Oscar Ewing thing must have been something new.
* * *
According to Lord Wiki, Ewing was part of something called The Whistle Stop tour.
He was also head of the Federal Security Agency which is now the Department of Health and Human services.
He was an advocate for a national health plan. Maybe that's what Roosevelt had been referring to.
I wonder if it would be like universal health care?
* * *
Now I should get on with searching for mention of the word "Jew" or "Jewish". I might also look for things like "Israel", "Palestine" and "Holocaust".
* * *
On March 26, 1946, Roosevelt writes about visiting a Jewish home for the aged. She says: I could not help being thankful that, in this country, these old people could find a sanctuary in their declining years. A happy contrast to the sad old people that I saw in a Jewish refugee camp in Germany.
I wonder when she went to visit the refugee camp.
And I wonder how many European Jews were in refugee camps, in Europe, after the war?
I'm assuming she's talking about post-war.
Although, I could be wrong.
* * *
It turns out there's a whole website about these camps. They were called Displacement Camps. Or at least, that's one of the names for them.
I'm going to bookmark this site and add it to my list of possible future posts.
To answer my question above, though...the site says, at it's peak, the camps/camp had around 250,000 people.
* * *
On June 11, 1946, Roosevelt talked a bit about the statistics of the Holocaust.
She writes: Of the 7,000,000 Jews who lived in Europe when Hitler first came to power, nearly 6,000,000 were put to death in the most brutal manner possible. The methods used frequently included deliberate starvation and torture. Among those murdered were 2,000,000 Jewish children.
I thought there were more than 7 million before Hitler.
But I could be wrong.
* * *
Or I could be right.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says the number was 9.5 million.
* * *
Roosevelt doesn't just talk numbers in the June 11, column. She also shares this:
I talked to a man and his wife who had finally managed to come to this country from a concentration camp near Frankfort. They are educated, scholarly people—he is a poet. They had seen their two children burned to death.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that behind the numbers, there are sad stories.
Or we may remember but....
For me, I don't feel a lot of empathy when seeing numbers. I need the stories.
* * *
Roosevelt talks about issues in Palestine on August 19, 1946.
By the way, I'm trying to go in order of date for the first page of results.
The problem is once I get to the second page, I'll probably jump back in time.
If all the results were on one page, I think I could manage to read the results in order.
It's too complicated to flip through all the results.
And with this website, sometimes it says there are many more pages of results. But when I look again, the results are no longer there.
Anyway...Palestine.
Roosevelt says: Many of us will agree that resort to force by Jews in Palestine is deplorable, but I don't think it is hard to understand. Palestine does not belong to Britain, which governs it under a mandate. When people are desperate, I suppose that a show of force against them inevitably brings retaliation in kind.
I'm not quite sure what was happening there.
Jews were using force. Was that against Arabs? The British?
I thought Palestine did belong to Britain.
It all confuses me so much.
Roosevelt says:
The suggestion that the country be partitioned seems to me no answer to the problem, since the main objection originally to Palestine becoming a home for the Jews was the grave doubt entertained by many as to whether the land would be able to support any more people than were already there. It is understandable that the Arabs are not anxious to have the Jews as neighbors. The Arabs are a nomadic people, leading simple lives, and those who have moved into the orbit of the Jewish people have found the competition difficult and the standard of living higher than that to which they were accustomed. The Jews, however, are not asking for a vast increase in land. They ask to keep what they have, with slight additions for economic needs, and to be allowed to take in refugees.
The Arabs that Roosevelt describe kind of remind me of Texans who don't want to share the land with people from Mexico, Central America, etc.
I believe there will always be people with the attitude of I'm sorry that happened in your country. But we can't help you here.
There will always be people who are anti-refugee.
There will always be people who are unwelcoming.
* * *
Were the Arabs in Palestine very nomadic? I mean were most of them nomadic? I feel that can't be completely true, because I'm pretty sure I've heard that some Palestinians lost their houses to Jews.
I'm guessing some Arabs were nomadic and others lived in homes.
I wonder which group was more resistant about letting Jews find sanctuary in Palestine—the nomads or the villagers.
* * *
A few days have passed since I've worked on this.
I'm worried a bit that I'm going to be lost and unable to jump back in...that I've lost that momentum.
* * *
Here's something odd.
On April 1, 1947, Roosevelt writes about European children orphaned by World War II/Nazis—the ones who died, because they acted in opposition to the Nazis. Basically: ANTIFA.
Roosevelt says, Under the law, the state can do nothing for these children. Orphans whose parents died under other circumstances have some rights under the law. But those whose parents, from patriotic motives and of their own free will, chose to defy the German authorities, are left without protection.
I guess maybe I'm confusing Germany back than with Germany today—imagining that right after the war, they showed regret for what the Nazis had done and immediately made laws to rectify some of the horrors.
* * *
The little boy from Jo Jo Rabbit would probably count as one of these kids.
* * *
On May 14, 1947, Roosevelt writes a LOT about Palestine. Well...the whole column is about the subject.
I kind of wish I could just quote all of it.
But I won't.
She definitely supports Palestine becoming the Jewish homeland but also understands that the land is important to Arab.
One of the things she says is: I realize perfectly that, from a religious standpoint, Jews, Arabs and Christians all have an interest in the Holy Land. I realize also that the Arabs have an economic interest and a right in much of that area of the world.
One thing that is missing from that statement is an understanding that Arabs may also have a...
Not sure what to call it.
Maybe....residential claim? Their house, apartments, neighborhoods, community, etc.
Another quote from Roosevelt.
Under the British mandate, through money contributed by Jewish people in many parts of the world, areas of this country have gradually become settled and developed. Possibilities are outlined for future development which many Jewish people feel will support many more of their unfortunate brethren. It is true that, as yet, the Arabs outnumber the Jews in most of this area, but there is no real reason why these two peoples, who have great similarities, cannot live in peace together.
I wonder if both groups were equally resistant to living in peace together.
Did both groups want the other group out of there?
One of the ideas Roosevelt seems to amplify on her platform is that the Arab people were nomadic— living simple lives. And one of their main reasons for resistance is that the Jews were bringing a more developed, modern way of living.
I wonder if this is very true or is it partly propaganda.
I think one of the pro-Zionist things I've heard is that the Israeli's brought technology and other modern things to the area.
Maybe irrigation?
* * *
I really need to learn more about the history of Israel.
It's just kind of daunting, because it's really hard to separate propaganda from history.
Though I guess that's the case with all history and not just Israel.
There's always going to be two sides of the story. It's just that in many cases, one side is kept quiet.
I think with some history, there are two sides yelling very loudly. I think this is what we have with Israelis vs. Palestinians and MAGA vs us Woke Liberals.
With other history, one side is very loud. The other is super quiet. But then through the years, the quiet becomes less quiet.
* * *
I'll use autism as an example.
I think for decades...the autism-is-a-tragic-disease group was very loud. Their message was readily accepted by most of society.
Then...I think in the 90's...there were quiet whisperings of autistic pride/neurodivergent acceptance.
Quiet whisperings=fringe movement. My brain just reminded me that this term exists.
Thanks, brain.
Anyway, I think because of the Internet...it's now probably around 50/50 among people who have an interest in autism. Some think of it as a tragedy that needs to be cured or overcome. The other half see it as something that should be accepted in the same way we accept different sexual orientations and skin colors.
I think with Israel vs. Palestine, from the beginning (not beginning beginnings but late 1940's)...there were two loud viewpoints.
Loud. I was trying to think of a word for that.
Would mainstream work?
At least since I can remember...supporting Israel or supporting Palestinians both seem like pretty mainstream movements.
It had to be, at least partly, the same back then. Because Roosevelt was writing about it in her column. I imagine she was so busy with mainstream issues. She probably wouldn't have time for fringe movements.
This is making me rethink autism viewpoints being divided 50/50.
Well, maybe it's about half and half in terms of people who have a vested interest in the subject.
But although neurodivergent acceptance isn't super fringe anymore, I also don't think it's mainstream. Just going by my experience on Twitter and Instagram. There very often seems to be posts written with an autism-is-a-tragedy mentality and the opposing side coming along to speak up and explain why they see that mentality as being problematic.
This is often in the form of a person or organization asking for others to support their support of an autistic charity...a charity that has a history of seeing autism as a tragedy.
Sometimes the person or organization. might know of the two opposing sides and has made a choice of which one to support. Other times, they seem to be clueless.
Note: Many people subscribing to the first mindset would probably claim that they DO support neurodivergence. But it's often in the form of: He has autism. But he's a delightful kid. Or: We have a child with autism, but we've taught her that she doesn't have to let her autism define her!
How about....
He's Jewish! But he's a delightful kid.
We have a Palestinian child in our class. But we've taught her that she doesn't have to be defined by that.
(Just in case someone didn't understand why that phrasing is offensive).
Well...there may be people who also don't understand why it's offensive when applied to Palestinians and Jews.
* * *
Getting back to Roosevelt's column.
She says: Some of the writers whose articles I have read suggest that, because the Arabs control much oil and because the U. S. and Great Britain are both interested in leasing this oil, they do not wish to offend the Arabs in anyway.
Outside of Trump's administration, I think most American presidents and governments have tried to play nice with both the Palestinians and Israelis.
It might not be equal. But I don't think any administration has been either We're pro-Israel and the Palestinians can go suck it or We're pro-Palestinian and the Israelis can go suck it.
I think the same goes for most other countries towards Israel/Palestine.
Anyway, I wonder what were and are the main motivations in trying to support both sides.
Do oil and economics play the main part?
I imagine there's a fear of losing votes from either group (Jewish voters and Muslim/Arab voters)
I'd like to imagine that some support of Israel comes from the American government feeling guilty that we didn't do enough to help the European Jews. But I don't think the United States is very good at facing their guilt and trying to make amends.
* * *
On August 14, 1947, Roosevelt used her column for a solemn lecture on bystanders.
She had learned of a group of college students who said antisemitic things; then pointed to a Greek student and said he looked Jewish. That led to the student being beat up bad enough that he had to spend ten days in the hospital.
Roosevelt writes, The horrible thing to me is that this could happen when other people were about and that no one seems to have tried to prevent it. I feel sure that even one person with courage and conviction could have brought these young people to their senses. We did not fight a war against fascism in order to allow it to develop here.
I think of things like this when I see people telling celebrities and corporations to stay out of politics.
What they're really doing, when they say these things, is pressuring others to be bystanders.
How would have history been different if more celebrities and European companies used their platforms to speak out against Nazism?
* * *
In that column, Roosevelt writes: This week marks the second anniversary of Hiroshima and the Atomic Age. Happy anniversary, everybody.
From what I know of her, I'm assuming she was being very darkly ironic.
Did I use ironic correctly here?
Anyway....
If someone like Trump had said it, I'd think he was being genuine.
* * *
It's the next day.
I realized yesterday, after I finished blogging for the day, that I went off on this tangent about autism and forgot to mention what I should have mentioned about Palestinians and Israelis.
I think the pro-Israeli side assumes that the modern ways of life are superior and universally desired by all.
If it's true that the Arabs in Palestine were nomadic and not modernized, we shouldn't assume their way of life was inferior.
Well, I think we CAN have opinions about which type of lifestyle we think is better. I think the problem is more when we assume everyone else must share that viewpoint.
Another analogy: Let's say family A is a video game/pop culture kind of family. The children from Family A spend a week with Family B. Family B is a sports family.
At the end of the stay, the B parents proudly tell the A parents that the A kids went a full week without screen time and even better, one of the kids used the spending money, she had saved for their next trip to their local comic-con, to buy a couple of sports-team sweatshirts.
Parents B expects Parents A to be very grateful and relieved that their child has made such vast life improvements and can't understand why Parents A are not overjoyed.
Stepping outside the analogy.
Modern living makes life easier, and in some ways, it makes life spectacular. But it also makes life incredibly stressful and is pretty much destroying the earth. So I couldn't blame anyone for wanting a more nomadic existence.
When it comes to providing refuge to fellow human beings, though....ones who I'm pretty sure have a pretty historical claim to the land. I don't think this is the time to say...Nah. We want to keep things simple. Find a home elsewhere.
Oh! That's the other thing. Yesterday when taking a shower, I had Alexa play the Fiona Apple cover of "Across the Universe", because the Arab resistance to too many Jews coming and changing the culture of Palestine, made me think of the song.
The last time the song came to me was during the beginning of the pandemic—hearing of people not wanting to make the changes needed to stop Covid from spreading.
* * *
I find it a bit messed up that the left tends to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. I think the Palestinian side of things (at least back then) fits in better with the right-wing anti-immigrant mentality.
If the world made more sense, I think the left would sympathize with Israelis and the right would sympathize with the Palestinian feelings of: Go Back to Where You Came from, and Isn't it time you stopped playing the Holocaust card?
It's all about the narrative, though. Were the Jews invaders and now colonizers? Or are they people indigenous to the land who returned to their land?
* * *
Getting back to Roosevelt.
She had a lot to say about Palestine on March 1, 1948.
I Googled to see when Israel became an official country.
It was about two months later—May 14, 1948.
Roosevelt says that she's getting letters from people asking them to rethink allowing Jews to turn Palestine into Israel and instead use one of the US states for that purpose.
Roosevelt says:
This particular suggestion is somewhat funny. I can quite understand how certain groups who feel that we would profit by Jewish immigration might ask us to receive not only those who are in Palestine but all the other Jewish displaced persons. But that we be asked to arbitrarily displace citizens of a certain state, and turn that state over to the Jews, strikes me as a suggestion to which the writers gave very little thought!
Why is it funny to imagine displacing citizens of a US state, but it's less funny to displace Palestinians?
Maybe if Arabs and Americans would have been cooperative and welcoming...they could have developed a smaller version of Israel in the Middle East and then another small Jewish area in one of the US states.
Even today, there are spaces that are undeveloped. I imagine back in the 1940's, this was even more the case.
It seems to me that there would have been room for tons of Jews without displacing a lot of people.
I'll have to read more about why and how the Arabs were displaced in the formation of Israel. Was Israel too forceful, inconsiderate, and greedy in taking over? Or were Arabs too antisemitic, unwelcoming, and uncompromising?
Or was it a mix of both?
* * *
Roosevelt writes more about Israel on December 30, 1948.
She says:
There are, of course, many points of view about the State of Israel. The Arab nations feel that they do not want to cede this territory to the Jews and, while they were quite willing to accept the Jews who came there and have them consider the area as a national home, they now feel that this never was meant to be a national state. The British, who had the mandate over the area from the League of Nations and finally gave it up because it was more than they could well handle, do not wish to do anything that would create difficulty between them and the Arab citizens in various parts of the world.
I wonder how the Arabs felt about the British mandate. I mean before the land was designated as the Jewish homeland.
Was there a lot of resistance to it?
Rhetorical questions for now...but maybe a future rabbit hole and post.
* * *
I really need to make improvements on my knowledge of Israeli history.
Roosevelt talks about the Balfour Declaration. I've heard of this but had no idea what it was.
It came about way before the Holocaust—November 2, 1917 and Roosevelt says that it expressed Britain's blessing on the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. And the Jews regarded this as a mandate created to make it possible for them to reach a point where they could govern themselves. That point, they consider, has been reached, and now they feel they are entitled to be a nation.
I think I did (kind of?) know that the plans of Israel came about before the Holocaust.
I think the Holocaust just put the plans in the fast lane.
Roosevelt says:
The Jews are willing to take long-suffering refugees from all parts of Europe who wish to leave the area where they have been unhappy, but in order to do this they must have sufficient land to settle them on. The land seems unpromising now, but they have discovered that through hard work they can develop it and make it productive.
How much territory has the story of undeveloped land being developed by the hard work of the Jews? and how much territory has the story of Arabs being kicked out of their homes to make way for Jews?
* * *
I finished with the first page of search results for Jew in the years 1946-1952.
When I tried to get to the second page, there was an error.
When I tried again, there were results. But it's going to reset my armchair time machine (futon, actually).
I'm going to guess the results are ranked by relevance. So I think I'm going to...not stop but look for some of the other relevant search terms.
I'll look at "Israel", "Palestinian", and "Holocaust". I'm wondering if those words were common enough in those days for Roosevelt to use them.
Well...she did use the term Israel in the December 1948 post.
I'm wondering when the Arabs in Palestine started referring to themselves as Palestinian. I also wonder, before Israel became a thing, did any Jews refer to themselves as Palestinian?
And when did the Holocaust become known as the Holocaust?
* * *
I searched for Holocaust, Israel, and Palestinian in the years 1946-1952...not among the whole universe but just within Eleanor Roosevelt's column.
Roosevelt wasn't yet using the word Palestinian.
I saw many mentions of Israel.
There were a handful of mentions of the Holocaust, but some might have been in reference to a nuclear Holocaust.
I was hoping and planning to try to finish the 1946-1952 years with this post. But this is already too long.
Yes, we can blame my tangents.
In the next post, I will continue with 1946-1952. I'll look at the posts mentioning Israel and the word Holocaust.
And I'll go on a million more self-indulgent tangents.
Before I say bye-bye, though. I am going to Google and try to get a quick answer about when the words Palestinian and the Holocaust came to mean what they mean today.
* * *
I'm going to give up on getting a quick answer about Palestinian.
I Googled and can already see how the term is super-politicized.
Just looking at the snippets that Google provides.
From the Jewish Virtual Library:
Origins of the name 'Palestine' and Palestinian Nationalism 'Under the Ottoman Empire (1517-1917), the term “Palestine” was used as a general term to describe the land south of Syria; it was not an official ...
From: DecolonizePalestine:
Myth: The name Palestine was a Roman invention: The very first traces of the name Palestine come from the time of Ramses II and III, roughly around the mid-12th century BC. There is an inscription dated to ...
From: the Hudson Institute:
The Forgotten History of the term Palestine: The ancient Romans pinned the name on the Land of Israel. ... “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the ...
I find this very interesting and will add it to my list of future post ideas.
I really want to write all these posts.
I want to do all the research.
I'm feeling a desire to clone myself or have a Groundhog Day spell put on me.
It's overwhelming. Not only do I now have a list of 44 post ideas. But each idea might take up 4-5 parts.
* * *
For the term Holocaust, I'm using Lord Wiki's expertise. It's fascinating.
I'm not going to go into the word's long history. At least not now.
One of the earliest uses of it, in terms of referring to what happened in Europe, was from a writer for the New York Times—Julian Metzer. He used the term in 1943 when writing about Jews immigrating to Palestine.
In the 1950's, when translating from Hebrew, the word was sometimes used as a translation for the Jewish/Hebrew word "Shoah"
In the 1960's the word became more associated with the Jewish genocide but with qualification. A book was written by Nora Levin titled. The Holocaust: The Destruction of Europe Jewry.
So back then...if someone said the word holocaust, they might be met with...WHAT holocaust?
The word's connection to the Jewish genocide became pretty much solidified in 1978. What was the cause? A Meryl Streep miniseries titled: The Holocaust.
The film and television industry really has a huge impact on culture and history.
* * *
The bit above was supposed to be the end of the post. But I just wanted to add a synchronicity story.
Yesterday evening, after rambling on about not assuming everyone values the same lifestyles, I was listening to the latest episode of the Weird Crap in Australia Podcast. Matthew and Holly did this whole lecture on people leaving modern society, for various reasons, and how people shouldn't be maligned or harassed for making such choices. It fit in well with what I had written.
Matthew and Holly make me wish I was still obsessed with Australia and that this blog was still about Australia.
But...at least I still have their podcast.
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