From a script, Roosevelt read out, “In one of the blackest crimes of all history – begun by the Nazis in the day of peace and multiplied by them a hundred times in time of war – the wholesale, systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour… None who participate in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished… All who knowingly take part in the deportation of Jews to their death in Poland or Norwegians and French to their death in Germany are equally guilty with the executioner himself.
”Hitler is committing these crimes against humanity in the name of the German people. I am asking every German and every person… everywhere under Nazi domination to show the world by his action that in his heart he does not share these insane criminal desires. Let him hide these pursued victims, help them to get over their borders and do what he can to save them from the Nazi hangman.”
Source:
Beschloss, Michael R. “Oppressor of the Jews.” The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2007. 59. Print.
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