MESSAGE
| DATE | 2024-09-13 |
| FROM | mayer ilovitz
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Henry Morgenthau film spotlights US antisemitism
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https://nypost.com/2024/09/13/us-news/henry-morgenthau-film-spotlights-us-antisemitism-in-world-war-2/
New film spotlights US antisemitism which stopped rescue of Jews from
Nazis in World War II
By
Isabel Vincent
Published Sep. 13, 2024, 11:08 a.m. ET
New York filmmaker Hilan Warshaw had no intention of beginning his
documentary on Henry Morgenthau with darkness.
But after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel last year, he felt he
needed to make a statement about antisemitism — the same hate which
dogged his subject, the former secretary of the Treasury during the
Second World War.
“Honorable Mr. Morgenthau,” which premieres at the Quad Cinema Sept.13,
plunges the viewer into several uncomfortable minutes of darkness,
punctuated by angry snippets of audio from protesters screaming epithets
like “Zionists need to die” — a refrain Warshaw heard often during
pro-Palestinian protests in New York City earlier this year.
“When I started making this film, I was determined not to put anything
modern-day into it,” Warshaw said in an interview with The Post.
“I wanted to tell the historical story as immersively as possible,
without making contemporary parallels. But after October 7, I found the
subject of my film facing me in the world we live in.”
In his Upper West Side neighborhood, posters of Israeli hostages, some
of babies and toddlers, were defaced with swastikas or torn down, he said.
“Anyone who’s intellectually honest has to ask: What on earth is behind
the ferocity of these protests,” said Warshaw, an Emmy Award-winning
writer and director whose previous films include “Wagner’s Jews,” which
chronicles the Jewish supporters and fans of controversial German opera
composer Richard Wagner.
“Antisemitism, the tradition of scapegoating and hating the Jewish
people … has been deep-seated in Western society and beyond for more
than 2,000 years,” Warshaw said. “And it hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Poster showing Henry Morgenthau in film "Honorable Mr. Morgenthau." 8
“Honorable Mr. Morgenthau” examines the antisemitism of high-ranking
members of the US government that prevented the saving of Jewish refugees.
Antisemitism pervaded the upper echelons of the wartime government of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, where Morgenthau, a longtime friend of the
president’s, grew increasingly frustrated at his inability to save
Europe’s Jews from Nazi concentration camps.
The film begins with the heartbreaking letters sent to Morgenthau from
distant relatives in Germany, begging him to bring them to America.
Morgenthau’s father, a real estate developer and ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire during the First World War, was born in Germany, and
immigrated with his family to New York City in 1866.
He created a dynasty, and while Morgenthau Sr. was well known as a
leader of Reform Judaism in the city, the second generation of the
Morgenthau clan was hardly made up of practicing Jews.
If anything, they were fiercely American, a storied family of
intellectuals and public servants who liked to spend most of their time
on a farm in upstate New York near the Roosevelts’ country estate.
The Morgenthaus celebrated Christmas every year at their Dutchess County
retreat, and Morgenthau confessed that he had never been to a Passover
seder until after he left government employ at the end of the Second
World War.
Children behind barbed wire at Auschwitz at the end of the Second World
War in 1945. 8
Working with the World Jewish Congress and other relief agencies, Henry
Morgenthau set up the War Refugee Board and was able to save 200,000
Jews from being shipped to Nazi death camps, such as Auschwitz, from
which these child prisoners were liberated in 1945. Getty Images
Prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp in 1938. 8
Antisemitism and a fear of letting in too many refugees prevented
federal bureaucrats and policymakers from helping Jews in the Third
Reich, who were targeted by the Nazis. Corbis via Getty Images
“Being Jewish was something that was never discussed in front of
children,” says his son Henry Morgenthau III in the film. “It was kind
of a birth defect.”
As a child, when Henry Morgenthau III was asked by a little girl in
Central Park what his religion was, he asked his mother, who said that
if anyone asked him again, he should just reply that “you’re an American.”
Henry Morgenthau III, an author and producer, died in 2018. His younger
brother, Robert, was Manhattan’s longtime district attorney, who died a
year later. Their younger sister, Joan Morgenthau, a doctor, died in 2012.
Henry Morgenthau, born in 1891, was the quintessential American country
gentleman and bureaucrat, who was fiercely loyal to Roosevelt. He
attended Phillips Exeter Academy and the Dwight School before going on
to study agriculture and architecture at Cornell University.
Although he never earned an academic diploma, he helped Roosevelt design
the New Deal, and prepared the US economy for war as secretary of the
Treasury, the second-highest-ranking cabinet seat.
But when it came to rescuing Jews, his efforts were stymied. Assistant
Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, who oversaw the agency’s Visa
Division, prioritized US national security over humanitarian aid, and
was also a known antisemite.
A popular propaganda film, “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” fed into the
wartime hysteria that helping refugees would allow spies to penetrate
the US.
“There were many obstacles to rescue,” said Warshaw. “The State
Department was filled with antisemites and popular opinion was opposed
to letting in refugees.
“The sad fact is that Roosevelt didn’t take action to save more Jews
because he didn’t believe in doing so. He once boasted to Morgenthau
that he was personally responsible for Harvard’s instituting a quota on
Jewish students.”
Henry Morgenthau sitting in his office with assistant Henrietta Klotz. 8
US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau with his assistant
Henrietta Klotz, who was known as his “watchdog.” She urged her boss to
work to bring Jewish refugees to the US during the war. LOC
Emaciated people in a concentration camp 8
Starved prisoners freed from a concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria,
on May 7, 1945. Getty Images
In 1942, when secret cables indicated the Nazis were killing more than
6,000 Jews a day in Poland, Morgenthau began working with the World
Jewish Congress and other relief groups to help rescue Jews in Europe.
In 1944, he persuaded Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board, which
sponsored Swedish businessman Raoul Wallenberg’s mission to Hungary to
help Jews leave the country. More than 200,000 Jews were saved.
Despite his efforts, Morgenthau was treated with contempt by his
government colleagues, especially after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945.
Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry Truman, refused to send any of
Roosevelt’s advisers — a group that included Morgenthau and aides whom
Truman called “the Jew boys” — to the Potsdam Conference where the US,
Great Britain and the Soviet Union hammered out the future of Germany.
For his part, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to
Morgenthau as “Shylock.”
Despite the opposition, Morgenthau pushed forward even after he left
government. He plunged into relief work for Jewish nonprofits with the
help of his longtime secretary, Henrietta Klotz, a Jew and one of the
heroes of the film, who was unrelenting in her mission to save refugees.
“When push came to shove, he was confronted with horrible knowledge, not
only about the Nazis but about his own government,” said Warshaw of the
subject of his film.
“Unlike virtually anyone else in his circle, he defied the advice of his
family, the orders of the president, and … put everything on the line to
fight for what was right.”
In his later life, Morgenthau donated his energies to Jewish
philanthropic efforts and was a financial adviser to Israel. He died of
heart failure in 1967.
“Honorable Mr. Morgenthau” premieres at Quad Cinema on September 13 and
continues through September 19. Filmmaker Hilan Warshaw will answer
questions after the screening on September 14 and 15.
----------------------
https://quadcinema.com/film/honorable-mr-morgenthau/
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
New York, NY 10011
Showtimes & Tickets
Fri September 13
9.30pm
Sat September 14
7.30pm
Sun September 15
2.00pm
Mon September 16
5.30pm
Tue September 17
5.30pm
Wed September 18
5.30pm
Thu September 19
5.30pm
Appearances
Sat September 14
Q&A with filmmaker Hilan Warshaw and David Denby, staff writer for The
New Yorker
7.30pm
Sun September 15
Q&A with director Hilan Warshaw and Eben Bronfman, political consultant
and former Special Assistant to New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau
2.00pm
Select Up To 25 Tickets
Adult $18.19
$16.00 + $2.19 Fee*
Movie Pass $18.19
$16.00 + $2.19 Fee*
Child $15.19 ( over 5 )
$13.00 + $2.19 Fee*
Senior Citizen $15.19
Senior Citizen discount information ( valid ID required age 62 & up )
$13.00 + $2.19 Fee*
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