James McDonald Warned the World about the Nazi Threat to Jews
He Later Supported Israel as a Permanent Safe Haven
On a television news program in May 1952, James G. McDonald faced tough questions about a nascent country: the State of Israel.
“As a supporter of this human experiment, you, yourself, are still confident it is going to work out satisfactorily?” asked journalist William Bradford Huie on Longines Chronoscope.
Four years after the State of Israel was founded, McDonald, who was the first US ambassador to the country, acknowledged its challenges: Tenuous peace with its neighbors. Exports equal to just one-eighth of imports. A population that had more than doubled in size since 1948.
But he was more than satisfied: “I’m confident that it will be a civilizing and modernizing and democratizing influence in the whole of the Middle East.”
Friend of the Jewish People
How did a self-described “blond ‘Aryan,’ offspring of Scotch Canadian and Midwest American stock” become one of Israel’s foremost champions in the United States?
After an early career teaching history at Indiana University and Harvard, McDonald moved to New York and became chairman of the Foreign Policy Association, an organization dedicated to educating the public about foreign affairs. In that role, he traveled to Europe and met with German leaders, including Adolf Hitler shortly after he became Germany’s chancellor in January 1933. Unlike so many at the time, McDonald perceived their intentions clearly.
“I had become convinced that [Hitler’s] attacks on Jews (and to a lesser degree on Christians) and his assaults on democracy were the forerunners of war,” McDonald wrote in 1951. “To me the threat of Jewish extermination in Germany was a threat also to all Christians, indeed to all freedom of religion, and all democratic ideals and principles. The threat to Jews was not only a hideous wrong but also created a world problem of overwhelming significance.”
In October 1933, McDonald became High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany at the League of Nations. It was frustrating work: He was an American in an organization to which his country did not belong. He was given few resources as the League tried to appease Germany, which withdrew from the League in October 1933. And most countries’ restrictive immigration practices, including quotas in the United States, made it hard to find places where the refugees could go.
By December 1935, McDonald had had enough. Working with private organizations, he had managed to help tens of thousands of Jewish people escape Germany. But the escalating persecution—including the revocation of German Jews’ citizenship in September 1935—convinced him that hundreds of thousands more would need safe haven, far outstripping the world’s willingness to help.
So McDonald resigned his post as High Commissioner in dramatic fashion, demanding that the League intervene in Germany. “I cannot remain silent,” he wrote in a resignation letter released publicly. “When domestic policies threaten the demoralization and exile of hundreds of thousands of human beings, considerations of diplomatic correctness must yield to those of common humanity.”
As we know, McDonald’s clear and prescient warning did not halt the Nazis’ agenda. World War II and the Holocaust followed years later, including the murder of six million European Jews.
An Unwavering Commitment
Stepping down from his position did not mean McDonald abandoned Jewish refugees. Their search for safe havens was the driving force in the rest of his career. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, which ultimately proved ineffective at aiding refugees due to its lack of budget or support from the US State Department. After the war, President Harry S. Truman appointed McDonald to the new Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, which developed a set of recommendations for allowing more Jewish immigration into the British-controlled territory.
Great Britain had received administrative control over what was called Mandatory Palestine after the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I. In subsequent years, the British had severely restricted Jewish immigration. After meeting with Holocaust survivors, now living in displaced persons camps in Europe, McDonald and the Anglo-American Committee recommended allowing in 100,000 Jewish refugees. Britain rejected that recommendation and turned the question of Palestine over to the new United Nations. In a special session, the UN General Assembly voted on November 29, 1947, to partition the territory of Mandatory Palestine into two new states, one Jewish and one Arab, upon the cessation of British control. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, announced the formation of the State of Israel. President Truman recognized the new country the same day.
McDonald spent much of the ensuing years in Israel, first as US Special Representative and then as the first US ambassador — and first ambassador to Israel from any country.
McDonald understood the historic nature of this period in history and documented his work in thousands of pages of diaries. After becoming aware of McDonald’s papers, Museum archivists and researchers worked with his family to assemble them into a Museum collection donated by his family.
“Israel’s leaders knew who McDonald was long before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. He was proven to be on the side of the Jewish people,” said the Museum’s Stephen Mize, who worked with the McDonald family to donate his papers. Indiana University Press (in association with the Museum) subsequently published McDonald’s diaries in four volumes edited by Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart — McDonald’s daughter — and Severin Hochberg (the final two titles were also edited by Norman J. W. Goda).
McDonald worked diplomatic and economic channels during the country’s first years in order to support its viability, advocating for support from the United States. It would seem an inauspicious beginning for a new country: war, discord, and a surge of immigrants. Many of the newcomers were Holocaust survivors who had lost everything and feared antisemitic violence if they returned to their former homes. Many had been stuck in displaced persons camps in postwar Europe, still stymied by countries’ restrictive immigration policies. But the new State of Israel accepted all Jewish people.
In McDonald’s words, “The Israelis did not discriminate against old age, against invalidism, and so on. Israel took them all. They came from about 60 different countries.”
McDonald, who stepped down as ambassador in 1951, remained Israel’s advocate for the rest of his life.
Learn more about the establishment of the State of Israel.
Sources:
James G. McDonald Collection, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Barbara Ann McDonald on behalf of the McDonald family.
Israel Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, MacMillan, 1990. 3:954–55.
Longines Chronoscope with James G. McDonald, May 12, 1952, NAID: 95754, Local ID: LW-LW-86, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/95754. Viewed on YouTube May 4, 2023, https://youtu.be/48BvRl_R6uk.
New York Times, “James McDonald, Ex‐Ambassador to Israel, Dies; Held League of Nations Post on Problems of Refugees; Former Chairman of Foreign Policy Association,” September 27, 1964, https://www.nytimes.com/1964/09/27/archives/james-mcdonald-exambassador-to-israel-dies-held-leagae-of-nations.html.
New York Times, “Text of Resignation of League Commissioner for German Refugees,” December 30, 1935, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1935/12/30/118886845.html?pageNumber=12.
Indiana Historical Bureau, n.d. “James Grover McDonald, 1886–1964.” Accessed May 4, 2023. https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/find-historical-markers-by-county/indiana-historical-markers-by-county/james-grover-mcdonald,-1886-1964/.
