The Roosevelt Legacy

This chapter describes the impact of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt on Ambassador vanden Heuvel's life and politics. He provides a brief biography of FDR and recounts his experiences with Mrs. Roosevelt, from shaking her hand when he was a boy to working with her on political and social issues as an adult. He tells the story of his participation in celebrating the legacy of FDR through the creation of the FDR Memorial in Washington, DC and the international Four Freedoms Awards. He presents two speeches, the first examining the legacy of the three Roosevelts – Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor – on American life and politics, the second detailing the close relationship between FDR and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The chapter ends with details of Ambassador vanden Heuvel's role in the creation of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in New York City.

America and the Holocaust

This chapter presents Ambassador vanden Heuvel's views on American immigration policies towards Jews before and during WWII. In response to a documentary by the historian David Wyman criticizing Roosevelt and his administration, vanden Heuvel began his own research to set the record straight. He demonstrates that American policy toward refugees was more generous than any other country at the time and that efforts by FDR to encourage Congress to revise refugee quotas would have resulted in a reduction of those quotas by an isolationist Congress. He refutes the idea that the exact details of the death camps were widely known at the time and thus could have prompted a military plan to save the Jews. He also recalls his intervention with President Jimmy Carter to challenge such claims by Elie Wiesel and others.

Introduction

We live in a world in which “delete” is far too easy. This fact compels us to be deliberate in what we save. What survives may not be important, but it is who we are. Memory fades, events unwind, the inevitable stamp of new generations covers over what we have built. Duff Cooper, the British statesman, entitled his memoir ...