Salo Baron, 1940, The World War and European Jewry

What follows are some selected extracts of an article published in the Contemporary Jewish Record, vol. 3, July-August 1940 and based on Address delivered at the joint session of the National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare meeting in Pittsburgh May 25, 1940.

World War II had begun eight months earlier, Kristalnacht happened  18 months previously, the Nuremburg Laws were promulgated four and a half years before this meeting.

Salo Baron was the outstanding Jewish historian of Jewish history at the time and, as has been noted:

Baron opposed the "lachrymose conception of Jewish history"...[that] the main elements of Jewish experience through the ages to be suffering and spiritual scholarship. In a 1975 interview, Baron said "Suffering is part of the destiny [of the Jews], but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption."

What was his view of the present and the future? Was a Holocaust forseen? Did his thinking overly influence the lack of activism in American Jewry's practical response? What did he expect would happen during the war?

I purposely employ PDF copy of the article to indicate no change or editing was made.

Such was the mindset of organized American Jewry leadership in 1940.

The end result was vastly different and, quite probably, this mindset facilitated the poor response to what later happened to European Jewry.

^