A Page in History

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany published an interview with Kaye Scholer White Collar Litigation Partner and former federal prosecutor Gregory J. Wallance about his latest book project, America’s Soul in the Balance: The Holocaust, FDR’s State Department, and the Moral Disgrace of An American Aristocracy.

According to Greg Wallance, “As we all know, the greatest genocidal crime in human history was the Nazi government’s murder of six million Jews during World War II. At the height of the war, highly educated, patrician diplomats in the State Department tried to cover up the Nazi extermination scheme and block efforts to rescue Jews in the few places where rescue was possible. Had they ultimately succeeded, it would have made the United States an accomplice to the Nazi genocide.”

“The book has two lessons for our time,” Wallance also noted. “The first is the hazards posed by powerful elite groups cut off from society’s mainstream. The second is the one from the Talmud, ‘To save one life is as if you have saved the world.’ And, while the United States cannot prevent every act of genocidal madness, we should never forget that saying – or the behavior of the wartime State Department that not only disgraced itself but came close to blackening the good name of the United States of America for all time.”

The full interview can be found on the Claims Conference site here.