Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah E. DuBois, Jr. and the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust (Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies)

This is a good news, bad news review. The good news is the book is must-reading for those interested in U.S. history, and specifically, WWII and the Holocaust. It's long been speculated that FDR knew about the German concentration camps and the extermination of the Jews at an early stage of the war and even before the war begun. This book proves it beyond a doubt. Its fascinating reading about the main players and how frustrating it was for those in the FDR administration who knew of the atrocities, and wanted the U.S. to help the Jews who were condemned to death, but who were largely helpless to do anything about it because of the loyalty the underlings had to their bosses, the Treasury and State Dept secretaries, and ultimately, FDR himself.The bad news is this book could have been told in a long journal article rather an entire book. There was a lot of repeating of the same facts and theme, so I ended up skipping roughly half the book because of the repetition.If one of our era's great history storytellers had written this book, like McCullogh and others, he would have written it like a novel instead of a term paper. This would have made the book much more enjoyable.Well worth the read.

Dr. Medoff made a worthy effort in depicting this unlikely American hero. However, the format, mostly conversation taken from diaries and transcripts, is difficult to maintain a flow of reading. It is choppy and lacks a narratives suspense.It is a wonderful compilation of the facts about this tragic period of American policy. A great book for research on this period.