Was FDR to Blame?

By Leonard Fein
Published on April 19, 2001

Scholars will doubtless continue to debate Franklin Roosevelt's actions -- and inaction -- regarding the Holocaust. What did he know? When did he know it? Didn't he care, or did he really believe that the best and quickest way to help the Jews was, as he repeatedly argued, to win the war?

FDR’s Holocaust of Inaction

By Sidney Zion
Published on April 19, 2001

FDR died on April 12, 1945. I was 11 years old and heard the news on the radio in the bird store, where I was buying seed for my little canary.

Freedom for Lori Berenson

By Murray Polner
Published on September 21, 2000

Franklin Roosevelt's remark that Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo "may be an SOB, but he's our SOB" is a reminder that defending universal human rights may be a good American party line, but it is somewhat tainted by the support given to loathsome regimes in Chile, Guatemala and South Africa. It's Lori Berenson's singular achievement that she has unwittingly injected Peru's Alberto Fujimori into that mix.Fujimori had crushed the Shining Path terrorists (not to be confused with Tupac Amaru) and destroyed the Peruvian drug trade. Yet his government has been sharply criticized by human rights organizations as well as by the State Department.