Truman, an anti-Semite

Editorial

Harry Truman, the U.S. president from the last days of the Second World War until 1953, is highly regarded for, among other things, leading his country in support for the new state of Israel. Now the Washington Post reports extensive anti-Semitic comments the plain-spoken president wrote in a previously unknown diary.

"The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic] on world affairs," the president wrote in 1947. "The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes."

Astonishing enough as it is that a man known for his sympathies toward the Jewish experience in the Holocaust could utter such words, more astonishing is that his views suggest a propensity toward group judgment. Ascribing tendencies to groups, without individual differentiation, is the epitome of prejudice. Over the years, we have discovered various previously unreported comments from former leaders which surprised and disappointed us.

Truman's words are disappointing, bleak and at odds with our previous understanding of the man. They raise many issues, including whether people are best judged on their words or their actions. But, most of all, it reminds us of our own folly in turning fallible humans into idealized heroes.

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