A Shameful Legacy

On an August morning in 1944, an Army troopship returning from the European theater docked in New York City, its hold filled with an unusual cargo. Nine hundred eighty-two foreigners disembarked, boarded a special overnight train, and were whisked to a vacant Army camp in Oswego, New York -- Fort Ontario -- where they would be sheltered until the end of the war.

"Most of the 982 . . . had endured years of persecution, flight, and camp life; nearly a hundred had survived Dachau or Buchenwald. They came from seventeen different nations . . . Their ages ranged from three weeks to eighty years, but people in their twenties were scarce, as were men of military age. The group was 89 per cent Jewish. Most of the rest were Catholic." (Wyman, p. 268)

On March 24, 1944, responding to appeals from the War Refugee Board (WRB), which he had instituted by executive order two months earlier, President Roosevelt issued a war crimes declaration, in which he condemned the "wholesale systematic murder" of the Jews as one of "the blackest crimes in history," and pledged to find "havens of refuge" for "all victims of oppression." (Wyman, p. 256)

But when the WRB proposed to the President that the United States offer "temporary asylum to all who could escape Hitler," Secretary of War Henry Stimson -- who opposed any compromise of the current immigration laws -- and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau -- who feared antagonizing Congress and incurring political damage -- would accept only a weakened declaration, which omitted the word "all."

On June 1st, in spite of burgeoning support in the press and among refugee organizations for "free ports," the President finally blessed the establishment of one -- Fort Ontario.

"While the immigration quotas allotted to the occupied countries of Europe were 91 per cent unfilled (a number equivalent to 55,000 in 1944), America had, belatedly, opened its doors to 1000 fugitives from extermination." Journalist I. F. Stone described this pusillanimous gesture as "a kind of token payment to decency, a bargain-counter flourish in humanitarianism." (Wyman, p. 266.)

It also undermined the WRB's original objective -- an American offer of "temporary refuge for all oppressed peoples," which, if carried to fruition, might have encouraged other nations to follow suit. But as Charles Joy of the Unitarian Service Committee pointed out, the smallness of the offer destroyed its value. "If the United States with all its resources can take only one thousand of these people, what can we expect other countries to do?" (Wyman, p. 267)

While many greeted the President's decision with gratitude -- and disappointment that it had been so limited -- others were severely critical. They doubted the refugees would ever go back to Europe, because, in the words of one Colorado man, "What country would want a Jew back?" (They were right; in 1945, a directive by President Truman allowed the Fort Ontario internees to immigrate legally.) They "saw the thousand as the entering wedge for hundreds of thousands more . . . a precedent for breaking down the immigration laws." (Wyman, pp. 267-268)

Such reactions reflected a restrictionist sentiment and latent anti-Semitism embedded in prewar and wartime society -- attitudes which essentially sanctioned a shameful legacy: President Roosevelt's, the Administration's, and Congress's pattern of response to the Holocaust -- which consisted of skepticism, obfuscation, procrastination, rationalization, and paralysis.

These same attitudes legitimized a policy which allowed only 21,000 refugees -- ten per cent of the legal immigration quota -- to enter the United States during the three-and-a-half years it was at war with Germany. (Wyman, p. x) And this was a quota which itself had been sharply curtailed since the 1920's.

From 1880 to 1920, forty million "unfortunates of other countries," including 2.5 million Jews, had sought, in the words of George Washington, "a safe and propitious asylum" in the United States. (Morse, p. 131) But by 1929 -- impelled by a heightened distrust of foreigners, fear of a deluge of cheap workers, the hostility of nativist Americans towards hordes of poor, illiterate Eastern Europeans, and a distaste for the squalid city slums where they settled -- Congress had reduced the annual immigration quota 80 per cent, to 154,000.

Furthermore, immigration by country had been allocated according to the ethnic background of the U. S. population in 1920. Thus, Great Britain and Ireland -- countries which provided relatively few applicants -- received 84,000 slots, while large numbers of potential immigrants from Germany (26,000), Poland (6000), Italy (5500), France (3000), and Rumania (300) were penalized. (Morse, p. 135)

Two other provisions of the immigration laws posed major obstacles for Jews fleeing the Nazis.

In September 1930, during the depths of the Depression, President Hoover -- invoking an 1882 stipulation which had excluded "any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any other person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge" -- announced that consular officers "will before issuing a visa have to pass judgment on whether the applicant may become a public charge (at any time, even long after his arrival), and if the applicant cannot convince the officer that it is not probable, the visa will be refused." Immigration plummeted from 242,000 in 1930 to 36,000 in 1932. (Morse, pp. 132-135)

When Jews were forbidden to take no more than $4000 with them from Germany, many had great difficulty proving they were not excludable under the public charge clause. (Morse, p. 145)

Section 7(c) of the Immigration Act of 1924 required the applicant to furnish a police certificate of good character for the previous five years, a record of military service, two copies of a birth certificate, and two copies of all other available public records. The incredulous notion of a Jew requesting his oppressors to furnish evidence of good behavior is testament to a stultifying bureaucracy divorced from reality.

"Restrictionists persistently asserted that refugees who came into the United States usurped jobs from unemployed workers." (Wyman, p.6) Veterans' organizations -- like the American Legion, which called for a virtual ban on immigration -- were intent on protecting employment for returning servicemen. Congressmen regularly introduced bills to suspend immigration until the end of the war or terminate it when the war was over.

The State Department used its regulatory power to tighten the immigration process even further. Beginning in June 1941, any applicant with a parent, child, spouse, or sibling remaining in Germany, Italy, or Russia had to pass a strict security screening to obtain a visa. The next month it instituted a systematic security review of all applications by special interderpartmental committees. The visa application itself was four feet long and had to be filled out on both sides by a refugee's sponsor, sworn under penalty of perjury, and submitted in six copies. It took nine months for an application to move through the contorted bureaucratic machinery. (Wyman, pp. 125-128)

The chief enforcer of the immigration laws was Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long; his anti-refugee sentiments were no secret. Years earlier he had praised "the efficiency, cleanliness, and morale" (Morse, p. 40) of Mussolini's Fascist state and the insight of Hitler's Mein Kampf regarding the connection between Communism and international Jewry. (Hamerow, p. 278) Yet he vigorously denied he was an anti-Semite or in any way prejudiced against the Jews.

Whether prejudiced or not, Long believed that aliens admitted to the country might prove to be a threat to national security, and that by barring the gates he was warding off an invasion by radicals and foreign agents. With him supervising the Visa Division, there would be no reform in the cumbersome process by which a Jew who had escaped the Nazis hoped to find a home in the United States.

National surveys lent support to the State Department's xenophobia. "In 1938, a year when the Nazis had intensified their persecution of the Jews, four separate polls had indicated that from 71 to 85 per cent of the American public opposed increasing quotas to help refugees . . . Asked in January 1943 whether 'it would be a good idea or a bad idea to let more immigrants come into the country after the war,' 78 per cent thought it would be a bad idea." (Wyman, p. 8)

Both a cause and corollary of restrictionism was anti-Semitism, which reached a peak in this country in 1944. (Wyman, p. 9)

Stoked by such agitators as fundamentalist preacher Gerald L. K. Smith -- who spread anti-Semitic propaganda from his pulpit and the pages of his magazine, "The Cross and the Flag" -- and Radio Priest Charles Coughlin -- who excoriated Jews as both Communists and capitalists, moneylenders and crooks (Rosen, p. 88) -- wartime violence proliferated. Jewish cemeteries were vandalized; synagogues were damaged and defaced with swastikas; anti-Jewish graffiti was scrawled on sidewalks and stores; schoolchildren were attacked and beaten; and anti-Semitic literature was widely distributed. (Wyman, p. 10)

Brazen anti-Semites in Congress joined the assault. "Representative Louis McFadden of Pennsylvania denounced the 'Jew-controlled New Deal.' Senator Robert Reynolds of North Carolina contended that Jews would not have been forced out of Europe if they 'had not impoverished those lands or . . . had not conspired against their governments.' " (Rosen, p. 88) When Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi launched an anti-Semitic tirade against "warmongering international Jewry," Michael Edelstein of New York became so apoplectic while delivering his rebuttal that he collapsed and died of a heart attack in the Capitol lobby. (Rosen, p. 168)

Less blatant was a pernicious anti-Semitism that excluded Jews from social clubs, turned them away from hotels, and limited the number of Jewish students at private and public universities. A series of polls from 1938 to 1946 indicated that over one-half of Americans perceived Jews as greedy and dishonest, and that one-third considered them overly aggressive. Another survey showed that over fifty per cent of the public believed that "Jews had too much power in the United States." (Wyman, pp. 14-15) Three polls -- in August 1940, February 1941, and October 1941 -- placed Jews at the top of a list which included Negroes, Catholics, Germans, and Japanese in response to the question "What nationality, religious, or social groups in this country are a menace to society?" (Hamerow, p. 202)

Thus, it is not surprising that efforts to relieve and rescue the endangered Jewish populations of Europe garnered little momentum in government circles; in spite of a profusion of compassionate rhetoric, most expired in infancy.

Disturbed by Hitler's annexation of Austria in March 1938 -- which subjected its Jewish inhabitants to a savage outbreak of arrest, plunder, deprivation, and deportation -- President Roosevelt invited thirty-three countries collectively to address the issue of political refugees. The conferees, called to order three months later in Evian, France, answered Chairman Myron Taylor's plea to "act and act promptly" by slamming their doors, one after another, against the victims of Nazi aggression.

Australia had no desire to import a racial problem. Britain could find no territory in its expansive empire suitable to large-scale settlement. (To appease the restive Arabs, it had capped total immigration to Palestine at 75,000 in its 1939 White Paper.) Canada, Columbia, Uruguay, and Venezuela wanted agricultural immigrants only. France, home to three million aliens, stressed that it had reached a saturation point. (Morse, p. 212)

The United States, "with its tradition of asylum, its vast land mass, and its unlimited resources," did make a concession. "It agreed, for the first time, to accept its full legal quota of 27,370 immigrants annually from Germany and Austria." (Morse, p. 213)

After the horrors of Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938 -- which witnessed the burning of 200 synagogues, the destruction or looting of 8000 shops, and the arrest of 20,000 Jews -- a delegation of Roman Catholic and Protestant clergymen presented a petition to the White House, calling upon the United States to open its borders to 20,000 German children. The subsequent bill, introduced in Congress by Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, was the first serious attempt in fourteen years to liberalize the immigration laws -- since the refugees admitted would exceed the established quota.

While the Wagner-Rogers Bill had support from clergy, labor leaders, prominent New Dealers in the Administration, and Eleanor Roosevelt, opposition was strong, fueled by nativism, prejudice, and the perception that it was a Jewish bill.

Francis Kinnicutt, representing thirty organizations, testified that "this is just part of a drive to break down the whole quota system," and that "it is not a refugee bill at all because most of those admitted would be of the Jewish race." John Trevor, speaking for 115 patriotic societies of the American Coalition, cited the outcome of a Fortune magazine poll, in which 83 per cent of the respondents had said "no" to the question: Would you vote "yes" or "no" on a bill to open the United States to a large number of European refugees. (Morse, pp. 259-261) Laura Delano, a cousin of the President and wife of the immigration commissioner, said that "twenty thousand charming children would all too soon grow into twenty thousand ugly adults." (Rosen, p. 85)

When the bill was amended so that the 20,000 visas would be counted against, rather than over and above, the German quota, a frustrated Senator Wagner withdrew it.

Nor would the immigration laws be bent to accommodate the 936 Jews condemned to an uncertain fate when their ship, the St. Louis docked in Havana harbor on May 27, 1939. Although they possessed landing certificates sold by the Cuban Director of Immigration, Manuel Benitez, the Cuban President, Laredo Bru -- determined to end the corruption or garner his share of the bribes -- refused to allow all but twenty-eight to disembark. On June 2nd, he ordered the St. Louis out of the harbor, neglecting, of course, to refund the $150 each passenger had paid for his bogus certificate.

Flush with $500,000 in pledges and cash from American Jews, Lawrence Berenson, former president of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce in the United States, was dispatched to Cuba to negotiate with President Bru. When Bru upped his price to $650,000, and then to $1,000,000 -- to cover bribes and food and lodging for the refugees -- Berenson balked, claiming he needed more time to raise the money. By the time Jewish sponsors deposited $500,000 in a Havana bank, the deal had collapsed.

Cast adrift in the Caribbean, for four days the St. Louis awaited its destination -- hovering within sight of the lights of Miami and shadowed by a Coast Guard cutter charged with preventing any desperate passenger from jumping overboard and swimming ashore. While the American press lamented that "the cruise of the St. Louis cries to high heaven of man's inhumanity to man," none suggested that the United States "come to the aid of these men, women, and children floating across the Atlantic toward certain doom." (Morse, p. 283) One editorial writer warned that one exception to the law would set a dangerous precedent and surely "be followed by other shiploads." (Rosen, p. 99)

On June 6, the St. Louis set her course for a return to Europe -- and toward a more favorable denouement than might have been expected. In Paris and London, Jewish representatives worked around the clock to find safe havens for the abandoned 908. England agreed to take in 288, who were spared Hitler's wrath. The remaining 620 were scattered throughout France, Belgium, and Holland, of whom it is estimated 392 survived the Holocaust. (Rosen, p. 103)

The St. Louis, of course, was just the tip of the iceberg. The number of potential refugees grew exponentially during the war years -- but there was simply no place for them to go.

In March 1943, Jewish leaders requested the assistance of British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden (then in the U. S.) and Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles in removing from Bulgaria 70,000 Jews who were threatened with extermination. Eden rejected the plan outright, stating that, "the whole problem of the Jews in Europe is very difficult, and we should move very cautiously about offering to take all the Jews out of a country like Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany." (Wyman, p. 98)

"The whole problem" was where to put the Jews if they were rescued. For the British, their release would put tremendous pressure on their White Paper policy of limited immigration into Palestine. Others countries had resoundingly shut their doors between 1933 and 1941, when Jews could have left Europe.

Echoing British anxieties, Cavendish W. Cannon in the State Department gave this reason for not supporting the relocation of 300,000 Romanian Jews to Syria and Palestine: ". . . such a plan was likely to bring new pressure for an asylum in the western hemisphere . . . and open the question of similar treatment for Jews in Hungary and, by extension, all countries where there has been intense persecution." (Wyman, p. 99)

Such was the tone of the joint British-American Bermuda Conference held in April 1943; it had been initiated by Great Britain, where publicity about the Holocaust was more widespread and cries for action more forceful than in the United States. (Wyman, p. 104)

"Breckenridge Long saw to it that the business of the Conference would be circumscribed. He sent his friend and ardent opponent of immigration, Robert Borden Reams, to act as secretary to the U. S. delegation. Jewish organizations were not allowed to send advocates." (Rosen, p. 270) Long's memorandum to the delegates instructed them not to overemphasize the Jewish nature of the refugee problem, not to pledge any funds, not to propose changes in the U. S. or British immigration laws, and not to make any commitment regarding trans-Atlantic shipping space for refugees. (Wyman, p. 113)

A suggestion that the Allies approach Germany and the Axis satellites for the release of Jews was rejected as "impossible and outside the scope of the Conference." Sending food to the starving victims of the Nazis received no support. On British insistence, their Palestine policy was not discussed. (Wyman, pp. 114-115)

After two weeks of deliberations, the delegations delivered an innocuous joint report to their governments. It recommended the use of neutral shipping to transport refugees, the consideration of Cyrenaica and Madagascar as havens, and the reactivation of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees -- an organization which, since its inception before the war, had proved to be as useless as a Cuban landing certificate.

The Conference's sole accomplishment was the authorized transfer of 21,000 refugees (of whom 5000 were Jewish) from Spain to North Africa.

But respite for the Jews had not been, after all, the objective of the diplomacy at Bermuda. Rather it had been to alleviate the growing pressure for a rescue effort. (Wyman, p. 122) Richard Law, head of the British delegation, confirmed this years later when he said, "It was a conflict of self-justification, a facade for inaction. We said the results of the Conference were confidential, but in fact there were no results that I can recall." (Morse, p. 63)

There was, however, one indirect result. On May 12, 1943, three days after the adjournment of the Bermuda Conference, Samuel Zygielbojm -- a member of the Polish National Council, who had pleaded tirelessly to the Allied governments to come to the aid of the men and women he had left behind when he had escaped from the Warsaw ghetto -- committed suicide.

In his farewell note, he wrote: "I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish people of Poland, of whom I am a representative of, are perishing . . . By my death I wish to make my final protest against the passivity with which the world is looking on and permitting the extermination of the Jewish people." (Morse, pp. 63-64)

Several months later, the State Department employed its well-honed delaying tactics to sabotage another potential rescue effort -- the exposure of which led to a stunning reprimand from the Administration and a diminishment of its authority.

On February 12, 1943, New York Times correspondent, C. L. Sulzberger, reported from London that the Romanian government was willing to release 70,000 Jews who had survived deportation to Transnistria (60,000 had perished) "to any refuge selected by the Allies," preferably Palestine -- for a price of $600,000. (Morse, p. 72) Responding to inquiries about the offer, the State Department summarily dismissed it, asserting that, "This story is without foundation." (Wyman p. 83)

In April, Gerhard Riegner of the World Jewish Congress, informed U. S. Ambassador Leland Harrison in Switzerland that funds were available to expedite this rescue and to feed and clothe 30,000 children hiding in France and to facilitate their removal to Spain. The funds would not fall into enemy hands because they would remain in a blocked account in Switzerland until the war was over.

For the next eleven weeks State Department officials stonewalled the proposal, waving red flags that it was "too vaguely phrased" to merit a decision, that it was merely a scheme to transfer money for ransom purposes, and that it might encourage other organizations to send relief funds to enemy territory. (Wyman, pp. 179-180)

It was late June before Robert Borden Reams met with the Treasury Department division charged with issuing the licenses required to transfer funds overseas. Reams argued the funds should not be transferred because the plan was unworkable. Later, though, he revealed the State Department's real objection: the plan might actually succeed. Reams considered it unrealistic to encourage large-scale rescue because only 30,000 openings remained under the British White Paper quota for Palestine and he "did not know of any other area to which the Jews could be evacuated." (Wyman, p. 180)

The Treasury was not convinced, and on July 16 agreed to issue the license.

Even after President Roosevelt's approval, Long and his colleagues delayed the license seven more weeks, this time alleging that the Riegner plan would provide the enemy with foreign exchange.

Four months months later Ambassador Harrison had still not issued the license, claiming again in contradiction of the Treasury that it needed British clearance, which had yet to be forthcoming.

On December 15, the British Foreign Office revealed in a statement their objection to the Riegner plan -- and the underlying fear that shaped their own and the State Department's response to the Holocaust. (Wyman, p.182)

"The Foreign Office are concerned with the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued from enemy occupied territory . . . They foresee that it is likely to prove almost if not quite impossible to deal with anything like the number of 70,000 refugees whose rescue is envisaged by the Riegner plan." (Wyman, p. 182)

Finally, on December 23, 1943, eight months after Riegner's first description of relief possibilities in Romania and France, bowing to directives from Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and his hard-nosed assistant, John Pehle, Long sent the license, authorizing an initial $25,000. But by then the plan was irrelevant and outdated; too much time had been wasted in a vacuous Cabinet war of words.

This deplorable episode did have two heartening outcomes. Secretary Morgenthau, now convinced that rescue operations needed to be removed from Long and the State Department, commissioned Pehle and Assistant Counsel Josiah DuBois to prepare a memorandum on State Department obstructionism. This "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews" was submitted to President Roosevelt on January 16, 1944.

"In nine pages, it detailed the procrastination, misrepresentation, suppression of the facts, deliberate interference with rescue efforts, and antisemitism of State Department officials, especially Breckenridge Long. It set out in detail the obstruction of the French and Romanian licenses, the cover-up of the obstruction, and Long's concealment of a State Department cable that ordered the suppression of information about the Holocaust." (Rosen, p. 344)

Among the misrepresentations was Long's statement to the President and subsequent testimony before Congress that the United States had admitted 580,000 refugees between 1933 and 1943. When challenged on those numbers by the American Jewish Committee, he made a clarification: 580,000 visas had been issued, but only 210,000 refugees had actually entered the country. (Rosen, 292)

The Report concluded with the mandate: "The matter of rescuing the Jews from extermination is a trust too great to remain in the hands of men who are indifferent, callous, and perhaps hostile." (Morse, p. 92)

Six days later, on January 22, 1944, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9417, establishing the War Refugee Board and instructing it "to take all measures within its power to rescue victims of enemy oppression in imminent danger of death." (Morse, p. 97) The President allocated $1,000,000 from his Emergency Fund; $20 million was donated by private organizations, of which $15 million came from the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. John Pehle was named Director. (Wyman, pp. 213-214)

Although at first it seemed that the WRB might become a potent rescue machine, it was hampered from the outset by several factors. The Russians would not participate. The British were obstructive. The War Department had a standing order to reject any and all rescue operations. The State Department's deep-seated prejudices were evidenced in a remark made by one official to a friend of DuBois: "That Jew Morgenthau and his Jewish assistants like DuBois (who was Protestant) are trying to take over the place." (Rosen, p. 349)

One early WRB success can be attributed to the efforts of Ira Hirschmann, a former New York department store executive assigned to the U. S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. Hirschmann persuaded Turkish and British officials to make travel documents available in three weeks rather than sixteen to Jews en route from Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary to Palestine. He found antiquated ships to ferry refugees across the Black Sea to Istanbul. Working through the Bulgarian Minister to Turkey, he convinced the Bulgarian government to rescind its anti-Jewish discrimination laws. He arranged a personal meeting with the Romanian Minister to Turkey, Alexandre Cretzianu, warned him of America's determination to punish war criminals, and secured the release of 48,000 Jews imprisoned in Transnistrian concentration camps -- which lay squarely in the path of Hitler's retreating army. (Morse, pp. 317-319)

Under the aegis of WRB representative Quaker Roswell McClelland, Switzerland became the focal point for a series of benevolent operations. McClelland shipped large quantities of medical and sanitary supplies to France. He found guides to lead one thousand men, women, and children over the Pyrenees from France to Spain. He relayed funds to reliable underground groups in Slovakia, Italy, and Germany to aid the escape of Jews and other potential Nazi victims. (Morse, pp. 331-332)

The WRB played a key role in probably the most heroic saving of Jewish lives during the war.

By 1944, Hungary was sheltering 760,000 Jewish natives and refugees -- who had been spared the gas chambers by the lenient regency of Admiral Miklos von Horthy. But in March, Hitler, infuriated by Hungarian prevarication, intervened, forced the appointment of a more militant government, and, two months later, initiated mass deportations. Harassed by the WRB and the International Red Cross, cajoled by Pope Pius XII and King Gustav V of Sweden, Horthy garnered enough courage to resist the Nazis and order a halt to the death trains. Two hundred thirty thousand Jews remained alive in Budapest, destitute and facing impending doom.

A Swedish architect and businessman, Raoul Wallenberg approached the WRB representative in Stockholm, Ivor Olsen, and volunteered to go to Hungary. At Olsen's suggestion, the Swedish government appointed Wallenberg attache to its Budapest legation. The WRB placed $100,000 at his disposal.

Wallenberg battled valiantly over the next three months -- buying apartment buildings in Budapest, applying Swedish exterritoriality to them, housing Jews there, and issuing protective Swedish passports. In October the Nazis deposed Horthy and replaced him with Ferenc Szalasi; Szalasi's anti-Semitic Arrow Party unleashed a new wave of terror against the Jews, slaughtering thousands. The Nazis, in desperate need of slave labor but now short of rolling stock, ordered 40,000 to march through bone-chilling rains to the Austrian border; eight thousand died. (Morse, p. 367)

Wallenberg carried food and supplies to the victims. By various pretexts, he rescued a thousand from the march. Receiving word of a mass arrest, "he would arrive at the railroad station, waving official documents and barking orders in Swedish and Hungarian," and manage to get several hundred prisoners released, once with German guns leveled at him. On another occasion he followed a train to a border station, jumped aboard, and bluffed German guards into freeing those deportees who carried any papers at all. He confronted the S. S. commander of Budapest at the gates of the Jewish ghetto, threatened him with postwar punishment, and most certainly influenced his decision to withdraw. (Morse, pp. 368-369)

When the Russians finally captured the city in February 1945, about 120,000 Jews remained alive.

Wallenberg may have fared worse. On January 17th, he left the Jewish relief office in Budapest and headed for Russian headquarters 137 miles away, apparently to request aid for the besieged Jewish community. Suspected of espionage by the Russians, he was never seen or heard from again. (Morse, p. 370)

The Jews of Budapest named a street for Raoul Wallenberg, and paid him this tribute: "We witnessed the redemption of prisoners and the relief of suffering when Mr. Wallenberg came among the persecuted to help. In a superhuman effort, not yielding to fatigue and exposing himself to all sorts of dangers, he brought home children who had been dragged away and he liberated aged parents. We saw him give food to the starving and medicine to the ailing . . . He was a righteous man. God bless him." (Morse, p. 374)

Despite these noteworthy accomplishments, in his seminal work on the subject, The Abandonment of the Jews, David Wyman contends that the American government did not respond decisively to the plight of European Jewry.

In the forefront was President Roosevelt, whose actions were limited. He met with Jewish leaders in December 1942 when overseas cables confirmed Hitler's extermination program, but afterward refused requests to discuss the matter. He declined to challenge the State Department's arbitrary curtailment of refugee immigration. Pressed to establish the War Refugee Board by a Congressional Rescue Resolution and the threat of a scandal involving State Department obstructionism, he took almost no interest in it and failed to fund it adequately. By agreeing to only one free port, he demonstrated that little was expected of any country. (Wyman, p. 312)

Callousness prevailed in the State Department, where its officials embraced nativism. They effectively closed the United States as an asylum by tightening immigration procedures and influenced Latin American countries to do the same. (Wyman, p. 313)

The War Department determined early on that rescue was not part of its mission. "To the American military, Europe's Jews represented an extraneous problem and an unwanted burden." (Wyman, p. 307)

"Except for a weak and insignificant resolution condemning mass murder, Congress took no official action concerning the Holocaust." Restrictionism, especially opposition to the entry of Jews, was strong on Capitol Hill. (Wyman, p. 316)

Governmental apathy can be traced to the indifference of much of the American public. Christian churches were almost inert in the face of the Holocaust and nearly silent too. No major denomination spoke out on the issue, nor did liberals and intellectuals, who might have been expected to be righteously vocal. (Wyman, pp. 317, 320)

In their defense, it must be acknowledged that information about the systematic murder of millions of Jews was not readily available, because the mass media treated it like minor news. Most newspapers and major news magazines printed very little about the Holocaust. Radio coverage was equally sparse. During the war, American filmmakers released a number of films on refugees and Nazi atrocities, but none that dealt with the Holocaust. (Wyman, pp. 321-322)

Wyman identifies a series of steps that might have been taken -- and conceivably saved lives -- if the United States had been committed to a more vigorous response.

The War Refugee Board should have been created in 1942 -- with adequate funding and much broader powers.

The U. S. Government should have urged Germany and the Axis satellites to release Jews -- signaling, if nothing else, that this was one of its goals.

It should have put pressure on neutral countries near the Axis -- Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Switzerland, and Sweden -- to accept Jewish refugees.

It should have established a number of "free ports" in addition to Fort Ontario -- thereby setting an example for Latin America, Canada, the British Dominions, and Palestine.

It should have made ships available to transport Jews from neutral countries to outside havens.

It should have transferred larger sums of money to Europe -- which could have been used to finance escape systems, to assist Jews in hiding, to supply food and medicine, and to strengthen Jewish undergrounds.

It should have disseminated more publicity about the extermination of the Jews throughout Europe -- threatening the Nazis with punishment for their crimes, influencing others to aid the victims, and warning the victims of their fate.

Finally, Wyman contends that bombing of the Auschwitz killing installations and deportation railroads was feasible and should have been undertaken by the military. (Wyman, pp. 331-335)

All these suggestions were rebuffed. Instead, government officials developed four main rationalizations for inaction.

The most frequent excuse, the lack of shipping was a fraud. When the Allies needed ships for non-military projects -- like moving 1400 non-Jewish Polish refugees from India to the West Coast or 2000 Spanish Loyalists to Mexico or 250,000 Axis prisoners overseas -- they located them. But ships were never available to transport Jews -- because there was no country willing to take them. (Wyman, pp. 335-336)

The argument that the Axis planted enemy agents among refugees was flawed. As a possibility, it could easily be addressed through security screening. Army intelligence found not one suspicious person when it vetted the 982 refugees who arrived at Fort Ontario. (Wyman, pp. 336-337)

A third rationalization asserted that helping Jews would improperly single out one group for assistance among the many suffering from Nazi brutality, substantiate accusations that the war was being fought for the Jews, and, perversely, fan the flames of an already seething anti-Semitism. Only the Jews, however, were facing total extinction. The real problem, again, was finding a place for those fortunate enough to be saved. (Wyman, p. 337)

The fourth claim -- that rescue operations would detract from the military effort and prolong the war -- was also disingenuous. None of the proposals was extensive or involved enough to do either. In fact, resources were diverted from time to time to meet humanitarian needs. In 1944 the British used troop ships to transport 36,000 Yugoslav refugees from Southern Italy to Egypt. Between August 1942 and August 1943, they moved 40,000 Poles from Iran -- where they had been sent by the Russians after deportation to Siberia -- to camps in Africa and the Middle East. The Allies also provided sanctuary in those same camps to 25,000 Greeks fleeing the Nazis. (Wyman, pp. 337-339)

Even Wyman acknowledges that a concerted relief and rescue program could not have saved anywhere near a million victims. Peter Novick, author of The Holocaust in American Life, puts the number at 2%, or 120,000, and concedes that, tragically, "the perception that the overall impact of American efforts would be marginal probably served to inhibit action." That the "practical possibilities for substantial rescue" are slight does not, however, relieve one of his moral responsibilities. (Hamerow, p. 392)

After all, this was a republic founded on the principles of individual liberty, universal justice, equal opportunity, and spiritual compassion. For almost two hundred years it had been a safe haven for the downtrodden and oppressed of other countries. It had entered the war to preserve its humanitarian ideals and to defend them against the evils and brutality of a totalitarianism intent on world domination. Was it not morally bound to do all within its power to prevent the consummation of the greatest atrocity in history -- the institutionalized slaughter of an entire nation?

But there was another reason to act. Because this genocide was not just a crime against the Jews; it was a crime which, ultimately, contemplated no limits. There were no more than 3 million Jews left in Europe when the Russians overran the concentration camps in Poland in 1945. Yet they found enough Zyklon B crystals to kill 20 million people -- 10 million non-Germanic people in the next two years. In a world where none but Aryans were qualified to live, "it stood to reason that everyone else would be exterminated." (Dimont, p. 389) Since this Holocaust was but a prelude to an even greater conflagration, saving the Jews meant saving the future of the human race.

REFERENCES

Dimont, Max I. Jews, God and History. New York: The New American Library,1962.

Hamerow, Theodore. Why We Watched: Europe, America, and the Holocaust. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.

Morse, Arthur D. While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy. New York: Random House, 1967.

Rosen, Robert. Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006.

Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust: 1941-1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Mediterranean Miscellany

It was properly labeled an Interlude, this week-long idyll cruising the Mediterranean, with daily dalliances at Pompeii (via Port of Naples), Cefalu (via Port of Palermo), Lucca (via Port of Lerici), St. Paul-de-Vence (via Port of Nice), Aix-en-Provence (via Port of Marseilles), and Barcelona -- but I seized upon the title above not only for its alliterative effect but also because these random musings (while lengthy) will hardly be exhaustive. Its felicity was further confirmed when I shared it with my clever and pun-acious traveling companion, CCS, who, breaking out into her signature beaming smile, instantly rechristened it "Mediterranean Mussolini" -- thereby coining a classic double entendre.

As fate would have it, midway through the trip, in the picturesque lakeside village of Torre del Lago, where the famous opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, lived for sixty-four years, we stumble upon a curious celebration honoring the early achievements of the Italian Air Force -- which was birthed in the days of the Fascist dictator. Idling in the town square, gazing out over the placid waters at the vague outline of another Puccini residence perched atop a distant hillside, sipping cappucino in an outdoor cafe, watching the uniformed band members hoist their instruments, we are roused from our tranquility by first the sound, then the sight, of two waves of vintage single-engine aircraft soaring overhead, a prelude to the unveiling of a prominent stone memorial and some incomprehensible speechmaking.

After this interlude, so to speak, we amble a couple of blocks to Puccini's home, now a museum, where I conclude that this creator of timeless musical works in a genre which sadly remains a mystery to me was the equivalent of a contemporary rock star. Strikingly handsome, impeccably groomed, universally admired, he accumulated substantial wealth during his lifetime, mainly from his writings but also from his endorsements of various consumer products, particularly cigarettes, which he is reputed to have smoked at the rate of one hundred per day. An avid sportsman, he loved to hunt, fish, or just motor around his formerly grand estate in one of the fifteen automobiles he owned (one at a time), including the first in Italy, according to the on-site expert.

During a week replete with sweet-and-sour surprises, these are typical.

The first comes before we have even left the States.

It always helps to read the directions, and I am notorious for failing to do so -- once having to dismantle a car-top carrier after three tortuous hours of manual labor upon discovering the omission of a critical part. But wouldn't you think that a cruise advertised from June 1st to June 10th would require you to arrive at your port of embarkation a day early -- May 31st? If so, you would be wrong, since flights from the U.S. to European cities normally leave in the late afternoon and arrive on the morning of the following day -- with a time loss of six hours.

So while CCS and I depart Lynchburg on May 30th and arrive in Rome (via Atlanta) on the 31st, our ship doesn't sail from Civitavecchia until the afternoon of June 2nd, June 1st being the date all attentive passengers are flying from the States to arrive in Rome the next morning for easy transport from the airport to the ship.

Alas, stranded two days in Rome, which some have described as the most beautiful city in the world. What to do?

First, get a room -- which travel-savvy CCS skillfully reserves online for us for a very reasonable $150 a night at the Massimo d'Azeglio, named after the famous 19th century statesman, painter, and writer, who served as a minister to Camillo Cavour during the period of Italian Unification -- the only fact I recall from the massive telephone book of suggested reading for this trip, "The Middle Sea," by John Julius Norwich, six hundred pages of microscopic print, senseless bloodshed, diabolical politics, and impenetrable monarchies. (For example, in 1734, Charles Duke of Parma took the Sicilian crown from the Austrians and became Charles VII and V. In 1754, he became King Carlos III of Spain and resigned Sicily and Naples to his younger son, who became Ferdinand III of Sicily and IV of Naples, and later Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.) But more on that later.

Our Google map indicates that this hotel is, of course, on Via Cavour, not far from the Rome Termine, from which we emerge after a one-hour train ride from the airport, hot and tired, dragging our suitcases (thankfully, they were the new four-wheel models). We turn right and begin to trudge uphill in what appears to be the right direction. A stampede of speeding automobiles with frenzied Italians riding herd bursts from an underpass, blocking our path, and so unnerves us that we succumb to the imprecations of an animated cab driver.

His responses to my two queries "How much?" and "How far?" -- "seventeen, eighteen euros . . . three kilometers" -- prompt me to examine the map again, and when he takes off in a direction opposite to the way we were walking, my festering suspicions erupt like a mosquito bite, but now we're in the cab, and it's just too oppressive to protest through the language barrier. Our glib host treats us to a whirlwind tour of the city, darting along back streets to avoid congestion, whisking by the Colosseum and hordes of sightseers, pointing out preparations for an upcoming holiday parade, until, ten minutes later, he ceremoniously deposits us at the door of the Massimo d'Azeglio -- for exactly seventeen euros. And I even have the temerity to give him twenty, in remuneration for his pleasant running commentary.

Four hours later, after a much-needed nap, we emerge from our hotel to investigate our surroundings. We walk half a block up Via Cavour to the nearest intersection, look to our right, and see looming ahead a monolithic, angular, glass-and-stone structure fronted by a traffic circle, a squadron of buses, and hundreds of scurrying pedestrians. While I prefer to postpone the inevitable revelation to another day, my inquisitive companion has no such reluctance. "Come on, Marc," she says, yanking my arm. "That looks a lot like the Termine."

There's a sucker born every minute. (It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last.)

We console ourselves with room service the next two mornings -- at no extra charge. Having sipped enough espresso (which you get when you order "coffee" or "cafe") after day one, I specify "coffee with hot milk" for breakfast number two -- only to find delivered to our door two pitchers of the thick steaming liquid, one for my coffee and one for my cereal. Not wanting to waste a good bowl of corn flakes, I pour some on and dig in. Now, I regularly enjoy instant oatmeal with milk nuked in the microwave, but hot cold cereal is a delicacy too soggy for my palate; those hapless flakes wilt on contact.

CCS is justly proud of bargain she got on a digital camera, procured two days ago at Office Max, for a mere $111, until, thirty pictures later, while we are resting in front of the Colosseum, she takes aim, fires -- and the battery expires; sadly, the charger is 5000 miles away. A long trek home through a commercial district, our eyes peeled for a Foto Shop, finally nets us a universal charger for thirty euros -- forty dollars.

At least we have the presence of mind not to take a cab back to the Termine, or tip the pesky vagrant, who, buzzing around me like an hungry horsefly, tries to instruct me in the finer points of purchasing a train ticket -- in broken English yet.

A few hours later, after rendezvousing with our fellow travelers at the Airport Hilton, we find ourselves aboard our luxury liner, the 100-passenger Corinthian II -- although on this voyage there will be only 75, thereby assuring us exceptional service from the 71-member crew. Having opted for the lowest deck -- at the lowest rate -- I am naturally -- but needlessly -- apprehensive about the quality of our accommodations.

Our spacious suite features a king-size bed, two portholes, a loveseat, an occasional chair, a vanity, a television, a wardrobe, lots of drawers, and a commodious bathroom well-stocked with fragrant soaps, shampoos, and gels. It's handsomely decorated in royal blue upholstery and carpeting and faux walnut paneling, and offers such amenities as proximity to the infirmary and dining room -- both are on the same deck -- and more stability in rough seas (although on our last night, when the ship is docked in Barcelona, we are kept awake by its incessant rocking against a rubber bumper and the consequent emission of the loudest flatulence I have ever heard).

Other inconveniences are minor. The DVD player doesn't work, thus foiling our viewing of two movies we check out from the ship's library, chosen for their appropriate subject matters, wine ("Sideways") and food ("Julie and Julia"); and the shower is cold (it does warm up) while the sink is hot, scalding hot, which I discover the next morning when, attempting to ingest my daily dose of Metamucil, I empty two packages into a small glass and turn on the tap. In case you've never tried it, scalding hot water turns Metamucil into a viscous orange blob, and evokes from CCS paroxysms of laughter, once she overcomes her initial disgust.

No sooner are we unpacked and comfortably ensconced in our new quarters, dreamily contemplating our first glass of wine and dinner aboard ship, than we are jolted from our reverie by a jangling three-bell alarm and a magisterial voice booming over a loudspeaker. It's our Travel Dynamics Tour Director, Tana, the Swedish taskmaster, whose guttural "Gut mornings . . Gut afternoons . . . and Gut evenings," followed by some very precise instructions concerning our next activity -- departure time, bus route, weather conditions, amount of walking involved -- become, in a few days, too easily mimicked.

In this case, she is asking us to search our cabins for some poor woman's lost luggage (it is never found) and alerting us to a mandatory evacuation drill. CCS insists on donning her life jacket in the cabin in open defiance of Tana's orders, for which I facetiously reprimand her, only to have the tables turned when, during the drill, I fail to locate my tie straps. (Fortunately, the ship stayed afloat.)

Cruises can be relaxing diversions -- when you're on the ship, dining, drinking, socializing, and sleeping. They can also be rigorous -- especially when sponsored by Washington and Lee University, as this one is, and crammed with orchestrated excursions. Although these are by no means mandatory, the persistence with which they are promoted leaves the conscientious traveler hungover with guilt (and the uneasy notion that he may not be getting his money's worth) should he be so audacious as to abstain.

Our cultural conditioning and continuing edification are further assured by the presence on board of three guest lecturers -- L. C., retired Washington and Lee history professor, F. M., author of the bestselling "Under the Tuscan Sun" and an alumna of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, and M. F., curator at the Art Institute of Chicago -- and three operatic professionals -- a pianist, a tenor, and a soprano -- who will be performing five one-hour concerts during the trip.

Professor C. is renowned for his exquisite erudition, irreverent intellectualism, extemporaneous expositions, multiple martinis, aura of authority, and bridge-playing acumen. While he romps through one thousand years of Sicilian, Provencal, and Aragonese history in three riveting hours, dropping along the way such lexical pearls as maladroit, bucolic, and satrapy, we learn that feeble Sicily changed owners more times than Poland, that the Austrian Hapsburgs rallied their subjects to celebrate their every defeat, that the Spanish Bourbons were no less incompetent, and even more cruel, and that, in the words of Somerset Maugham, the once-glamorous French Riviera has degenerated into "a sunny place for shady people."


Trying to impress Professor C., I parade my diligence in tackling the voluminous "Middle Sea," to which he tartly retorts, "Oh, I didn't recommend it; I never would. It hardly touches on the places we're visiting," leaving me crestfallen. (It turns out this monstrosity was the brainchild of R. F., Director of Special Programs for Washington and Lee.)

As for the shore excursions, after the first few days, they assume a numbing monotony, as seventy adults (a fitting number, since most are over that age; CCS and I are among the youngest) are herded like cats on and off buses; endure long rides to and from the ports, interminable traffic jams in congested city streets, and miraculous maneuvers in spaces designed for microcars and scooters; walk, walk, walk through the narrow, stone-cobbled corridors of medieval towns; tread reverently into the cavernous chambers of centuries-old churches of Romanesque, Baroque, and Gothic design (I still don't know the difference); gaze respectfully at magnificent frescoes, tender madonnas, and stark crucifixes; shuffle through museums of ancient sculpture and modern art; and explore twisting alleys lined with shops, galleries, and cafes, lingering for an occasional memento, coffee, or gelato.


Since my trip to Egypt four years ago, a new technology has revolutionized the guided tour industry -- remote handsets. Simply attach the receiver to your belt; stick your ear through a plastic loop (not so simple); flip one dial on, the other to channel one, two, three, or four; and, presto, your fearless leader, like a thoroughbred released from the starting gate, is off and running, for two or three uninterrupted hours -- unless some annoying static intrudes, sparked by a sequestered cell phone, which our guide that day, Patricia, vigorously denies possession of, until tour director Brian insists on searching her purse and produces the rude culprit.

These characters are a special breed. They religiously abide by their first commandment: let there be no moment of silence -- even when most of their weary audience are desperate to snatch a nap on the bus ride home. Their reservoir of information is bottomless; it gushes forth as if from an uncapped fire hydrant, while we strive to capture a few rivulets with our tiny straws. Their repertoire of tangential tales is inexhaustible, one leading to another, like passageways through an endless maze.

Dare I say it? Their brilliance rivals our professor's, since it's not just history they have mastered -- ancient, medieval, modern, local, provincial, national -- but also art, architecture, archaeology, agriculture, economics, religion, and politics. For us, of course, their articulations are all English (Who knows what other languages they speak?), in which they are remarkably fluent, although occasionally one is reminded of presidential diction by a malapropic construction (a la George W. Bush) or a plethora of "uhs" between sentences (a la Barack Obama).

Our guide in Cefalu, Gabrielle, tosses out American colloquialisms like a robotic batting practice pitcher. Not as tolerant of the Sicilian Mafia as Professor C. -- who characterized it as a shadow government -- he launches into a thirty-minute diatribe in response to an impromptu question on the subject. Referring to Sicilian subjugation under a succession of inept rulers and the disillusionment of so many broken promises, he entertains us with such pithy moralizations as "The devil you know is preferable to the devil you don't"; "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"; and "After the trick, the game is up."

Similarly, our guide in Lucca, Vincienzo, in discussing that town's embattled past, invokes the memory of his father, who taught him "to come home with two black eyes, not one," and that "it's better to live one day as a lion than one thousand as a lamb."

Inundated by a tsunami of facts and figures, we salvage a few precious nuggets.

Although the smothering of Pompeii under fifty feet of volcanic ash in 79 A.D. was a disaster for its twenty thousand inhabitants, its ruins are a boon for the twentieth century Italian economy, drawing 2.5 million visitors a year. During the process of excavation, one archaeologist discovered hollow pockets with bits of human and animal remains, and was foresighted enough to fill them with plaster, thus preserving the forms of the decomposed bodies, many in their death throes. Another highlight is the brothel, easily located, since carved stone penises on a wall and road point the way. "Just follow the erection for the direction," quips one comedian, while I whisper in CCS's ear: "If you have an erection lasting two thousand years, see your physician."


The medieval town of Lucca -- the birthplace of Puccini -- is memorable to me not for the two churches we visit -- ho hum -- but for the fifty-foot wide wall -- built with two million bricks in the 16th century -- which encircles it. Formerly a bastion for defense, today its five-mile circumference is capped with a paved promenade for walkers, joggers, and cyclists and lined with shade trees and park benches.

Vincienzo points out some ancient graffiti and quotes a Roman historian, who wrote, "You can judge the intelligence of the people by the scribbling on the walls." He also informs us that, after conquering the area, Napoleon appointed his sister Elisa -- his ugliest sister -- "Queen of Etruria." She governed from Lucca and became a capable administrator, imposing taxes on the wealthy and converting monasteries into hospitals and convents into schools.

A refreshing change of pace -- unfortunately, it comes on the last day -- is La Boqueria, the Barcelona Farmers' Market -- a sprawling canopied football field planted in the middle of the city. Its narrow aisles are packed with stalls of every foodstuff imaginable -- colorful, exotic fruits and vegetables bursting with sweetness; whole tuna, dolphin, flounder, and salmon lying in state, ready to be deboned and sliced; hogs and piglets staring back at you with ghastly grins; lobsters and clams crawling across beds of ice. CCS is repelled by some indigenous gray-green shellfish, especially when she hears how they are caught: by women suspended over cliffs on ropes held by their husbands.


By then, CCS and I are suffocating from programmatic overload, a surfeit of bus rides, museums, and churches, and an allergic reaction to name tags and earphones. That afternoon we pass on the Gaudi Temple and the Picasso Museum. In Nice, we forgo the Matisse Museum and set off on our own, winding our way through a neighborhood of luxury stores until we emerge in a vast, open pedestrian plaza, where we relax in an outdoor cafe, enjoy a pastis (my first), and admire the scenery.

CCS is familiar with Aix-en-Provence, having vacationed there twice before, and can't wait to exit the bus (which circles the town in order to show us a Cezanne vista -- and gets hung up in a traffic jam), discard our colleagues, and embark on some serious shopping. Since we look so purposeful, two of them accost us. "Do you know where you're going?" they ask. Yes, we think, but it's not to Cezanne's studio or the Musee Granet, so we point them back towards the tour group.

Tana advises us to rendezvous for lunch at L'Aixquis, and almost gets into an altercation with our guide Delores when she corrects her by naming L'Amphitryon. "The program says L'Aixquis," says Tana. "But that's not possible," says Delores. "It closed last week."

At L'Amphitryon, I taste another delicacy for the first (and hopefully the last) time: cold melon soup spiced with pate, which, as I look around, most other diners have not yet acquired a taste for either. I compliment our waitress on her excellent English. "Thank you," she says. "I'm from England."

Later, our determined shopping yields a stunning silver-gold necklace for CCS and two gift packages of callisons -- the famous Provencal pastry -- which, contrary to the American way, the local purveyors allow you to sample only after you have made your purchase. But a flashy bathing suit in pink with blue rabbits is a little too pricey at 130 euros. (How often would I wear it?)

Abandoning our fellow travelers is nothing personal. Because one of the unanticipated pleasures of a trip like this is the opportunity to meet and enjoy new friends. For eight days, seventy-five individuals, mostly unknown to each other, come together in a confined environment and interact -- at cocktail parties, on buses, on walking tours, and at open-seated meals. (With good company, fine wine, and five glorious courses, it's like attending a dinner party every night.)

While I am tempted to refer to this assortment as eclectic, the inaptness of that adjective is manifest in an innocuous question posed to me one evening by I. S., a short, rotund, cheerful woman in her mid-eighties, who can best be described as a trooper; wielding a cane taller than she is, she struggles gamely up and down hills and steps, never losing her composure or her smile. "Are you retired? Are you in financials?" she asks, two questions in one, since one answer in the affirmative would have applied to eighty per cent of the (male) passengers.

Including the tall, courtly S. M., one of only three Washington and Lee alumni (including myself) on this Washington and Lee sponsored trip. Like so many others, S. uses the availability of a virgin audience to share his favorite story, one which particularly appeals to me, a sympathetic non-golfer.


At the tender age of twenty-six, young S. was assigned by his boss at Chemical Bank to substitute for him at a prestigious charity golf tournament. Borrowing some wooden clubs and a pair of weather-beaten shoes from his father-in-law, S. showed up and was astonished to find himself in a foursome with three big bank executives, all scratch golfers, one of whom was Hootie Johnson, later President of Augusta National. Striding boldly to the tee, S. informed his partners that, "The good news is that Chemical Bank has $10 billion in assets; the bad news is that I've never played golf before." How did S. end up in this illustrious group? A week prior, an organizer had called him and asked him what his handicap was. S.'s innocent reply, "What's a handicap?" had been interpreted to mean that he played without a handicap. S. handled his predicament with grace, courage, and a little luck; he won a hair dryer for his wife by hitting a ball closest to the pin.

The other Washington and Lee alumnus, M. M., is a charming, country-smart raconteur whose artificial voice box hardly inhibits him from regaling us with countless tales from his salad days roaming the backwaters of south Texas peddling municipal bonds, owning and selling three investment firms along the way -- while his demure, elegant wife, J., a published poet, eyes him adoringly, as if she is hearing it all for the first time.

M. detests modern art, and his wit is brazenly on display the morning we visit the Maeght Museum in St. Paul-de-Vence. The red, white, and yellow cylindrical shape that greets us he likens to a "rotten apple," although it looks more like a banana to me. He implores J. to photograph an odd human metal figure boasting an erect penis, but says, "I know she won't." He points to a clownish green face spouting water into a pool, and says, "He ate something that didn't agree with him," and indoors to a painting which, he says, his "grandson did when he was four." He imagines inviting some friends to a party at his home in home in Houston for a slide show, but says he'll have to chain them to their chairs.

Other travelers don't seem be having nearly as much fun. A friend of ours plucks another juicy pun from a low-hanging vine when he renames the Elderhostel group, "Elderhostile," in honor of one sourpuss who wears a permanent scowl on his face, regularly elbows people aside in his haste to get off the bus, and rudely commands his waiter, "Give me some wine."

CCS tags an imperious, gray-haired woman HM, for "High Maintenance," which I correct to "Her Majesty." On a lavish breakfast buffet displaying ten varieties of fruit, eight of cereal, eggs, bacon, sausage, and a tasty assortment of rolls, bread, and pastry, she finds nothing to suit. Weary of sightseeing, she wants to retreat to the bus for an hour and asks if the driver can turn on the air conditioning. None of Tana's exceedingly explicit instructions is thorough enough to forestall a question from her.

Throughout all this, a wonderful staff continues to delight and entertain us. After two days, the waiters know our names, although, one Manny -- Manuel by the time we reach Spain -- mangles mine into "Mr. Skewel." Another, Danny, amuses CCS when he calls me Mr. CCS when I forget my "Skewel" name tag. Mr. White becomes Mr. Green or Mr. Red or Mr. Brown, depending on the shirt or tie he is wearing.

Under the watchful eye of the maitre de, Gabor the Happy Hungarian -- who engages in mindless conversations with no one in particular, sprinkled with "goody-goody's" and "yummy-yummy's" -- these efficient fellows unfold our napkins and lay them in our laps, swiftly replace our table settings after every course, and never let our wine glasses fall below half full.

The meals they deliver are exquisite, the presentations works of art. The final night's is the piece de resistance -- a serendipitous celebration of dual birthdays, CCS's and D. M.'s (S. M.'s wife), featuring escargot (five of them, seasoned to perfection, each in its own pocket in a specially designed bowl), lobster tail (of course, there are options, beef, pasta, or vegetarian, but the vote at our table is unanimous), and baked alaska, of which I grudgingly eat two portions (mine and CCS's) plus birthday cake a la mode. But who's counting calories? At this point, our only recourse is to follow the lead of our friend, K. V.; he's having his mouth wired shut when he gets home.



Which is where we are soon headed, after bidding a bittersweet farewell to the Corinthian II, to our transitory friendships, and to the crew that has served us so well. Like other vacations (unless you are retired, from financials) this enchanting escape from reality -- which two weeks ago stretched endlessly before us -- now must end, transformed into a fading moment in time, to be summoned on special occasions from the depths of memory by the lively interest of family and friends, by a catalogue of images faithfully digitalized, and by this humble record of Mediterranean miscellany.

A Great Company

Founded over one hundred years ago by the great-grandfather of the current owners, its heart firmly anchored in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, its arteries stretching beyond its humble origins into the fertile breadbasket of the Shenandoah Valley, the mountainous coal communities of West Virginia, the red clay tobacco farms of Southside Virginia, and the marshy flatlands of eastern North Carolina, a great company perseveres.

This company will never be spotted on the Fortune 500 list, nor be traded on the New York Stock Exchange, nor be lauded by Virginia Business Magazine as one of the fastest-growing in the state, nor be one that Warren Buffett might want to buy, even though he has collected several in the same industry.

Yet it's a company that has repeatedly demonstrated why it deserves to be called great; if there were ever any doubt, it was dispelled with emphasis in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010.

Three years ago its retail home furnishings business had achieved record sales and profits, the peak of an upward trend that had continued with a few minor interruptions since the founder began peddling household goods from a horse-drawn cart in 1897. Substantial debt incurred twenty years ago in a leveraged buyout of a related family's fifty per cent ownership had been reduced to an insignificant amount. While expansion into new markets -- which had propelled the company's store count from twenty to fifty since that buyout -- had been sharply curtailed, a strategy of relocating existing stores into larger, more modern facilities had generated healthy sales increases. Technological and logistical progress had been slow but steady, enabling the company to operate more efficiently and improve customer service.

But even before the dark clouds of the Great Recession descended upon the U. S. economy, the company's sales had entered into a perilous, painful, perplexing decline, melting away like the Arctic Ice Cap succumbing to global warming. Beginning in April 2007, the company was rocked by thirty-four months of comparable sales decreases -- interrupted only by a mysterious, but welcome, 15% jump in January 2009 -- which resulted in a cumulative three-year drop of 18%.

Does an encouraging 12.3% aggregate sales increase in March and April signal the end of this long, national nightmare? Only the fickle consumer knows for sure, and in May he seems to be reverting to his frugal spending habits.

As one would expect, profits during this period suffered commensurately. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006, the company reported the highest pretax profits in its history -- 6.7% of revenues -- before falling 50% over the next three years to a level on March 31, 2009, equal to 4.1% of revenues.

And the descent was far from over. From April 1, 2009, through March 31, 2010, the end of the current fiscal year, the company (and the country) staggered under the highest unemployment numbers and the worst contraction in discretionary consumer spending in recent memory. And just when a ray of sunlight appeared to be peeking through the cloud cover, in late January, the sky fell in -- literally.

When one is accustomed to success, confronting failure -- and how else to define this exasperating reversal of fortune, regardless of its presumed external causes -- is a daunting task. While some will justifiably rebuke me for the analogy ("It's only business, and not irreversible; you still have your health and your loved ones."), the adjustment seems to parallel the grieving model proposed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross for terminal cancer patients; one moves progressively through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And with acceptance comes a lowering of expectations.

Initially, of course, one regards a bad sales month as an aberration, a temporary blip on the radar screen, since it is such an unfamiliar phenomenon. Even two or three are hardly a trend and not intolerable, but as the losing streak continues, denial turns to anger, especially when a sale which has always produced results in the past suddenly goes sour, or when the revived optimism of a few good days is strangled by twice as many bad ones.

For a while, one bargains -- concocting bold schemes to cope with the deleterious situation: discarding heretofore successful promotions for a host of new ones, all of which fail miserably; searching frantically for those elusive magic bullets -- sales training, creative credit offers, fresh merchandise -- which will restore his lost brilliance. Alas, nothing works -- except radical, ruthless excision, cost-cutting. This too is virgin territory; but one is longer merely responding to some unfortunate economic conditions; he is in survival mode.

When sales are down from one year to the next, and each successive month rolls back around, one thinks: We sold that much last year, and even more the year before; surely we can do as well, or better, this year. But it doesn't happen, because we're in a whole new world of retailing. Acceptance means that last year's failure becomes this year's success, that we're now resigned to doing less business and making less money; in fact, for the first time in my forty years with the company, if we're not careful, we might lose money.

Acceptance means keeping one's composure through two disastrous snowstorms -- three, if one includes December 19, 2009.

Since the company had conceived its "Lowest Price of the Year Sale" five years ago, the concept -- "prices lower than our Half-Price Sale, lower than our Free Furniture Sale, and lower than our Furniture for a Dollar Sale" -- and the timing -- the end of the January retail hibernation and the arrival of tax refund checks in many customers' mailboxes -- had transformed a respectable weekend into its two biggest days -- provided the weather cooperated, always a risky proposition at that time of the year.

Having bolted winter's wrath myself by flying out early Friday morning, appropriately enough, to a dealers' meeting in Las Vegas, where gambling is a way of life, I could only wander aimlessly through the casinos, curse the gods of chance, shake my head in frustration and despair, and text the pithy message "s__t" back to my upholstery buyer, R. E., when, mid-day on Saturday, in response to my innocent inquiry "How's the weather?" she frostily informed me: "Twelve inches and still coming down."

And what Vegas oddsmaker wouldn't lay a hundred to one against a sister storm blowing in the following weekend, dumping another foot-and-a-half on the company's footprint, and smothering the Final Two Days of its Lowest Prices of the Year -- this in a region which had hardly seen six inches of total snowfall in the past four years?

In his best-selling business textbook, Good to Great, author Jim Collins relates the story of Admiral James Stockdale, "the highest-ranking United States military officer in the 'Hanoi Hilton' prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner's rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again." (Collins, pp. 83-84)

When asked by Collins which prisoners hadn't made it out of the camp, Stockdale said, "The optimists . . . the ones who said they would be out by Christmas . . . or by Easter . . . or by Thanksgiving," and when those days came and went, "they died of a broken heart." (Collins, p. 85)

What separates people, and businesses, Collins writes, "is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life." Successfully overcoming adversity requires one to adopt a dual paradigm, which Collins, paraphrasing the Admiral's prescription for survival, calls the Stockdale Paradox: "Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." (Collins, p.86)

For twelve harrowing months, this company's managers confronted those facts -- demoralizing sales declines -- made the necessary adjustments, never lost faith, and prevailed. In the most challenging business climate I have ever seen in my thirty-five-year career, they worked wonders: posting a profit number only fifteen per cent lower than last year and achieving a pretax margin of 3.9%.

How did they do it?

First and foremost, with a clear vision, for this was a company that, throughout its evolution, whether by accident or design, had adhered to what Collins labels "the Hedgehog Concept."
Collins compares hedgehogs to foxes, who "pursue many ends at the same time, see the world in all its complexity, but never integrate their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision; hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle that unifies and guides everything." (Collins, p.91)

Thus, the company understood that its infrastructure and culture would not allow it to compete in large, high-volume markets, but that it could be regionally the best at its unifying concept: selling home furnishings and related products on installment credit in small towns -- a business that sounds rather quaint and mundane, yet one which, for over one hundred years, its ownership and management were intensely passionate about.

While, in the process of refining their logistics, other furniture retailers consolidated their warehouses and implemented direct retail delivery from their distribution centers, this company chose to centralize the receiving of its merchandise but to maintain its satellite warehouses -- in order to accommodate its widely-dispersed markets, to facilitate customer pickups, to store selected items on-site for immediate availability, and to sustain its entrepreneurial spirit.

While other furniture retailers eliminated appliances and electronics from their product mix in the face of fierce competition, this company assessed the marketplace, determined it could be a viable seller, reduced its prices, and focused on extended warranties to enhance its margins.

While other furniture retailers viewed the widespread extension of credit -- even to subprime purchasers -- as an opportunity to jettison their cumbersome in-house credit operations and improve their cash flow, this company saw the ability to control its credit destiny and retain its customer accounts as a competitive advantage and a profit center.

Informed by its unifying concept, exhibiting the consistency and single-mindedness of hedgehogs, company managers performed with exceptional grace, courage, dexterity, and wisdom.

During the fiscal year 2010, they increased their gross profit percentage one hundred basis points, from 41.33 to 42.32 -- by reducing their inventory shrinkage fifty per cent, by selling more high margin fabric protection and extended warranties, and by complying with company pricing policies.

They reduced their total payroll 5.4% -- by improving employee productivity, by eliminating overtime, and by staying within budgeted guidelines.

They collaborated with their credit managers to stretch the limits of credit approval, yet produced historically low delinquency ratios and charge-offs. At the end of March, three-month delinquency stood at 1.6%; compared to last year, net charge-offs were down 15%, and totaled only 1.9% of gross revenues.

They reduced company truck expenses 25% -- by encouraging customer pickups, by consolidating their delivery routes, and by adapting to biweekly in lieu of triweekly merchandise transfers from the company's Distribution Center.

They increased vendor credits 25% -- by diligently documenting all merchandise repairs and submitting claims in a timely manner.

They reduced worker compensation, vehicular accident, and corporate liability claims 33% -- by preaching safety to all employees and supporting the dynamic leadership of L. D. in her neverending crusade to make the workplace risk-free.

And they reduced a host of miscellaneous expenses a total of 10% -- including the CEO's personal bugaboo, copy toner, and postage, which fell prey to executive assistant L. P.'s ultimatum that store managers use U. S. Mail rather than UPS.

The only expense that increased significantly was building maintenance, and it was beyond anyone's control; in 2010, the company spent $100,000 on snow removal.

In Good to Great, Collins describes the rigorous training regimen of Dave Scott, who won the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon six times. "In training, Scott would ride his bike 75 miles, swim 20,000 meters, and run 17 miles -- on average, every single day. Dave Scott did not have a weight problem. Yet he believed that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet would give him an extra edge. So Dave Scott -- a man who burned at least 5000 calories a day in training -- would literally rinse his cottage cheese to get the fat off . . . one more small step that he believed would make him just that much better, one more small step added to all the other small steps to create a consistent program of superdiscipline." (Collins, p. 127)

I'm proud of the way the company's managers rinsed their cottage cheese to produce extraordinary results in 2010. They typify this essential characteristic of Collins's great companies: they are "self-disciplined people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibilities." (Collins, p.124)

They also make my job as CEO a joyous one -- because they are enterprising as well as disciplined. Collins employs another analogy to illustrate this concept -- the airline pilot. On one hand, the pilot operates within a strict system, which he does not have the freedom to deviate from: methodically working through a preflight checklist, coordinating with air traffic control to taxi out on the runway and take off in proper sequence, communicating with flight-control centers during the flight, and staying within commercial air traffic boundaries. (Collins, p. 123)

On the other hand, should the pilot encounter severe turbulence or treacherous crosswinds, he has the freedom to make crucial decisions -- whether to take off, whether to land, whether to abort. "He has ultimate responsibility for the airplane and the lives of the people on it." (Collins, p.124)

Similarly, this company's managers -- both in the field and in the corporate office -- operate in a structured environment, yet have a great deal of freedom and responsibility within that framework.

In its heyday, Circuit City -- one of Collins's great companies, which, of course, later foundered under mismanagement -- used this formula to run its chain stores. In words that reflect this company's culture, Bill Rivas said of Circuit City's success: "It was the combination of great store mangers who had ultimate responsibility for their individual stores, operating within a great system. You've got to have management and people who believe in the system, and who do what is necessary to make the system work. But within the boundaries of that system, store managers had a lot of leeway, to coincide with their responsibility." (Collins, p. 126)

Not long ago, I was visiting one of the company's stores, and found myself surrounded by a veritable jungle of flower arrangements. When I suggested to the manager that he consider allowing salespeople to offer them free to customers as closing tools, he took offense at such irrationality, loath to impair his markup. "But I'll do it," he said. "It's your store." Well, not exactly, I thought to myself, as I bit my tongue. It's my company (along with a few other shareholders), but it's your store.

The entrepreneurial spirit is robust and thriving in this great company. So many heroes are using their freedom, ingenuity, and self-motivation to boost top-line revenue and bottom-line profitability.

S. A. is a one-man advertising department. He's in his office every morning at 6:30 (or is it 6:00). He has to be, with all he has to do: design all circulars and mailers; write and produce all broadcast commercials; prepare advertising budgets; update the company's web site; forward online credit applications to the appropriate stores; monitor the company's customer database; communicate with his media placement agency; verify all advertising invoices; respond to a barrage of telephone calls and e-mails from stores, vendors, and occasionally customers; and besiege me with dealer ads offering free delivery on bedding, until I finally surrendered. And then he comes in the next day and does it all over again.

A few years ago, R. E. became frustrated that the company was not receiving adequate vendor reimbursement for legitimate repairs made to defective merchandise. Finding time in her busy schedule as upholstery buyer, she devised a system to facilitate the submission and processing of these credits, which, in conjunction with the cooperation of store managers, has generated since its inception $2 million. This year, working with a template supplier, she designed a new price tag which has enabled stores to display important product information in a concise, attractive format.

As its Director, W. W., likes to say, "Everything's perfect in the Credit Department," and with its outstanding performance in 2010, one would be hard-pressed to dispute that statement. Shunning the limelight, W. W. graciously prefers to bestow all the accolades on his regional supervisors and local credit managers. While his philosophy -- that he likes to measure everything -- echoes that of his predecessor, he has brought his own brand of professionalism to the process and raised it to a whole new level of sophistication, thoroughness, and accuracy. For example, now the company knows its credit approval rate, its credit sales as a per cent of total sales, and its per cent of no finance charge sales. These incremental improvements combined with a traditional methodology have provided stability and cash flow in a faltering economy.

Of course, none of this would be possible without a vigorous sales engine -- and a strong-minded engineer at the helm. The company's week-long sales training course, its sales development tool -- the Business Builder -- its emphasis on Customer Care Options, and its motivational bedding and appliance/electronics contests (not to mention the competitve merchandising of the latter two products) were never mandated or prescribed by the CEO. Rather they were conceived, refined, and perfected by corporate sales manager S. C. Ever vigilant, seeing a void, a necessity, or an opportunity -- most recently, working with the tech committee to automate the Business Builder -- he seizes the moment, and from his fertile imagination is birthed another sales driver.

Similarly inspired is the company's risk manager, L. D. Groomed in credit, office, and inventory functions, recruited as a substitute manager and trainer, thrust into a newly-created position in which neither she nor the company had any experience, she embraced the challenge with curiosity, energy, and intensity. The results have been no less than spectacular. Traveling the width and breadth of three states, teaching experienced truck drivers more than they want to know, inspecting doors, walls, floors, and framing for microscopic evidence of delivery negligence, resolving complaints with sensitivity and firmness, putting out fires (literally), and finding a myriad of ways to make the premises safer for customers and employees, she has saved the company $2 million over four years.

In the company's fifty-one satellite locations, innovative managers are brimming with ideas to motivate their employees, increase sales, and generate profits.

Last year, R. H. in S___n determined that every customer coming into his store, even if he was making a payment or registering a complaint, should be treated as a salesperson's turn at the door or "up." That salesperson was required to capture pertinent Business Builder and credit information about the customer in order to convert him into a current or future sale. Recently, R. H. has created a Daily Quota Report Form, which he prepares every morning and distributes to his salespeople. It includes each individual's quota status, commissions earned, door count cards, undelivered orders, and Customer Care Option penetration.

Taking inventory in C___e a couple of months ago, I observed an interesting new practice implemented by S. S. With a few exceptions, I have always harbored a deep antipathy toward sales desks floating in the middle of the display floor, where they seem to morph into miniature landfills, collecting food wrappings, drink bottles, old price tags, ancient circulars, outdated signs, and stacks of cards, notepads, and envelopes. S. S. has eliminated these desks, moved all customer records to a file cabinet, and established a call center in a private office, where for one hour a day, uninterrupted, each salesperson makes an allotted number of calls. So far, S. S. is reporting positive results.

Like W. W., K. L. in R___e likes measuring things. He has developed a number of reports to track what's happening in his store daily and monthly and to evaluate salesperson performance. The Monthly Traffic Report compares store traffic (both salesperson "ups" and walk-in customer payments) and average sale per contract in the current month to the same month, prior year. The Monthly Sales Detail Report summarizes the key statistics for each salesperson: quota, delivered sales, number of contracts, average sale, ups, closing ratio, and Customer Care Option Penetration. The Monthly Back Counter Report lists each back counter sale by amount and salesperson and calculates a close ratio based on the number of walk-in payments. The Monthly Office Report tracks debt cancellation penetration, contract maturities, and down payments daily; if targets are met, office personnel split an incentive based on the number of contracts each has processed. The Monthly Income Component Report compares finance charge, debt cancellation, and Customer Care Option income in the current month to the same month, prior year, and thus identifies opportunities to increase revenue.

Does K. L.'s reporting system work? As he would say, look at the numbers. R___e was one of only ten stores to increase sales last year. And it earned in profits more than any other store in the company.

One of the company's great sales entrepreneurs is K. J. in C___e. This lady stays excited about selling, and believes that excitement is contagious. Last December, she trained her office personnel on the features and benefits of selected popular electronics items -- flip videos, netbooks, cameras, ipods -- and challenged them to add at least one to the contracts they were processing; they achieved a success rate of 55%. After giving them a crash course on Customer Care Options, she charged them with saving or upgrading sales; office personnel responded and tripled their pm's. K. J. has a host of other award-winning ideas she will be happy to share with anyone who cares to listen. Be warned, however; they require commitment, teamwork, and enthusiasm.

At the end of Good to Great, Collins writes about the head of a high school cross-country program -- who in five years transformed it from good (top twenty in the state) to great (two consecutive state championships). Collins asked the coach why she felt compelled to make the the program great. She said, "I guess it's because I really care about what we're doing. I believe in running and the impact it can make on these kids' lives. I want them to have a great experience, the experience of being part of something first class." (Collins, p. 208)

This coach has an MBA from an elite business school, but found that her classmates' careers -- investment banking, management consulting -- had no meaning for her. "She just didn't care enough about these endeavors to make them great . . . And so she made the decision to search for meaningful work, work about which she would have such passion that the question, why try for greatness, would seem nonsensical." (Collins, p. 208) In other words, says Collins later, "If you're engaged in work that you love and care about, for whatever reason, then the question needs no other answer. (Collins, p.209)

"Indeed," he says, "the real question is not 'Why greatness?' but 'What work makes you feel compelled to create greatness?' " (Collins, p.209)

A few weeks ago, a store manager -- who, it must be acknowledged, was having a fantastic year, in sales, that is -- called me and said, "I really love my job." He wasn't one of the nine individuals mentioned above, although he could have been. Because in order for these leaders to create, innovate, originate -- expertly pilot their planeloads of responsibilities -- they must be passionate about what they do -- as I believe most, if not all, of this company's managers are. The company could not have achieved such remarkable sucess in 2010 without people engaged in work they love and care about. That's what makes it great.

REFERENCES

Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001