Lyndon Johnson deserves ‘righteous gentile’ honor

BY ALAN J. STEINBERG

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

Sunday, May 1, 2011 was Yom HaShoah, a date designated by the State of Israel as Holocaust Remembrance Day to honor the memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust. As is always the case on Yom HaShoah, my mind is filled with thought as I reflect on the Holocaust and its impact on my family and my fellow Jews.

I think of the many members of my paternal family living in Pultusk and Rozan, Poland on the date the army of Nazi Germany invaded Poland, September 1, 1939. The fortunate members of my family escaped to the former Soviet Union, stayed in Siberia during the war, and eventually found safety and security in the new State of Israel. My less fortunate relatives residing in Rozan and Pultusk, however, were murdered by the Nazis.

I remember the Adolf Eichmann trial, fifty years ago in Jerusalem in 1961. My paternal uncle, Eliahu Malovany sent us copies of the Jerusalem Post every day, which contained the detailed descriptions of the testimony of Holocaust survivors. My father would read the stories and, on a number of occasions, cry.

This year, however, I am also thinking about a true “Righteous Gentile” — in Hebrew, a Hasid Umot Ha-Olam, a righteous one from among the nations of the world. It can be directly proven that this man saved 42 Jews from the Holocaust, including the Austrian Jewish orchestra conductor, Erich Leinsdorf. There is a substantial quantum of evidence indicating that this man actually saved at least four hundred Jewish lives from the Nazis.

The name of this man was Lyndon Baines Johnson, known by millions of Americans as simply LBJ. To save these Jewish lives, as a young member of the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1938 and 1939 he procured illegal passports for Jews attempting to flee Europe.

Later, Johnson did even more.

According to Texas historian James M. Smallwood, in 1940, in a personal undercover operation known as Operation Texas, LBJ used legal and sometimes illegal methods to smuggle "hundreds of Jews into Texas, using Galveston as the entry port. Enough money could buy false passports and fake visas in Cuba, Mexico and other Latin American countries.... Johnson smuggled boatloads and planeloads of Jews into Texas. He hid them in the Texas National Youth Administration... Johnson saved at least four or five hundred Jews, possibly more."

Had Johnson’s actions been discovered by law enforcement authorities at that time, he would have received a criminal conviction and a prison sentence. His political career would have been over. His life would have been ruined.

Fifty years ago, in 1961, Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November, 1963, Johnson became the 36th President of the United States. LBJ demonstrated his friendship for World Jewry again by providing the armaments that enabled Israel to prevail in the June, 1967 war. Indeed, it can be stated unequivocally that the two best friends Israel ever had in the White House were Lyndon Baines Johnson and George W. Bush – both from the state of Texas.

The three book series on the life of LBJ, written by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Robert A. Caro describes brilliantly how LBJ was one of the most enigmatic individuals in American history. Next year, the fourth volume of the series, describing LBJ’s White House years, will be published.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a unique blend of corruption and compassion. Caro describes how LBJ was elected as a United States Senator from Texas in 1948 – in an election that Johnson literally stole. After having illegally won an election, however, he soon emerged at the greatest Senate Majority Leader in American history.

His legacy as President will be regarded by future historians as a combination of historic domestic accomplishment and foreign policy disaster. In successfully enacting the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 (public accommodations), 1965 (voting rights), and 1968 (housing), Lyndon Johnson earned his place in American history as the President who, more than any of his predecessors or successors, finished the work of Reconstruction and enabled minorities to obtain unprecedented opportunity. Yet in foreign affairs, he presided over the war in Vietnam, American history’s worst foreign policy debacle.

In explaining LBJ’s tergiversations on civil rights during his years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and his early years as a U.S. Senator, Caro describes Johnson as a man whose compassion was always limited by his ambitions. When compassion was in conflict with ambition, compassion would lose. Thus, while LBJ always had compassion for African-Americans and Mexican-Americans, during the 1950s, he would limit his efforts on behalf of these minorities out of fear of alienating Southern Democrats whose support he would need in any presidential run.

Disappointingly, with the exception of Johnson’s role in the Erich Leinsdorf immigration, Caro states very little about Johnson’s Holocaust rescue actions. It is abundantly clear, however, that Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to save European Jews from the Nazis were motivated solely by altruistic, humanitarian concerns and not by personal ambition. There were very few Jewish constituents in Johnson’s House of Representatives district, and nationally the Jews had not yet become the effective political force later embodied by AIPAC.

Rather than politics, it was LBJ’s paternal grandparents’ roots in the Christadelphian church that was the source of his special concern for Jews. Christadelphians believe that the Jews are God’s chosen people and the people of the Bible. Thus, Lyndon Johnson’s grandfather, Samuel Ealy Johnson, Sr., once told Lyndon, '"Take care of the Jews, God’s chosen people. Consider them your friends and help them any way you can."'

Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is Yad Vashem that has the official authority to designate an individual as a Righteous Gentile.

The Yad Vashem law passed by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, defines a Righteous Gentile as a non-Jew who risked his or her life to save Jews during the Holocaust. Since Lyndon Johnson never risked his physical life in his efforts to rescue European Jews, Yad Vashem has thus far refused to designate him as a Righteous Gentile.

I believe very strongly, however, that this “risk of life” criterion should be waived in the case of LBJ. While his physical life was never at risk, there is no question that he placed his liberty and career at complete risk by his actions to assist European Jewry.

Johnson’s actions are even more remarkable when viewed in the context of America at that time. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, anti-Semitism was still a highly significant force in American life. Indeed, the prevalence of American anti-Semitism intimidated many leading American Jewish figures from raising their voices on behalf of their European brethren. It was fear of anti-Semitic political retribution that caused President Franklin D.Roosevelt and his State Department to refrain from any actions to either rescue European Jews or provide a safe haven for those Jews who overcame overwhelming odds to actually elude their Nazi persecutors.

At a time when many Jews felt that the entire world was their enemy, Lyndon Baines Johnson stood alone as an American political figure who put his liberty and career at risk to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. He truly deserves the designation by Yad Vashem of Righteous Gentile, and I hope that Yad Vashem accords this richly deserved honor to America’s 36th President.

Alan J. Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush. Region 2 EPA consists of the states of New York and New Jersey, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and eight federally recognized Indian nations. Under former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman, he served as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. He currently serves on the political science faculty of Monmouth University.