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Although American Jews were enamored with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies, Roosevelt did little to save Jews during the Holocaust. With a constant eye toward reelection, Roosevelt supported immigration policies that were popular with his constituents but which concomitantly hindered Jews from entering the United States to escape Nazi genocide. Thus, kowtowing to popular opinion, Roosevelt and his advisors acted cowardly in their efforts to save Jewish lives; in retrospect, one realizes that much more could have been done by American politicians in power during the late 1930s and early 1940s. This chapter examines Susan Lieberman and Stephen J. Morewitz's Steamship Quanza to argue that admiralty lawyer Jacob L. Morewitz managed to single-handedly save eighty-six European Jews from their deaths by using his legal skills to influence immigration laws created by the Roosevelt administration, demonstrating that courageous acts of individuals led the way for what American politicians could have done to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137000613_7

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