Holocaust scholar dead at age of 89

NEW YORK—David S. Wyman, a leading scholar of the U.S. response to the Holocaust whose "The Abandonment of the Jews" was a provocative, best-selling critique of everyone from religious leaders to President Franklin Roosevelt, died Wednesday at age 89

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies announced that Wyman died at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts, after a lengthy illness. Wyman was a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The grandson of Protestant ministers, Wyman was in graduate school when he began a long-term quest to learn what was done on behalf of the millions of Jews rounded up and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II.

He was best known for "The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-45," which came out in 1984 and sharply intensified a debate that began during the war. Drawing upon private and government records and contemporary media accounts, Wyman found widespread indifference and hostility to the Jews in Europe, even as their systematic extermination was conclusively documented. He faulted religious organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish; mainstream newspapers and movies; and the anti-Jewish feelings of the general public.

The federal government was slow to act, enforcing strict immigration quotas and refusing to bomb the concentration camps; waiting until well after the Holocaust had begun to establish a War Refugee Board, then forcing the agency to rely mostly on private funding. The blame rose right to the top, with Roosevelt, who Wyman alleged was more concerned about angering anti-Semites than about helping the Jews.

"If he had wanted to, he could have aroused substantial public backing for a vital rescue effort by speaking out on the issue," Wyman wrote, calling Roosevelt's inaction the low mark of his presidency. "It appears that Roosevelt's overall response to the Holocaust was deeply affected by political expediency. Most Jews supported him unwaveringly, so an active rescue policy offered little political advantage. A pro-Jewish stance, however, could lose votes."

Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, praised Wyman for his "courageous, lucid, painful book." And "The Abandonment of the Jews" received several honors, including the National Jewish Book Award, and a nomination from the National Book Critics Circle.