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[semih koen]

3/5/1937 The US government sees fit to apologize officially to Nazi Germany for New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's reference to Adolf Hitler as a 'brown shirted fanatic'. “LaGuardia successfully ran for mayor of the City of New York in 1933. Once in office, he became an implacable foe of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Before taking office, LaGuardia called Hitler a "perverted maniac." In a public address in 1934, LaGuardia warned, "Part of [Hitler’s] program is the complete annihilation of the Jews in Germany." In 1937, speaking before the Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress, LaGuardia called for the creation of a special pavilion at the upcoming New York World’s Fair: "a chamber of horrors" for "that brown-shirted fanatic."

 

In response, the government-controlled press in Germany called LaGuardia a "Dirty Talmud Jew," a "shameless Jew lout" and "a whoremonger." When the German ambassador protested LaGuardia’s remarks to Cordell Hull, the U.S. Secretary of State, Hull explained to the ambassador that, personally, he "very earnestly deprecate[d] the utterances which have thus given offense to the German government." Hull had to explain, however, that in America the mayor of New York was free to speak his mind. Hull complained privately to President Roosevelt that LaGuardia was poisoning German-American relations, but Roosevelt asked Hull, "What would you say if I should say that I agreed completely with LaGuardia?" Several months later, LaGuardia visited Roosevelt and recorded the following scene: “The president smiled as I entered his office. Then he extended his right arm and said, "Heil, Fiorello!" I snapped to attention, extended my right arm and replied, "Heil, Franklin!" And that’s all that was ever said about it”

 

In May of 1937, news broke of a scandal in six Brooklyn public high schools in which bootleg contraceptives were being sold to students. The German press immediately blamed "the Jew LaGuardia" for this episode of "hair-raising immorality." LaGuardia fired back he had no response to the charge: the only city official competent to deal with the German press allegations was the deputy sanitation commissioner in charge of sewage disposal!

 

In 1938, after the division of Czechoslovakia and Kristallnacht, LaGuardia stepped up his attacks on the Hitler regime. At a rally of 20,000 anti-Fascists in Madison Square Garden, LaGuardia proclaimed himself unable "adequately to describe the brutality of [Hitler] and his government" and called the Nazi regime a great threat to world peace. Historians David and Jackie Esposito have written, "In the face of large scale indifference to human rights violations abroad and growing isolationism at home . . . LaGuardia reasserted a Progressive’s faith in the rule of reason and the power of enlightened public opinion to face up to the Nazis and confront Hitler." When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, LaGuardia’s principled position was vindicated.

 

After the war, LaGuardia became the director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) from March 29, 1946 to January 1, 1947, where he joined in the efforts to feed the millions of displaced persons in the aftermath of World War II. In his role as director general, LaGuardia visited several DP camps in Europe.

 

It was recently discovered that among the millions of Jews who were detained at concentration camps during WWII, it is little known that Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, the sister of New York's illustrious Mayor Fiorello LaGaurdia, was among them.”