George Bancroft Quotes
the need for I never doubted Captain Levy's competence but there was a strong prejudice in the service against Captain Levy which seemed to me, in considerable part attributable to his being of the Jewish persuasion .... [but there was] the need for harmonious cooperation which is essential to the highest effectiveness.
Uriah Phillips Levy, 1792-1862, was the first Jewish naval captain of the United States Navy. He was acknowledged by the Secretary to be qualified for promotion to Commodore but there was much anti-Semitic opposition among the other senior officers. The Secretary justified his refusal to promote Levy because of. Levy was finally appointed Commodore.
George Bancroft, 1800-1891, Historian & U. S. Secretary of the Navy, Testimony, 1857
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Poland was one of the Nazi occupied nations which cooperated in the mass murder of Jews and facilitated the Holocaust. Even after the war, much of the Polish Catholic clergy maintained virulent anti-Semitic views and in 1946 Polish thugs with the encouragement of some priests engaged in a pogrom in Kielce of returning Polish Jewish refugees. Catholic Primate of Poland, Augustus Hlond, made numerous anti-Semitic statements further exacerbating the problem. Many cast blame on Pope Pius XII who was not very vocal during the Nazi era regarding the ill treatment and murder of Jews, Gypsies, and handicapped, giving a “green light” to the Polish Prelate and those lower anti-Semitic priests. Papal apologists note that Hitler could have turned on the Catholic Church; the Pope had to walk a fine line between condemning evil and risking the welfare of the Church. Nonetheless, many Catholic priests risked and some lost their lives speaking out against the Nazi evil and protecting Nazi targets.
This quotation was used by the Lyndon B. Johnson 1964 Campaign as: “We represent the majority of the people in Alabama who hate niggerism, Catholicism, Judaism, and all the isms of the whole world.” So said Robert Creel of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. He also said, “I like Barry Goldwater. He needs our help.” The second statement was made at a different time.
In his early years, Stalin was a strong opponent of Anti-Semitism ({627514}) but he felt he needed to make a pact with Nazi Germany—the Hitler-Stalin Pact. In meeting with Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbontrop, Stalin as a quid pro quo promised to get rid of “Jewish Domination” (which never existed but there were many Jews in positions) among officials and intellectuals. He then fired his Jewish Foreign Minister Litvonof and replaced him with Vyacheslav Molotov to whom he have this instruction. This was the first major official Anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union but it continued thereafter. See {636526} & {636527}.
The attitude of the non-Muslims at that time was based on the Muslim attacks in the Punjab on Sikhs where entire Sikh villages and neighborhoods in towns and cities were murdered—every man woman and child. In many cases women were first raped. The Muslims had been whipped up by the leaders of the Muslim League to put terrorist pressure on the Sikh, Hindu and British to meet the League's political and territorial demands for an Independent Pakistan. Soon there was retaliation in kind and there were many Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims engaged in internecine slaughter and behaving "little better than animals".
This was one of the most hateful of his public speeches. He was one of the American “heroes” in Nazi Germany, receiving assistance from the Nazi government. Between his anti-Semitism and support for Hitler, Fascism and radical socialism, the Vatican ordered him off the air and shut down his political demagoguery.
See Justice Richard Cox for a similar view.
George Bancroft was an American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national and international levels. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845. He was a senior American diplomat in Europe. Among his best-known writings is the magisterial series, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.
