Because of his role in allowing anti-Semitic legislation to remain in place following the Allied liberation of North Africa, and his near-hostility toward Israel as president during the Suez crisis, the 34th American president does not have a reputation as a great friend of the Jewish people. Yet, writes Benjamin Runkle, Eisenhower’s dealings with the survivors of the Holocaust in his role as commander of Allied forces in Europe are greatly to his credit.

On April 12, 1945, [about a month before the German surrender], Eisenhower visited the recently liberated Ohrdruf-Nord concentration camp near Gotha with Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton. . . . Eisenhower called the atrocities “beyond the American mind to comprehend,” and ordered every American unit not on the frontlines to see Ohrdruf. The next day he visited Buchenwald and sent a cable to George Marshall urging the Army chief of staff to come to Germany to see for himself. “I made the visit deliberately,” he told his boss, “in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

Eisenhower wrote to the governments in Washington and London urging that newspaper editors and representatives of all political parties be sent to Germany immediately so that evidence of Nazi atrocities could be placed before the British and American publics in a way that would leave no room for doubt. This began the process of documenting the Shoah that proved instrumental both to the prosecution of Nazi war crimes and to gaining international sympathy critical to the eventual support for the creation of the state of Israel.

Several months later, Eisenhower received a report composed by Earl Harrison on behalf of the U.S. State Department, documenting the miserable conditions of Jewish displaced persons. Runkle continues:

Once Eisenhower was made aware of Harrison’s findings, he acted quickly. He toured the DP camps, which Rabbi Judah Nadich, who worked at one such camp, said “proved to be the single greatest factor to date in boosting the morale of the displaced persons. They knew now that they were not forgotten people.” Eisenhower issued a series of directives aimed at improving their conditions. Subordinates were told to segregate Jewish refugees, requisition housing for them even if it meant displacing Germans, and to increase their daily rations to 2,500 calories, twice that of German civilians.

Eisenhower also reversed his initial position and requested that somebody be appointed to serve as a special adviser on affairs dealing with displaced Jews, and in October Judge Simon Rifkind was given the position. . . . Eisenhower subsequently promised Rifkind “anything you need in the way of personnel or transport, or in any other type of assistance.” Rabbi Nadich, who later served as an adviser to Eisenhower, recalled that Eisenhower’s treatment of the Jews was consistently “marked by understanding and sympathy.”

Eisenhower [also] allowed David Ben-Gurion and other representatives of the Jewish Agency to visit the camps and establish contact with the Jewish DPs that enabled a mass exodus from the camps once Israel gained its independence.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.