ABSTRACT
The ineffectiveness of American Jewry during the Holocaust represents something of a paradox for the historian. Like other Diaspora communities in the West, American Jewry has a good track record in nurturing beleaguered Jewish communities abroad. The historical development of American Jewry, especially the more recent process of secularization and acculturation in a free and open society, significantly altered its internal governing threshold so that the requisite coherence and will to play its advocacy role was diminished. By the 1940s American Jewry had virtually lost its corporate communal character and the new coherence based on voluntarism and managed by professionals had not yet taken its place. Yet historians will hardly need to mention that change because it made little difference in the larger picture. Even a more powerful American Jewry would not appreciably have changed the picture. The same process of modernization inured non-Jewish bureaucrats from sympathizing with the Jewish plight.
