The Foreign Service Journal, September 2010

by the early 1930s he was personally known to essentially all leading Americans in public life and in the fi- nancial world. For example, in 1929, he accompanied John D. Rockefeller III, who had just graduated from col- lege, on a four-month, round-the- world tour during which the two met many political figures. Early Warnings Go Unheeded Until 1933, Zionism was but one of many topics on the FPA’s agenda. But shortly after Adolf Hitler became the German chancellor that year, Mc- Donald interviewed him in fluent German and warned him against pur- suing anti-Semitism. Hitler’s blunt response that the world would thank him for his actions convinced Mc- Donald that German Jews faced mor- tal danger. He immediately began publicly appealing for preventive action to curb Hitler, both by governments and private organizations. This paved the way for his appointment as the League of Nations’ first high com- missioner for refugees from Germany in 1933. As he himself knew full well, Mc- Donald faced considerable obstacles in his new position. Because the League hoped to bring Germany back into the organization, it denied him an office and secretarial support, let alone sustained funding. Un- daunted, McDonald established his headquarters in Lausanne, where he periodically regrouped and met with his board and staff as he traveled the world seeking places of refuge and fi- nancial support for threatened minori- ties. His main backing, of course, came from Jewish communities, among whom he became a very familiar face, especially in Western Europe, Latin America and the U.S. After two years of frustration, Mc- Donald stepped down from his posi- tion in December 1935. His letter of resignation, in which he candidly laid out his detailed analysis of the prob- lem and those responsible for it, did not really change anything. But it fur- ther solidified his image among Jews as their most admirable public advo- cate. Over the next few years, he held a variety of positions. For two years he was a member of the New York Times editorial board (an irony, given the harsh criticism that would later be lev- eled at that paper for having “buried” the story of the genocide against the Jews). Next he was president of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sci- ences (although, as the editors of his published papers have noted, admin- istration was not his strong suit). And during World War II, he was a regular radio commentator on a na- tional network and took up ad hoc public assignments as a member of various local and federal boards. (The $20,000 annual salary he would later receive as ambassador to Israel was about the same level of income he’d averaged throughout this earlier pe- riod.) Meanwhile, McDonald kept up his useful ties to the FPA as its “honorary chairman.” He also retained an im- portant public role and access to the highest levels of the U.S. government throughout the war years, as chairman of President Franklin Delano Roo- sevelt’s Advisory Committee on Polit- ical Refugees. The Palestine Question With the accession of Harry Tru- man to the presidency upon FDR’s death in April 1945 and the war’s end, McDonald intensified his quest for a federal position. But despite support from the Jewish community and other quarters, he was not chosen to head up the 1945 survey of Jewish displaced persons in Europe. That mission was instead performed by Earl Harrison, the American representative to the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees. McDonald was named as one of six U.S. members of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine that carried out its work fromDecem- ber 1945 through April 1946. A British initiative, the commission was established in response to President Truman’s endorsement of Harrison’s call for the immediate entrance into Palestine of 100,000 Jews languishing in camps in the British and American zones of Germany. Although the com- mission’s recommendations were never implemented, the Jewish-Amer- ican community greatly appreciated its efforts — and McDonald’s role. At a meeting with Pres. Truman in July 1946, McDonald bluntly criti- cized him for allowing the special State Department-led Cabinet com- mittee handling the issue to dilute his own policies in its follow-up consulta- tions with the British. Adamantly op- posed to unconditional immigration into Palestine, London backed the Morrison-Grady Plan for partition, even though the Anglo-American Commission had already rejected it back in January. McDonald told the president that the approach would cause an unacceptable “cantonization” of the Jewish communities in Palestine and allow the British to remain there indefinitely. Following that meeting, McDonald James Grover McDonald was neither a career diplomat nor an influential supporter of the party in power. 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 0