Morgenthau Report
1919 report by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Morgenthau Report?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The Morgenthau report, officially the Report of the Mission of the United States to Poland, was a report compiled by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., as member of the "Mission of the United States to Poland" which was appointed by the American Commission to Negotiate Peace formed by President Woodrow Wilson in the aftermath of World War I. The purpose of the mission was to investigate "alleged Polish pogroms" and the "treatment of the Jewish people" in Poland.[1] The mission consisted of three American members: former US ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Brigadier General Edgar Jadwin of Engineer Corps, and professor of law Homer H. Johnson from Cleveland; and from the British side Sir Stuart M. Samuel. They were selected to investigate accounts of mistreatment of Jews in the newly-reborn Second Polish Republic. The report by Morgenthau was published on October 3, 1919.
The final report "denied the authenticity of the pogroms" but it noted "isolated excesses" of antisemitic nature, in which approximately 300 Polish Jews died, which it attributed to the chaos of the post war situation. It also cleared the Polish government of any role or support for the incidents, although it did chastise it for insensitivity with regard to Jewish issues, and suggested "culpable negligence". Morgenthau also criticized both Zionism and Polish nationalism as well as "widespread antisemitic prejudice" created by contemporary social and political conflicts. The report stated that the condition of Jews in Poland was not satisfactory and could be improved but also noted that the situation had been widely exaggerated. Morgenthau called for improvement in Polish-Jewish relations which required good willed people to stand up against "extremists on both sides".[1]
Popularly regarded as the definitive statement of the commission, in effect, it was a minority opinion released one month ahead of the joint Jadwin-Johnson deposition. The Jadwin-Johnson deposition agreed with the Morgenthau report that no pogroms had occurred, but it downplayed the criticisms of Polish government found in the previous report. It also blamed "German propagandists" for spreading the image of Poles as "barbarous anti-semites".[1]