In the Garden of Beasts

mistreatment of Jews was on the wane. He said as much in a letter to Rabbi Wise of the American Jewish Congress, whom he had met at the Century Club in New York and who had been a fellow passenger on his ship to Germany.
    Rabbi Wise was startled. In a July 28 reply from Geneva, he wrote, “How I wish I could share your optimism! I must, however, tell you that everything, every word from scores of refugees in London and Paris within the last two weeks leads me to feel that far from there having been, as you believe, an improvement, things are becoming graver and more oppressive for German Jews from day to day. I am certain that my impression would be borne out by the men whom you met at the little conference at the Century Club.” He was reminding Dodd of the meeting in New York that had been attended by Wise, Felix Warburg, and other Jewish leaders.
    Privately, in a letter to his daughter, Wise wrote thatDodd “is being lied to.”
    Dodd stood by his view. In a response to Wise’s letter, Dodd countered that “the many sources of information open to the office hereseem to me to indicate a desire to ease up on the Jewish problem. Of course, many incidents of very disagreeable character continue to be reported. These I think are the hangovers from the earlier agitation. While I am in no sense disposed to excuse or apologize for such conditions, I am quite convinced that the leading element in the Government inclines to a milder policy as soon as possible.”
    He added, “Of course you know our Government cannot intervene in such domestic matters. All one can do is to present the American point of view and stress the unhappy consequences of such a policy as has been pursued.” He told Wise he opposed open protest. “It is my judgment … that the greatest influence we can exercise on behalf of a more kindly and humane policy is to be applied unofficially and through private conversations with men who already begin to see the risks involved.”
    Wise was so concerned about Dodd’s apparent failure to grasp what was really occurring that he offered to come to Berlin and, as he told his own daughter, Justine, “tell him the truth which he would not otherwise hear.” At the time, Wise was traveling in Switzerland. From Zurich he “again begged Dodd by telephone to make possible my air flight to Berlin.”
    Dodd refused. Wise was too well known in Germany and too widely hated. His photograph had appeared in the
Völkischer Beobachter
and
Der Stürmer
too often. As Wise recounted in a memoir, Dodd feared “I might be recognized, particularly because of my unmistakable passport, and give rise to an ‘unpleasant incident’ at a landing place such as Nuremberg.” The ambassador was unswayed by Wise’s suggestion that an embassy official meet him at the airport and keep him in sight for the duration of his trip.
    While in Switzerland, Wise attended the World Jewish Conference in Geneva, where he introduced a resolution that called for a world boycott of German commerce. The resolution passed.
    WISE WOULD HAVE BEEN heartened to learn that Consul General Messersmith held a much darker view of events than Dodd. WhileMessersmith agreed that incidents of outright violence against Jews had fallen off sharply, he saw that these had been superseded by a form of persecution that was far more insidious and pervasive. In a dispatch to the State Department, he wrote, “Briefly it may be said that the situation of the Jews in every respect except that of personal safety, is constantly growing more difficult and that the restrictions in effect are becoming daily more effective in practice and that new restrictions are constantly appearing.”
    He cited several new developments. Jewish dentists were now barred from taking care of patients under Germany’s social insurance system, an echo of what had happened to Jewish doctors earlier in the year. A new “German fashion office” had just excluded Jewish dressmakers from participating in an upcoming fashion show. Jews and anyone who had even the appearance of a non-Aryan were forbidden to become policemen. And Jews, Messersmith reported, were now officially banned from the bathing beach at Wannsee.
    Even more systemic persecution was on the way, Messersmith wrote. He had learned that a draft existed of a new law that would effectively deprive Jews of their citizenship and all civil rights. Germany’s Jews, he wrote, “look upon this proposed law as the most serious moral