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Roosevelt but was reluctant to raise matters of Jewish concern with the president. Born in Vienna and raised in New York City, Frankfurter gained renown as a member of the Harvard University law school faculty and as a social activist. Frankfurter was deeply ambivalent about his Jewish identity. He labored to distance himself from his Orthodox Jewish upbringing and to avoid any perception that his views were affected by his immigrant roots.

During the s, he seldom mentioned the Jewish refugee issue to President Roosevelt. Even when his uncle, Dr. During the s, Frankfurter was deluged with letters from European Jews seeking his assistance to immigrate to the United States.

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At this point, Frankfurter withdrew almost completely from any Jewish communal involvement, including from the American Zionist movement, with which he had been associated in the s at the behest of Justice Louis Brandeis. In July , the Polish ambassador in Washington arranged for Polish Underground courier Jan Karski to present Frankfurter with his first-person account of Nazi atrocities against Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and at a transit site en route to the Belzec death camp.

Karski , I am unable to believe you. Ambassador, I did not say this young man is lying.