Refugees

[ag]

I thought we may need a thread to parallel the one on the international discussion board. You know, they did not have forums blogging around the time of the Kristallnacht, so people were reduced to expressing themselves in private diaries. I think we should remedy this.

Let me start with the following gem:

"The station platform is filled with Jews leaving for America. They were a poor looking lot on the whole... I have never been anti-Jewish and I have  great respect and admiration for the Jews I know.  Some of them are among my best friends. But this group on the station platform gave me a strange feeling of pity and disgust. These people are bound to cause trouble if many of them go to America."

Diaries of Charles Lindbergh, November 19, 1938

[Gustaf]

Haha, well played.

Is this the first recorded instance of the "many of my best friends are X" defense?

[ag]

Haha, well played.

Is this the first recorded instance of the "many of my best friends are X" defense?

Not nearly. Ford had been doing the Trumpian "they love me" for a long time by then, but he did not invent it either.