Harry Truman's Jewish Problem

PENNED: Child killer Susan Smith seeking pen pals.

JULY 11--A newly discovered diary of Harry S Truman indicates that the former president may have had a strongly negative opinion of Jews. In the diary, which includes 42 entries written in 1947, Truman recounts a conversation he had with Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury, who had phoned to discuss the fate of Jewish refugees. In criticizing the approach of Morgenthau, who was Jewish, Truman wrote in a July 21 passage, "The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog." The diary, found earlier this year by a researcher at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, was released yesterday by the National Archives. Although Truman supported recognition of Israel in 1948, he was known to use anti-Semitic language. In a letter written years before he entered the White House, Truman referred to New York City as "kike town." (3 pages)