Office of the Historian

867N.01/12–244

President Roosevelt to Senator Robert F. Wagner 18

Washington, October 15, 1944.

Dear Bob: Knowing that you are to attend the forty-seventh annual convention of the Zionist Organization of America, I ask you to convey to the delegates assembled my cordial greetings.

Please express my satisfaction that, in accord with the traditional American policy and in keeping with the spirit of the “four freedoms,”18a the Democratic Party at its July convention this year included the following plank in its platform:

“We favor the opening of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization, and such a policy as to result in the establishment there of a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”

[Page 616]

Efforts will be made to find appropriate ways and means of effectuating this policy as soon as practicable. I know how long and ardently the Jewish people have worked and prayed for the establishment of Palestine as a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth. I am convinced that the American people give their support to this aim and if reelected I shall help to bring about its realization.

[Franklin D. Roosevelt]
  1. Reprinted from file copy of House Report No. 1997, 78th Cong., 2d sess., p. 3.↩
  2. The Four Freedoms were enunciated by President Roosevelt in the State of the Union Message, January 6, 1941, Congressional Record, vol. 87, pt. 1, p. 44.↩