Barely had the controversy over the S.S. Bremen faded from the headlines when another New Yorker was taking up the cudgels against Hitler. In 1935, a Nazi German construction firm won the bid to supply 500 tons of sheet steel to build the Triborough Bridge. When Mayor Fiorello La Guardia caught wind of the impending transaction, he was horrified. La Guardia, unlike Roosevelt, had repeatedly denounced Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, and he was not about to have the city do business as usual with the Nazi regime.
Technically, the Bridge Authority was an independent agency that did not require the mayor’s approval for its construction purchases, but the mayor found grounds to block the deal.
Although bedridden at Mount Sinai Hospital after a painful attack of sciatica, the feisty mayor dashed off a telegram to Bridge Authority chairman Nathan Burkan, declaring that he did not want that “damned steel” in his city.
“The only commodity we can import from Hiterland now is hatred,” La Guardia declared, “and we don’t want any in our country.”
As mayor, he insisted, he bore responsibility for New Yorkers’ safety, and he could not vouch for the reliability of Hitler’s steel. “I cannot be certain of its safety unless I first have every bit and piece of German made material tested before used,” he wrote. “Verstehen Sie [Do you understand]?”
Burkan got the message.
In the 2011-2012 school year, many New York City school children will be getting that message, too – when teachers begin showing “La Guardia’s War Against Hitler,” a new semi-animated “motion comic” co-created by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and Disney Educational Productions and illustrated by legendary comic book artist Neal Adams.
The La Guardia episode is part of an innovative educational series called “They Spoke Out,” which focuses on Americans who protested against the Holocaust. (Teachers can download the motion comics free of charge at www.TheySpokeOut.com.)
Next Week: Part 2 – FDR, Hitler, and the Crisis of German Jewry.
