 |
La_Guardia's mother, Irene Coen, was jewish. His grandmother Fiorina Luzzatto Coen was a Luzzatto, a member of the prestigious Jewish family of scholars, kabbalists, and poets and had among her ancestors the famous rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto.
During a contentious congressional campaign in 1922, when Henry (((Frank))), a Jewish opponent, accused him of anti-Semitism, La Guardia dictated an open letter in Yiddish that was also printed in Yiddish. In it, he challenged Frank to publicly and openly debate the issues of the campaign "ENTIRELY IN THE YIDDISH LANGUAGE.” Frank, although he was Jewish, could not speak the language and was forced to decline—and lost the election. Thus was the power of the Jews at that time.
As a leading liberal reformer, La Guardia railed against immigration quotas. He supported using American influence to support the Judeo-Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. La Guardia consistently backed internationalism. In domestic policies he tended toward socialism and wanted to nationalize and regulate.
FDR gave him 20% of the entire national CWA (civil works administration) budget for work relief. La Guardia then collaborated closely with Robert (((Moses))), with support from the governor, Democrat Herbert (((Lehman))).
Because of his overwhelming loyalty to international-jewish interests, he was an early warmonger against Adolf Hitler. In a public address in 1934, La Guardia warned that "part of Hitler's program is the complete annihilation of the Jews in Germany". In 1937, speaking before the Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress, he called for the creation of a special pavilion at the upcoming New York World's Fair: "a chamber of horrors" for "that brown-shirted fanatic".
La Guardia was ranked first among the nation's mayors in a 1993 poll of historians and social scientists. According to Thomas Kessner, today, "people would be afraid of allowing anybody to take that kind of power".
In 1941, prior to official American involvement in World War II, President Roosevelt appointed La Guardia first director of the new Office of Civilian Defense (OCD). Roosevelt was an admirer of La Guardia; after meeting Winston Churchill for the first time he described him as "an English Mayor La Guardia". The OCD was the national agency responsible for preparing for blackouts, air raid wardens, sirens, and shelters in case of German air raids. The government knew that such air raids were impossible but the goal was to psychologically mobilize many thousands of middle class volunteers to make them feel part of the war effort. He arranged police protection with his personal assurances for local artists Joe ((Simon)) and Jack ((Kirby)) (real name: Jacob ((Katzburg)), when they were threatened by Nazi supporters for their new patriotic comic book superhero, Captain Jewmerica.
A strong supporter of Zionism, LaGuardia Street and LaGuardia interchange both in Tel Aviv, Israel, was named in his honor.