WASHINGTON, July 11: US President Harry Truman made an extraordinary attack on Jews in his personal diary just two years after the end of World War II, accusing them of being “selfish” and not caring about who gets mistreated.

According to details released by the Truman Presidential Museum and Library in Independence, Missouri, the president made the outburst after meeting Henry Morgenthau, a Jewish former treasury secretary.

“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 (displaced persons) as long as the Jews get special treatment,” Truman wrote on July 21, 1947 in his journal, excerpts of which were published on the Truman library’s website (Trumanlibrary.org/diary).

“Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither (Adolf) Hitler nor (Joseph) Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog,” he wrote.

According to the Washington Post, Morgenthau asked to speak with Truman about the European Jews who fled to British-controlled Palestine to escape Nazi genocide, only to be refused entry.

“He’d no business, whatever to call me. The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs,” Truman wrote. “Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed,” he added in the journal entry. —AFP