Tzemach Atlas has done a remarkable interview with historian Bryan Mark Rigg on Barry Gourary, o.h., and Chabad and the Holocaust:
[T]he Rebbe [Yosef Yitchok Schneersohn] of course wanted to escape Europe and had his movement employ every means, even approaching the Secretary of State, to get him out, but when he was here in the US, he did not approach those very same people to help rescue those who had to remain in Europe. However, he did approach those people in the government to rescue his library, which he did get out in 1941. Are books more important than people? Some of the books were secular like Dante's Inferno and books on Communism. This is a sad part of the history of the Rebbe. Also he started condemning people who were organizing amazing rescue efforts like rabbis Kotler and Kalmanowitz of the Vad-Haatzala.
Rigg asks if books are more important than people. As I have pointed out many times, as far as Chabad is concerned, the answer to that question is "yes".
When I spoke with Barry Gourary three months ago, I asked him about the
Holocaust and his grandfather and father's reaction to it. Barry
thought both did eveything possible to rescue Jews, although he had no
proof or information to back up that belief. He told me his father
backed Rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn's moshiach campaign – done in instead of rescue – because "my father was a chassid of my grandfather."
Barry was very precise in his answers: "Ido not know." "I do
not remember." "I do not think so." Or specific answers with specific details. His answers
seemed completely credible and were given freely.
Sadly, the fact that his belief that
the RAYATZ, etc. did everything they could to rescue Jews was nothing
more than a belief – he had no facts, no documents, not even any stories to
support it – says volumes about the failings of Lubavitch leadership
during WW2.