Holocaust

The Event: Systematic attempt by Germanys Nazi regime to exterminate European

Jews`
Date: Late 1930s to mid-1940s
Location: German-occupied European countries
Significance: During World War II and the years leading up to it, European Jews were
the principal victims of German chancellor Adolf Hitlers genocidal policies. Many fled
eastern and western Europe, attempting to enter the United States.
Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis arriving in Belgium in June, 1939, after they were
turned away from Cuba. More than one-quarter of the refugees eventually died in the
Holocaust. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Between 1933, which saw the Nazis rise to power, and Germanys 1945 surrender that
ended World War II, more than 345,000 Jews emigrated from Germany and Austria.
Many of them initially fled to countries that were later occupied by Germany, and these
Jews subsequently left again or were murdered. Although about 85,000 Jewish
refugees reached the United States between March, 1938, and September, 1939, far
greater numbers were seeking refuge. However, when U.S. president Franklin D.
Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, the United States was preoccupied with the
challenges of the Great Depressionhigh unemployment and widespread social
disillusionmentwhich contributed to public resistance to any relaxation of immigration
quotas. Another factor in opposing specifically Jewish immigration was anti-Semitism.

Anti-Jewish sentiment was on the rise during the 1920s; it increased dramatically during
the early 1930s and reached its peak in America during the late 1930s and early
1940s.

Failed Attempts to Help the Jews

In 1939, the United States refused to admit more than 900 refugees who had sailed
from Hamburg, Germany, on the SS St. Louis. After being turned away from Cuba, the
ship appeared off the coast of Florida. After the United States denied it permission to
land, the St. Louis returned to Europe. Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and
Belgium each accepted some of the passengers as refugees. Of the ships 908
passengers, 254 are known to have died in the Holocaust. The event was widely
publicized.
News of the true extent of the Holocaust began to reach the United States only in 1941
the year in the United States entered World War II. Nevertheless, the U.S.
Department of State placed even stricter limits on immigration due to national security
concerns. The threat of enemy subversion during the war was a legitimate concern, but
the State Department exaggerated the problem and used it as a reason for cutting in
half the already small immigration quotas. In 1943, 400 Jewish rabbis marched on
Washington, D.C., to draw attention to what was happening to Holocaust victims. Only a
handful of politicians met with the marchers, but one of them, Senator William Warren
Barbour of New Jersey, proposed legislation that would have permitted 100,000
Holocaust refugees to enter the United States temporarily. Barbours bill failed to pass,
and another, similar bill, introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative
Samuel Dickstein of New York, also failed to pass.

In 1944, President Roosevelt, pressured by government officials and the American

Jewish community, took action. He established the War Refugee Board to facilitate the
rescue of refugees in imminent danger. The American Joint Distribution Committee and
the World Jewish Congress worked with the board to help rescue many thousands of
Jews in Hungary, Romania, and other European nations. However, government funding
for the board was so small that 91 percent of its work was funded by American Jewish
organizations. The board conducted a month-long campaign to persuade Roosevelt to
offer temporary shelter to large numbers of refugees, but it yielded only one result. In
the spring of that year, Roosevelt established Fort Ontario, New York, as a free port for
refugees. However, only a few thousand were allowed to enter, and these were people
from liberated countries who were under no immediate threat of deportation to Germany.
Roosevelts response to Holocaust immigration was strongly influenced by political
concerns. During an era of strong anti-immigration sentiment, any move to increase
immigration might well have cost him votes in elections.

Change in Immigration Policies

Harry S. Truman, Roosevelts successor as president of the United States from 1945 to
1953, favored an immigration policy that was liberal toward displaced persons, but
Congress failed to act on his proposals. On December 22, 1945, Truman issued an
executive order, called the Truman Directive, requiring that existing immigration quotas
be designated for displaced persons. Although total U.S. immigration figures did not
increase, many more displaced persons were admitted to the United States. Between
the end of 1945 and early 1947, about 22,950 displaced persons entered the United
States under the new Truman Directive. About 16,000 of these refugees were Jewish.

Before existing immigration quotas could be increased, congressional action was

necessary. Pressured intensely by lobbying on the part of the American Jewish
community, Congress passed legislation in 1948 to admit about 400,000 displaced
persons to the United States. Nearly 80,000 of those who arrived, or about 20 percent,
were Jewish. Other immigrants included Christians from eastern Europe and the Baltic
nations who had worked as forced laborers under the Nazi regime. American entry laws
favored agricultural workers to such a degree, however, that Truman found the new law
discriminatory to Jews, few of whom were agricultural workers. By the 1950s, Congress
amended the law, but by that time most of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe had
entered the new state of Israel, which was established on May 14, 1948.
Thanks in large part to the influx of Jews during and after the Holocaust, the United
States emerged as the largest and most culturally innovative Jewish center in the world
after World War II. Smaller centers of Jewish population worldwide soon turned to the
vigorous Jewish establishments in the United States for help and support. By the first
decade of the twenty-first century, Jews in the United States had risen to leadership
positions in government, the media, entertainment, popular culture, business, labor
relations, law, and the arts.
Sheila Golburgh Johnson