This refugee crisis created a dilemma for many nations, including the United States. How would they respond to the refugees’ plight? Would they welcome refugees or refuse them admission?

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In July 1938, delegates from 32 nations met in Evian, France, to discuss how to respond to the refugee crisis. Each representative expressed regret about the current troubles of refugees, but most said that they were unable to increase their country’s immigration quotas, citing the worldwide economic depression. The representatives spoke in general terms, not about people but about “numbers” and “quotas.”

In the end, only one country, the Dominican Republic, officially agreed to accept refugees from Europe. (Dictator Rafael Trujillo, influenced by the international eugenics movement, believed that Jews would improve the “racial qualities” of the Dominican population.) After the Evian conference, Hitler is said to have concluded, “Nobody wants these criminals.”

REFUGEES LOOKING FOR SAFETY

Political cartoon entitled “Will the Evian conference guide him to freedom?” in The New York Times, July 3, 1938

• Like most other countries, the United States did not welcome Jewish refugees from Europe.
• In 1939, 83% of Americans were opposed to the admission of refugees. In the midst of the Great Depression, many feared the burden that immigrants could place on the nation’s economy; refugees, who in most cases were prevented from bringing any money or assets with them, were an even greater cause for concern.
• As early as 1930, President Herbert Hoover reinterpreted immigration legislation barring those “likely to become a public charge” to include even those immigrants who were capable of working, reasoning that high unemployment would make it impossible for immigrants to find jobs.

THE US RESPONSE

On 13 May 1939, more than 900 Jews fled Germany aboard a luxury cruise liner, the SS St. Louis on their way to Cuba. But Cuba refused to accept the refugees. When they reached the Florida coast, they were refused by the United States. President Roosevelt ignored pleas for help from the ship’s passengers. With food and water running low, the captain decided to return to Europe. Over 250 of the passengers were killed by the Nazis. That’s 1/3 of those aboard the ship.

As the war continued, Jewish Americans urged the American government to help Jews in Europe. But Roosevelt worried massive immigration would intensify anti-Semitic feelings, and also feared Nazi agents would come to the US along with Jewish refugees.

Even though in 1942 the US government knew the Nazis were slaughtering Jews in a systematic way, it wasn’t until 1944 when Roosevelt took action. He issued an executive order creating the War Refugee Board. This agency arranged for Jewish refugees to stay at centers in Italy and North Africa, and in former army camps in the USA.

JEWISH AMERICANS

THE SS ST. LOUIS

• Over 500,000 Jewish Americans served in World War II
• Fought against fascism, but they also waged a more personal fight – to save their brethren in Europe. They made sacrifices like other Americans, but also suffered from knowing that millions of Jews were being imprisoned and murdered in Europe. They could do nothing to stop it.
• Jewish servicemen were also among the first to assist the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps liberated by American troops

JEWISH AMERICANS

WATCH TRAILER FOR PBS FILM (2 minutes)

described Jewish refugees’ predicament in this way:

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PHILOSOPHER HANNAH ARENDT

“[The refugees] were welcomed nowhere and could be assimilated nowhere. Once they had left their homeland they remained homeless, once they had left their state they remained stateless; once they had been deprived of their human rights they were rightless, the scum of the earth.”

CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHO IN THE US WANTED TO KEEP JEWISH REFUGEES OUT AND WHO WANTED TO LET THEM IN

• As a World War II U.S. Army combat photographer, Walter Rosenblum landed in Normandy on D-Day morning. There, he took one of the most famous images of D-Day (right).
• Rosenblum also took the first motion picture footage of the Dachau concentration camp.
• Rosenblum was one of the most decorated WWII photographers, receiving the Silver Star, Bronze Star, five battle stars, a Purple Heart and a Presidential Unit Citation. The Simon Weisenthal Center has honored him as a liberator of Dachau in WWII.

JEWISH AMERICANS

Photo of Lt. Walter Sidlowski kneels over the blanket covered body of an American soldier he had just helped rescue from the surf off Omaha Beach. Exhausted, Sidlowski appears motionless. His dripping wet uniform hugged by an inflated life belt, his face tortured and staring as though he is looking at someone but can’t find the words to speak.