Was America complicit, negligent or ill-informed? What did Americans know in the wake of antisemitism and what role did America play during the Holocaust?
During the 1940s, Jewish extermination was portrayed by the American government and viewed by the American public as a brutal effect of National Socialism, and the death of millions of Jews was considered as some of the unspeakable crimes committed by the Germans (Theodore, S. Hamerow 12). Some have also argued that the events of the Holocaust revealed America’s attitude towards the oppressed. Some critics of the American response to the Holocaust believe that America could have done more by accommodating refugees who were fleeing Europe. According to the historian Peter Hayes, “We all tend to think of this country and the Statue of Liberty [poem] ‘Give me your tired, your poor.’ … But in fact, exclusion of people and shutting them out has been as American as apple pie” (Jeanne Dorin McDowell). The refusal to open up the doors of America has been argued as one of the major causes of death for the European refugees fleeing Europe because these refugees were forced to return to Europe risking their safety and life. The American government’s foreign policy and the State Department cracking down on immigration at the time, led families like Anne Frank’s who sought refuge in America to be considered security risks and denied entry to the United States (Jeanne Dorin McDowell).
It is important to mention that while the American government was enforcing stringent immigration policies that prevented European refugees from entering the United States, American citizens were out on the streets protesting against Nazism as early as the 1930s before the extermination of Jews started in the 1940s.
TIMELINE OF AMERICAN RESPONSE TO THE HOLOCAUST
Americans signed petitions sent to the State Department protesting the treatment of Jews.
43% of Americans supported boycotting the 1936 Olympics.
72% of Americans refused to allow more Jewish refugees into America. In June 1938, A German liner, St. Louis carrying 937 Europeans was not allowed to dock in Miami with more than a quarter of the passengers later killed in the Holocaust. Anne Frank’s Family was one of such denied entry into America.
66% of Americans opposed Wagner-Rogers Bill that advocated expanding immigration to accommodate refugee children.
72% of Americans polled that Germany had spies in the United States, with 22% unsure.
Isolationists and America First Committee supporter Charles Lindbergh accused Jews of being “war agitators”.
American media reports of the mass murder of Jews. In November 1942, Americans learned about the Nazi plan to murder all the Jews of Europe.
Reports on the mass murder of Jews are blocked from reaching the United States.
76% of Americans in a poll stated that they believed that the Jews were being murdered in their numbers by Germans. The War Refugee Board was created and it provided aid to Jews and other World War victims.
As part of its World War II efforts, American rescue team invades Dachau concentration camp in Germany and rescues Jewish victims on April 29, 1945.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
America and the Holocaust. Facing History & Ourselves. 2021, https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/america-holocaust. Accessed 20 Oct. 2024
American Response to the Holocaust. 2018, https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/american-response-to-the-holocaust. Accessed 20 Oct. 2024
America and the Holocaust. A documentary History. Rafael Medoff. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln. 2022.
Hamerow, Theodore, S. “Why we Watched. Europe, America and the Holocaust”. W.W. Norton & Company. New York. 2008.
Jeanne Dorin McDowell. Why Was America So Reluctant to Take Action on the Holocaust? Smithsonian Magazine. September 16, 2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-was-america-so-reluctant-to-take-action-on-the-holocaust-180980779/. Accessed on 15 Oct. 2024.
Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein. The U.S and the Holocaust. Accessed on https://kenburns.com/films/the-u-s-and-the-holocaust/. Accessed on 15 Oct. 2024.
Lipstadt, Deborah E. America and the Holocaust. Modern Judaism. Review of Developments in Modern Jewish Studies. Oxford University Press. Vol. 10, No. 3, 1990, 283-296 https://www.jstor.org/stable/139628. Accessed on 15 Oct. 2024.
Lipstadt, Deborah. E. Beyond belief : The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945. Free Press, 1993.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington. “The United States and the Holocaust, 1942–45”. Holocaust Encyclopaedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2023, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-united-states-and-the-holocaust-1942-45. Accessed on 15 Oct. 2024.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington. “Americans and the Holocaust”. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust. Accessed on 15 Oct. 2024.