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Advocates of the Doomed: the refugee crisis of the 1930s in light of American and international refugee policy

33rd Annual Yom HaShoah / Holocaust Remembrance Day exhibit

U.S Public Opinion

The Politics of Indifference: a documentary history of Holocaust Victims in America 

Authors Michael N Dobkowski, Print Book 1982, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. https://ric.on.worldcat.org/oclc/8587781, HV640.5.J4 P64 1982 

 

A collection of documents divided thematically and provided with short introductory notes, showing the indifference and lack of action on the part of the U.S. government concerning the admission of refugees from Nazi Germany and Nazi-controlled territories of Central Europe between 1933-45, as well as anti-immigrant (including anti-Jewish) sentiments in the U.S. at the time. Examines the U.S.'s lack of proper cooperation with the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees, the U.S. delegation at the Evian Conference, the Bermuda Conference, the U.S. State Department as a force that impeded the admission of refugees, and the activities of the War Refugee Board in 1944-45. 

The actions of the US government at this time reflected the public opinion of the American people at large as shown by numerous opinion polls taken between 1936 - 1945 showing that more than two-thirds of Americans did not want to admit refugees and that anti-Jewish sentiments were high.


 

Excerpt from the introduction of Refugees and Rescue, by James G. McDonald

Refugees and Rescue: the diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945

Author: James G McDonald (James Grover), 1886-1964. Richard, 2009. https://ric.on.worldcat.org/oclc/244628340, E 748 M1475 A3 2009

"In January 1931 James G. McDonald wrote in his diary: [Henry] Ford entertained me with some interpretation of world events. He said, "Do you know, Mr. McDonald, that the world war was caused simply by the desire of the Jews to get control of everything in Germany?" He said the situation was quite clear. The same way it is perfectly certain that the Bolshevik revolution was carried through by the Jews. "I have the documents to prove it. A Russian made a special investigation for me and gave me the documents, including photographs of people shot, bullets, etc. The evidence is overwhelming. I have it in my vault. The man who gave me the material, to whom I paid $10,000 for it, said, 'This has cost me much more than that, but I wanted to put in your hands.'

This quotation is but one example of widely held anti-semitic views of prominent, influential Americans - the tide against which McDonald battled to bring some policy-level relief to refugees as he served as the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Coming from Germany (1933 -1935), was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Evian refugee conference in July, 1938, and chaired the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees from 1938 to 1945.


 

Refuge and Reality: Feuchtwanger and the European Émigrés in California.

Authors Pol O'Dochartaigh Alexander Stephan, eBook2005, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. https://ric.on.worldcat.org/oclc/714567194  

This volume brings together papers by scholars from Germany, the USA, France, England and Ireland given at the first International Feuchtwanger Conference, held in Los Angeles in 2003. Some of Lion Feuchtwanger's novels from his exile in the United States are analyzed here, as are the lives of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger (two of the intellectuals smuggled out of France by Varian Fry) and their contacts in the German émigré world in California. In addition, two papers focus on aspects of Bertolt Brecht's and Alfred Döblin's lives as emigrants in California. This volume is of interest to students of exile studies, of German refuge in the USA and of modern Germany.