United States Policy and Impact on European Victims of the Holocaust

Six days after Kristallnacht, Paul Cormack, staff cartoonist for the Christian Science Monitor, drew a cartoon titled “The Best Answer to Race Persecution.” It showed a large hand, labeled “Humanity,” handing a document titled “Assistance” to a crowd of Jewish refugees. Photo: Courtesy of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

FDR statement on Krystallnacht Nov 15, 1938 “I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization.”

Question 1: Admission of Immigrants Depression exacerbates anti-Semitism and xenophobia 1924 Immigration Law- difficult to obtain visas Latin America- after 1938 increasingly reluctant to accept immigrants (Exception- Bolivia, admits 30, ) 1940: US orders consuls to delay visa approvals After 1941 (“final solution”/ systemic murder) and US entry into War immigration virtually stops

Publication of Genocide 1942: State Department receives telegram revealing Nazi plan to murder all European Jews- does not pass it on to head of World Jewish Congress (intended recipient) When Weise does get cable, secretary Wells asks him to hold off on publication of contents (contents are eventually published, US condemns murder)* *Difference between knowledge of the planned final solution and knowledge of concentration camps and human rights violations

Rescue Winning war = priority of US Governments April 19, US Govt meets with Great Britain to find solutions to refugee problems, neither govt initiates rescue initiative Jan Kranski tells FDR of mass murder War Refugee Board Established, rescues 200,000 Jews and provides safe haven (too little too late)

US Media Did not always publish accounts of the atrocities in full, and consistently deemphasized murder of Jews in the coverage

Bombing Auschwitz The Situation During the spring and summer of 1944, the Germans and their Hungarian collaborators deported nearly 440,000 Jews-on more than 140 trains- from Hungary to the killing center Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland. From May-July 1944, the gas chambers of Birkenau worked beyond capacity; at least 10,000 people a day perished. In less than three months (May-July, 1944) the largest remaining Jewish community in Europe had been completely decimated. The United States government knew about the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the scope and scale of the Nazi assault on European Jewry. American-Jewish organizations and the newly formed U.S. War Refugee Board, which had been created to organize and coordinate rescue efforts, repeatedly asked the U.S. War Department to bomb Auschwitz.

Bombing Auschwitz Allies receive explicit information about mass murder by gas. Some Jewish leaders plead with US Govt to bomb the gas chambers and rail lines Anglo-American air forces developed capacity to hit targets in Silesia (location of camps), but were not bombed. Explanation of lack of bombing is technical and cites aircraft capacity, and that allies committed to bomb exclusively military targets to win ASAP

AUSCHWITZ ENVIRONS, SUMMER 1944 — US Holocaust Memorial Museum Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. It was a complex of camps, including a concentration, extermination, and forced- labor camp. It was located at the town of Oswiecim near the prewar German-Polish border in Eastern Upper Silesia, an area annexed to Germany in Auschwitz I was the main camp and the first camp established at Oswiecim. Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was the killing center at Auschwitz. Trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau almost daily with transports of Jews from virtually every German-occupied country of Europe. Auschwitz III, also called Buna or Monowitz, was established in Monowice to provide forced laborers for nearby factories, including the I.G. Farben works. At least 1.1 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included between 70,000 and 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, and about 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.

Picture of the Birkenau (Auschwitz II) extermination camp taken by an American surveillance plane on August 25, Crematoria II and III and the holes used to throw cyanide into the gas chambers are visible