America and the Holocaust

Is This American History?  1919 Lodge sinks League of Nations –  American Isolationism ensues  1929 Immigration Quotas set  1933 Hitler rises to power in Germany

 March 27, Mass anti-Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden, New York.  September, Nazis enact the Nuremberg Laws.

 1936…America participates in the Olympics.  July 6, 1938…America and 31 other countries participate in the Evian Conference to deal with refugee crisis –  November 9-10, 1938…Kristallnacht. Night of Broken Glass.

Wagner Rogers Bill  Early Wagner Rogers Bill proposes American Kindertransport. Admitting 20,000 children above quota.  Gallup Poll: 77% of mothers opposed!

SS St. Louis  June, 1939: SS St. Louis refused entry into Cuba and US. – Forced to return, some 750 passengers perish in the Holocaust – israel.org/jsource/ Holocaust/stlouis.h tml israel.org/jsource/ Holocaust/stlouis.h tml

 June, New rules in the U.S. cut refugee immigration to about 25% of the relevant quotas.  October "New York Times" story reports on massacres of thousands of Jews in Galicia.  July 21, Twenty thousand people gather in New York's Madison Square Garden to protest the Nazi atrocities.

 August 8, Gerhart Riegner informs U.S. consulate in Geneva about a Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe.  December 8 -- Jewish leaders meet with President Roosevelt and hand him a 20- page summary of the Holocaust.

 April 19 th, 1943 – Bermuda Conference convened to deal with refugee crisis and possibility of rescue.  January 22, President Roosevelt establishes the War Refugee Board.  August -- Nine hundred eighty-two refugees, most of them Jewish, arrive at Fort Ontario in upstate New York.  August 14, War Department writes that bombing Auschwitz would divert air power from “decisive operations elsewhere.”

Beyond Belief by Deborah Lipstadt  War Atrocity Stories  American Press and the incredulity of American post war response  What does this say about the press today?