WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.680 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] All right. Welcome everyone! 00:00:04.680 --> 00:00:10.340 I'm gonna say a couple of words, give a little introduction, let you know kind of the logistics of how 00:00:10.340 --> 00:00:14.720 this event is gonna work, and then we'll go ahead and get started. 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:20.520 Thank you for your patience while we admitted you all from the waiting room. 00:00:20.520 --> 00:00:26.120 So, good afternoon and thank you to everyone who's joining us today for Read Out Loud: Escaping the Nazis. 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:31.440 My name is Anthony Wright de Hernandez and I'm the Community Collections Archivist in Special Collections 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:33.880 in University Archives at Virginia Tech. 00:00:34.260 --> 00:00:39.560 This event was originally planned as an in-person event related to the Americans and the Holocaust Traveling 00:00:39.560 --> 00:00:43.820 Exhibition for libraries from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and 00:00:43.820 --> 00:00:46.000 the American Library Association. 00:00:46.560 --> 00:00:53.680 Due to the ongoing situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are not able to invite you to the library 00:00:53.680 --> 00:00:55.500 to see the exhibit at this time. 00:00:55.500 --> 00:01:00.520 We hope to share the exhibit with our local community at a later date in the exhibit tour. 00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:02.620 You can check the current tour schedule at 00:01:02.620 --> 00:01:09.820 ala.org/tools/programming/usholocaustmuseum/tourschedule 00:01:09.820 --> 00:01:15.640 And I will put that in the chat so that you have access to that link. 00:01:15.640 --> 00:01:23.500 [Pause] 00:01:23.500 --> 00:01:25.440 Sorry. 00:01:25.440 --> 00:01:30.520 Please note that the schedule may change as the situation with COVID-19 continues to develop. 00:01:31.120 --> 00:01:35.620 Before we begin, I want to cover a couple of logistics about how the session will operate. 00:01:35.620 --> 00:01:42.540 Ana Corral, who's resident librarian with Virginia Tech University Libraries, and I will be reading passages from 00:01:42.540 --> 00:01:46.660 two books followed by remarks and a question-and-answer section. 00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:52.960 As attendees, you will not be able to share your screen, share video, unmute to speak, or 00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:56.280 send a chat message to the entire room. 00:01:56.280 --> 00:02:01.760 We do want your comments and questions and we ask that you please send those in private message 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:05.820 to one of us who are the co-hosts. 00:02:05.820 --> 00:02:12.840 We also have Bradley Nichols as a co-host and Jordan Kuneyl as a co-host. 00:02:12.840 --> 00:02:16.760 Any of us can receive and read those questions for you. 00:02:16.760 --> 00:02:23.960 Just send them via private message and then we'll read the question aloud and Bradley Nichols will respond. 00:02:23.960 --> 00:02:27.600 Bradley Nichols is a visiting assistant professor of History at Virginia Tech. 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:32.960 He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled "The Hunt for Lost Blood: Nazi Germanization Policy of 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:41.000 Occupied Europe," which explores how the wartime Third Reich sought to assimilate and naturalize millions 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:44.180 of foreign subjects on the basis of racial kinship. 00:02:44.180 --> 00:02:49.560 He's also conducting preliminary research for a second monograph that will focus on the mass murder of 00:02:49.560 --> 00:02:53.900 Soviet POWs in German captivity during the Second World War. 00:02:54.460 --> 00:02:59.720 So, Bradley, I will pass this off to you to do a little bit of introduction and then we'll get started. 00:03:00.380 --> 00:03:05.580 [Bradley Nichols] Sure. So I wanted to start by thanking both Anthony and Ana for inviting me 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:11.800 to participate in this event as well as thank all of you for attending. 00:03:11.800 --> 00:03:18.860 The topic that we're here to discuss is the flight of Jewish refugees from the Third Reich. 00:03:18.860 --> 00:03:27.880 This is a topic that has a variety of different facets that we could focus on, but I think it's useful for our purposes 00:03:27.880 --> 00:03:37.740 to narrow it down to three overarching issues and place this phenomena within the broader context of 00:03:37.740 --> 00:03:42.720 what the exhibition is all about: Americans in the Holocaust. 00:03:42.720 --> 00:03:50.160 So first issue, and these are three issues that I would consider to be sort of the most important to consider 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:51.980 regarding this topic. 00:03:51.980 --> 00:03:59.020 First, what did Americans know about the plight of European Jews at the time? 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:03.460 Second, how did Americans respond? 00:04:03.460 --> 00:04:15.200 And third, what were the experiences of Jewish refugees who became Americans as a result of Nazi persecution? 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:24.100 We could spend the whole session talking about any one of these subjects on its own, but I'll just limit my remarks 00:04:24.100 --> 00:04:33.420 to a brief overview of sort of basic facts and trends, again placing the phenomenon of Jewish flight in 00:04:33.420 --> 00:04:39.040 the broader context of American responses in an interaction with the Holocaust. 00:04:39.780 --> 00:04:48.500 To start with the answer to the question of what was known in America really depended on 00:04:48.500 --> 00:04:51.960 how much someone wanted to know. 00:04:52.860 --> 00:05:03.500 It's incredibly difficult to gauge the extent of public awareness at the individual level, in particular, so it really 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:10.280 depends on who we're talking about when we ask what was known about the Holocaust at the time. 00:05:10.280 --> 00:05:19.500 Certainly events like Kristallnacht the nationwide pogrom in Germany in November 1938. 00:05:19.500 --> 00:05:25.140 This was well covered in the press throughout the country. 00:05:25.140 --> 00:05:37.200 And, as early as 1940, you also have footage depicting the dreadful conditions in the Warsaw ghetto in Poland. 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:46.500 You had footage of this included in American newsreels, mass produced for the public consumption. 00:05:47.600 --> 00:05:54.940 Concrete information on the final solution itself, on the other hand, on the actual extermination of 00:05:54.940 --> 00:06:04.220 European Jews, this was less prominent, less well-known, and even when it was known it was often 00:06:04.220 --> 00:06:14.780 met with skepticism, in part due to the legacy of false atrocity propaganda during the first world war. 00:06:15.620 --> 00:06:24.380 But also, in large part, even when it's stemmed from reliable sources, skepticism disbelief was due to the fact 00:06:24.380 --> 00:06:32.860 that most people couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that the Germans actually intended to wipe out 00:06:32.860 --> 00:06:35.600 an entire group of people. 00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:39.240 People just couldn't comprehend that in the United States. 00:06:40.420 --> 00:06:46.900 It is worth noting, though, again in terms of discussing sources of information. 00:06:46.900 --> 00:06:54.000 The New York Times, for instance, among other newspapers ran semi-regular stories on 00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:01.120 the mass murder of Europe's Jews for mid-1942 or early 1942 onward. 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:02.720 [Pause] 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:09.980 The bottom line is that it would have been difficult for contemporary informed Americans, at least, 00:07:09.980 --> 00:07:13.860 to plead total ignorance about what was going on. 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:21.780 As for the matter of reactions to the Holocaust, here the evidence is more clear-cut regarding responses in the 00:07:21.780 --> 00:07:30.900 United States and and it does not make America look too favorable in retrospect. 00:07:31.800 --> 00:07:42.340 Both before and after the entry of the United States into the Second World War, Americans were by and large 00:07:42.340 --> 00:07:50.540 hostile to the idea of taking in foreign refugees regardless of who they were, 00:07:50.540 --> 00:07:56.060 regardless of where they came from, regardless of why they were seeking asylum. 00:07:56.620 --> 00:08:06.940 There was a broad and widespread nativist sentiment, which found its most tangible expression of course 00:08:06.940 --> 00:08:15.440 in the imposition and maintenance of some pretty restrictive immigration quotas. 00:08:15.440 --> 00:08:16.740 [Pause] 00:08:16.740 --> 00:08:24.340 Public opinion, in short, seriously hindered efforts to assist the Jews of Europe in their darkest hour. 00:08:24.340 --> 00:08:31.820 These were limited efforts anyways, but they were very much hampered by fears of public reaction. 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:40.560 This was true for the Roosevelt administration, this was true for members of Congress. 00:08:40.560 --> 00:08:51.140 For instance, there's a senator from New York, Senator Robert Wagner, who sponsored a bill in 1939 to allow 00:08:51.140 --> 00:08:59.900 20,000 German Jewish children into the United States and it's quite telling that this bill ultimately fell through. 00:08:59.900 --> 00:09:01.580 I mean it was never even voted on. 00:09:01.580 --> 00:09:03.380 [Pause] 00:09:03.380 --> 00:09:11.880 Now that's not to say that the public at large in America was completely apathetic to the Holocaust. 00:09:12.480 --> 00:09:22.300 By around the middle of 1943, thereabouts, there was a pretty substantial grassroots protest movement 00:09:22.300 --> 00:09:30.100 calling for some kind of American intervention to help European Jews specifically. 00:09:30.100 --> 00:09:31.520 [Pause] 00:09:31.520 --> 00:09:41.260 Even though many Jewish American leaders, like Rabbi Stephen Wise, were against this, they attempted to 00:09:41.260 --> 00:09:46.960 silence these activists for fear of an anti-semitic backlash in the United States. 00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:48.380 [Pause] 00:09:48.380 --> 00:09:55.000 In the end, though, I think it's fair to say that that more could have been done and we can discuss later 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.480 what could have been done specifically. 00:09:57.480 --> 00:09:59.920 I think it's fair to say that more could have been done. 00:09:59.920 --> 00:10:08.280 That the average American, at the very least, should have cared more despite everything else that was going 00:10:08.280 --> 00:10:14.220 on in the midst of a world war and that's important to keep in mind. 00:10:14.220 --> 00:10:17.980 People had other problems on their plate, everyone. 00:10:17.980 --> 00:10:19.540 [Pause] 00:10:19.540 --> 00:10:27.640 Popular attitudes towards immigration took towards the persecution of European Jews. 00:10:28.140 --> 00:10:32.420 These popular attitudes I was just discussing, they had a direct bearing on the third issue 00:10:32.420 --> 00:10:40.380 I mentioned at the outset, the experience of European Jews who did find refuge in the United States whether 00:10:40.380 --> 00:10:43.680 before, during, or after the Holocaust. 00:10:43.680 --> 00:10:45.380 [Pause] 00:10:45.380 --> 00:10:54.960 In many respects, these people actually faced most of the same obstacles to assimilation that other immigrant 00:10:54.960 --> 00:11:02.260 groups have encountered throughout American history: nativism, xenophobia, discrimination, and so forth. 00:11:02.260 --> 00:11:03.560 [Pause] 00:11:03.560 --> 00:11:13.360 Fitting in could be very much an internal struggle which, for many Jewish immigrants, produced a kind of 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:19.680 identity crisis about whether they were, who they were, essentially, were they still European? 00:11:19.680 --> 00:11:22.020 Were they Jewish? Were they Jewish Americans? 00:11:22.580 --> 00:11:30.600 This is especially the case for people who found it difficult to get used to the rhythms and rituals 00:11:30.600 --> 00:11:42.480 and customs of American life, but there are also external forces that complicated the assimilation process. 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:50.480 European Jews had the advantage of being white, which definitely helped at the time, and, to some extent, 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:54.880 lessened anti-immigrant sentiment directed towards them. 00:11:54.880 --> 00:11:56.560 [Pause] 00:11:56.560 --> 00:12:05.860 That being said, we should not underestimate the prevalence of anti-semitism in the United States 00:12:05.860 --> 00:12:08.080 during the 1930s and 1940s. 00:12:08.080 --> 00:12:08.880 [Pause] 00:12:08.880 --> 00:12:18.040 In other words, while Jewish refugees sometimes endured ostracism and discrimination and prejudice, 00:12:18.040 --> 00:12:19.660 both formal and informal. 00:12:20.260 --> 00:12:25.340 They experienced this simply because they were foreigners, simply because they were outsiders. 00:12:25.340 --> 00:12:29.980 In most cases, this was definitely due to the fact that they were Jewish, specifically. 00:12:29.980 --> 00:12:31.260 [Pause] 00:12:31.260 --> 00:12:38.560 The isolationist movement, for instance, in the late 1930s repeatedly claimed that the Jewish immigrants 00:12:38.560 --> 00:12:45.780 and American Jews themselves were agitating for the United States to join the war against Germany and 00:12:45.780 --> 00:12:50.100 that they therefore should not be, more of them should not be let in and those who were there 00:12:50.100 --> 00:12:53.120 should not be treated as equal citizens. 00:12:53.860 --> 00:13:04.460 Ironically, once America did enter the war, some of these same refugees were labeled "enemy aliens" 00:13:04.460 --> 00:13:10.020 and accused of working as spies on behalf of Germany. 00:13:10.020 --> 00:13:11.600 [Pause] 00:13:11.600 --> 00:13:19.620 Nevertheless, with all that being said, most Jews who fled to the United States to escape Nazi persecution did 00:13:19.620 --> 00:13:28.140 ultimately end up settling into their new lives, sometimes with the help of native-born Jews, with the help of 00:13:28.140 --> 00:13:35.900 co-religionists, sometimes due to the hospitality of their Gentile neighbors, or non-Jewish neighbors. 00:13:35.900 --> 00:13:37.220 [Pause] 00:13:37.220 --> 00:13:48.420 Many of them, however, always retained a sense of longing for their lands of origin, for their homelands, 00:13:48.420 --> 00:13:53.360 and many never felt truly and fully American. 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:55.120 Some did, others didn't. 00:13:55.120 --> 00:14:05.360 Some had nostalgia for Germany, others definitely did not, but the feeling of Americanists, of really 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:13.400 belonging to America, of feeling that you were American, that really only came in the next generation among 00:14:13.400 --> 00:14:17.620 their children, among the children of Jewish refugees. 00:14:17.620 --> 00:14:18.920 So I'll leave it at that. 00:14:18.920 --> 00:14:22.720 I hope this is overview has been informative to set the stage. 00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:28.280 I'm looking forward to hearing and answering your questions, and I'll turn it back over to Anthony and Ana 00:14:28.280 --> 00:14:29.940 for the reads. 00:14:29.940 --> 00:14:32.300 [Pause] 00:14:32.300 --> 00:14:34.040 [Ana Corral] Hi everyone, my name is Ana. 00:14:34.040 --> 00:14:39.420 I am the resident librarian and I'm gonna start off with a combination of passages from 00:14:39.420 --> 00:14:43.300 Gertie Frankel and Fritz Frankel. 00:14:43.300 --> 00:14:50.020 The passages come from Ruth Wolman's "Crossing Over: An Oral History of Refugees from Hitler's Reich." 00:14:50.020 --> 00:14:51.380 So, I'm going to go ahead and get started. 00:14:51.380 --> 00:14:54.620 They're actually a married couple so... 00:14:54.620 --> 00:14:55.760 [Pause] 00:14:55.760 --> 00:15:01.860 The passages from "Crossing Over," they're in a type of interview setting and so they usually start off with 00:15:01.860 --> 00:15:06.660 a question and then the person, the refugee, that they are interviewing responds. 00:15:06.660 --> 00:15:12.960 So, the passage starts like this: "Miriam, what was it like for you when you first came to this country?" 00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:18.440 And then, this is Gertie's response: "That is such a general question. I didn't have a choice. 00:15:18.440 --> 00:15:24.340 If I had come under different conditions, just to look around and see what it is like to decide if I would want 00:15:24.340 --> 00:15:27.220 to live here or not, I would have left. 00:15:27.220 --> 00:15:32.220 I couldn't relate to the way people behaved or interacted or to the values. 00:15:32.220 --> 00:15:33.720 I came first to Providence. 00:15:33.720 --> 00:15:40.200 I was very lucky because for the first months here, I was under the protection of people I liked and who liked me. 00:15:40.200 --> 00:15:43.440 People who tried very much to make me feel at home. 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:48.800 Bella knew about me more than anyone else by virtue of having lived with my family in Vienna. 00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:55.960 In the meantime, she had gotten married and her baby Jonas was four or five months old. 00:15:55.960 --> 00:16:02.640 So I came to Providence and lived in this very nice elaborate house: two stories, many rooms. 00:16:02.640 --> 00:16:09.080 After that very cozy experience in Providence, where I really didn't want to stay anymore, I moved to New York. 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:12.720 One reason was that Fritz finally came to the United States. 00:16:12.720 --> 00:16:16.040 I had come in the previous November 1939. 00:16:16.040 --> 00:16:19.840 He came in February and went to his relatives in Middletown, New York. 00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:21.020 [Pause] 00:16:21.020 --> 00:16:25.720 I wasn't going to go to Middletown, but New York City was much closer than Providence and 00:16:25.720 --> 00:16:27.980 Fritz could come into the city on weekends. 00:16:27.980 --> 00:16:29.380 [Pause] 00:16:29.380 --> 00:16:31.280 I tried to find a job. 00:16:31.280 --> 00:16:36.400 Well, that was 1940, the United States was still at the tail end of the depression. 00:16:36.400 --> 00:16:39.020 To find work was not easy for refugees. 00:16:39.020 --> 00:16:42.180 People were getting sick and tired of refugees. 00:16:42.180 --> 00:16:47.620 I was still under the illusion that I could find a job in the field that I had been trained, so I looked up addresses 00:16:47.620 --> 00:16:51.480 of physicians, I followed up ads, and I went to offices. 00:16:51.480 --> 00:16:53.340 They all wanted local experience. 00:16:53.340 --> 00:16:56.420 Of course I didn't have any. How the hell could I? 00:16:56.420 --> 00:17:02.620 One day I came and introduced myself to a physician. He had a Park Avenue practice. He was German. 00:17:02.620 --> 00:17:09.980 He had come in the early 30s before the Hitler thing started and had built up a very nice x-ray practice. 00:17:09.980 --> 00:17:12.620 He asked me questions and we had a very nice chat. 00:17:12.620 --> 00:17:13.760 [Pause] 00:17:13.760 --> 00:17:15.840 I had the feeling he liked me. 00:17:15.840 --> 00:17:20.460 He asked me questions like: 'how would I do this? How would I do that?' 00:17:20.460 --> 00:17:23.220 And I apparently answered to his satisfaction. 00:17:23.220 --> 00:17:26.380 Then he said 'how long have you been in this country?' 00:17:26.380 --> 00:17:28.540 And I said 'three months.' 00:17:28.540 --> 00:17:33.840 He responded 'three months? After three months you expect to get a job in your profession? 00:17:33.840 --> 00:17:37.900 We have been here three years and my wife is still washing dishes in a cafeteria 00:17:37.900 --> 00:17:40.180 with a diamond ring on her finger.' 00:17:40.180 --> 00:17:42.040 I didn't get the job. 00:17:42.040 --> 00:17:45.380 I began to work as a maid. I was a lousy maid. 00:17:45.380 --> 00:17:48.160 That anyone kept me was astonishing to me. 00:17:48.160 --> 00:17:50.800 I would have fired myself within a week. 00:17:50.800 --> 00:17:55.180 Mrs. Rothstein was a very stingy woman and paid me very little. 00:17:55.180 --> 00:18:00.580 She probably could have couldn't have gotten anybody more efficient for what she was willing to pay, 00:18:00.580 --> 00:18:02.320 so I retained the job. 00:18:02.320 --> 00:18:08.060 To work as a maid with my arrogance of coming from a very good family, of having a desirable background, 00:18:08.060 --> 00:18:13.800 of being intelligent and fairly well educated, and having a profession, so to speak, was a demeaning thing." 00:18:13.800 --> 00:18:16.560 [Pause] 00:18:16.560 --> 00:18:21.800 And then I'm gonna read Fritz's responses. Just a second. 00:18:21.800 --> 00:18:23.820 [Pause] 00:18:23.820 --> 00:18:26.860 So the question for Fritz is this. 00:18:26.860 --> 00:18:29.820 [Pause] 00:18:29.820 --> 00:18:35.260 It doesn't say who asked it, but this is the question: I'm curious what was it about you that made it possible 00:18:35.260 --> 00:18:38.960 for you to make so many adaptations to this new country and culture? 00:18:38.960 --> 00:18:44.380 What in your personality do you think made you able to make this very difficult transition? 00:18:44.380 --> 00:18:49.580 And then this is the beginning of Fritz's response: "Nature works that way. 00:18:49.580 --> 00:18:53.000 The culture here was so different that it is different still. 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:54.820 I'm not fully yet adapted. 00:18:54.820 --> 00:18:58.880 There are certain features, functions, details, that I fully adopted. 00:18:58.880 --> 00:19:05.640 What I don't adopt, I accept as a necessity but not as an ideal state of my being. This is very complicated." 00:19:05.640 --> 00:19:10.440 This is the second question asked of him: "If you were traveling in another country and there was a group 00:19:10.440 --> 00:19:16.540 of people all from different countries and someone said to you Mr. Frankel, what is you nationality? 00:19:16.540 --> 00:19:18.000 What would you say? 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:21.960 And then, Fritz: "I'd say I'm an American. I'm a Jew." 00:19:21.960 --> 00:19:22.800 [Pause] 00:19:22.800 --> 00:19:27.100 Another question: "Does it feel totally comfortable to say you're American?" 00:19:27.100 --> 00:19:31.880 Then Fritz: "I feel very comfortable, but it doesn't mean anything to me, basically. 00:19:31.880 --> 00:19:36.600 What does it matter that I'm an American or I'm in Austria? That I can yodel like an Austrian? 00:19:36.600 --> 00:19:37.760 To me it's irrelevant." 00:19:37.760 --> 00:19:38.860 [Pause] 00:19:38.860 --> 00:19:43.600 And then another question: "When you first got to the United States, how did you feel about the fact 00:19:43.600 --> 00:19:45.340 that you were an Austrian?" 00:19:45.340 --> 00:19:50.940 Fritz: "It didn't mean anything. I was born in Austria, period. It was an accident." 00:19:50.940 --> 00:19:54.220 Another question: "When people asked you where you came from?" 00:19:54.220 --> 00:19:58.300 "[Fritz] I said Vienna I had nothing to be ashamed of." 00:19:58.300 --> 00:20:00.860 Another question: "Did they realize you were Jewish?" 00:20:00.860 --> 00:20:05.000 "Probably. That was not a problem that ever entered my [Fritz's] life." 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:10.540 Another question: "But during those first few years, you were considered politically an enemy." 00:20:10.540 --> 00:20:17.240 "Right. I [Fritz] was an enemy alien and not permitted to be outside of the house after seven o'clock." 00:20:17.240 --> 00:20:20.024 Another last question: "What was that like?" 00:20:20.024 --> 00:20:22.320 "I [Fritz] could not go out, so what?" 00:20:22.320 --> 00:20:23.760 [Pause] 00:20:23.760 --> 00:20:27.800 And so that concludes the first two passages from Gertie and Fritz Frankel. 00:20:27.800 --> 00:20:33.300 [Pause] 00:20:33.300 --> 00:20:33.800 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] All right. 00:20:33.800 --> 00:20:41.920 I put in the chat some instructions, but if anyone has any questions about those passages that you'd like to ask 00:20:41.920 --> 00:20:48.220 please send them via direct message to either Ana or me and we will read them out. 00:20:48.220 --> 00:21:07.640 [Pause] 00:21:07.640 --> 00:21:11.400 So I have not received any questions about those passages yet. 00:21:11.400 --> 00:21:14.880 Ana what did you find interesting about those passages? 00:21:14.880 --> 00:21:18.500 I know you had some time to look at them and think. 00:21:18.500 --> 00:21:22.480 Did you have questions that you thought Brad might want to speak to? 00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:24.900 [Pause] 00:21:24.900 --> 00:21:28.700 [Ana Corral] I actually found it really interesting. They're a married couple. 00:21:28.700 --> 00:21:36.680 I think they were married prior to trying to come to the US and so it was really interesting the difference in 00:21:36.680 --> 00:21:41.080 their answers, especially when they were asked do you feel like you're an American? 00:21:41.080 --> 00:21:43.120 What does that mean to you? 00:21:43.120 --> 00:21:49.974 And so it was really interesting. Fritz was kind of like "What of it? I don't understand why you keep asking me 00:21:49.980 --> 00:21:51.100 the same question?" kind of thing. 00:21:51.100 --> 00:21:54.400 So it was interesting to compare that to his wife's response. 00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:56.980 [Pause] 00:21:56.980 --> 00:22:00.500 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] We did get a question in in the chat. 00:22:00.500 --> 00:22:03.100 [Pause] 00:22:03.100 --> 00:22:06.880 What made the assimilation process easier for Fritz than Gertie? 00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:11.820 If Gertie answered the same questions at the same time, would she respond in the same way? 00:22:11.820 --> 00:22:14.100 [Pause] 00:22:14.100 --> 00:22:18.920 [Bradley Nichols] So I think a part of this has to with occupation. 00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:23.260 You notice that Gertie mentioned that she was working as a domestic servant. 00:22:23.260 --> 00:22:29.760 In many cases, depending on what kind of work you could get and how your colleagues, 00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:32.720 your co-workers were, how they treated you. 00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:34.080 [Pause] 00:22:34.080 --> 00:22:42.880 The work experience, in general, could go a long way to making it much easier to feel at home. 00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:45.360 [Pause] 00:22:45.360 --> 00:22:58.100 I don't know that these two individuals, in particular, like if one felt assimilation was easier than the other. 00:22:58.100 --> 00:23:09.080 My reading of the testimony of the responses the interviews is to some extent that these issues, 00:23:09.080 --> 00:23:12.960 people don't want to talk about them, really. 00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:20.040 You'll notice that that Gertie is sort of more forthcoming about her experiences than her husband is 00:23:20.040 --> 00:23:28.500 and I think that's worth bearing in mind too as a reflection of why this and how this trying to fit in 00:23:28.500 --> 00:23:34.420 and in a totally new environment was difficult and painful. 00:23:34.420 --> 00:23:40.320 We're all familiar here, I think, with this idea of America as a melting pot for immigrants, but I think we're also 00:23:40.320 --> 00:23:48.520 all familiar with the difficulties that immigrants have faced in this country throughout its history. 00:23:48.520 --> 00:23:52.100 And this was, again, Jewish refugees were no exception to that. 00:23:52.100 --> 00:23:56.140 They fit within these broader patterns. 00:23:56.140 --> 00:24:00.020 Is that? I hope that answers the question adequately. 00:24:00.020 --> 00:24:13.400 [Pause] 00:24:13.400 --> 00:24:14.720 Were there any other questions Anthony? 00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:16.700 [Pause] 00:24:16.700 --> 00:24:21.180 [Ana Corral] Anthony stepped away for a second, but I don't see any other questions. 00:24:21.180 --> 00:24:28.420 [Pause] 00:24:28.420 --> 00:24:37.100 [Bradley Nichols] Just that it was a lot easier for younger people and children, in particular, to fit in and 00:24:37.100 --> 00:24:44.860 feel American and get along than it was for people who are older like this couple, for obvious reasons. 00:24:44.860 --> 00:24:51.260 Right? Like once you're set in your ways, once you're an adult, it's a lot harder to move into 00:24:51.260 --> 00:24:54.940 a totally new surrounding and try to adapt. 00:24:54.940 --> 00:25:05.580 And, again, you'll notice that this is true in a lot of the responses in "Crossing Over," which is that 00:25:05.580 --> 00:25:12.880 people sort of cherry-pick what aspects of American life they like and want to be a part of and want to adopt 00:25:12.880 --> 00:25:15.440 and others they just maybe accept. 00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:21.500 I think the words were as a matter of necessity in Fritz's case. 00:25:21.500 --> 00:25:32.820 So the age of a refugee, the age of an immigrant, their professional skills, these sorts of things mattered in 00:25:32.820 --> 00:25:41.120 how easy or difficult it was for them to to feel integrated to feel welcome in the United States. 00:25:41.120 --> 00:25:43.580 [Pause] 00:25:43.580 --> 00:25:46.700 [Ana Corral] Actually we do have a question. 00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:50.380 Is there a time when this discrimination ended? 00:25:50.380 --> 00:25:54.800 Did this persist until the end of the war, after the war, or at another time? 00:25:54.800 --> 00:26:01.480 If so, was there any anti-semitic discrimination as in like they did to African-Americans? 00:26:01.480 --> 00:26:09.580 [Bradley Nichols] In terms of anti-semitism in America continuing after World War II, most definitely. 00:26:09.580 --> 00:26:19.940 It's certainly not as pronounced and it's not publicly acceptable anymore in the way that it was, 00:26:19.940 --> 00:26:23.940 in large part because of the Holocaust itself. 00:26:23.940 --> 00:26:33.640 Once it became indisputable and pretty much all Americans were aware of the atrocities committed 00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:45.300 by the Nazis, of the scope and extent of the final solution, then anti-semitism became more of a taboo 00:26:45.300 --> 00:26:50.920 just because people realized the consequences of it in most cases, yet not all cases. 00:26:50.920 --> 00:26:52.120 [Pause] 00:26:52.120 --> 00:27:01.620 The real important moment here is when American troops, in many cases, stumble across 00:27:01.620 --> 00:27:07.080 concentration camps in Germany during liberation in 1945. 00:27:07.080 --> 00:27:08.400 [Pause] 00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:17.000 And this is coupled with information from the Soviets from the Red Army, from the Russians, about the actual 00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:20.060 death camps that they came across too. 00:27:20.860 --> 00:27:32.080 That event, or this sort of cluster events, followed by post-war war crimes trials, the Nuremberg trials, 00:27:32.080 --> 00:27:40.060 the awareness of the Holocaust that happens at that particular moment time makes anti-semitism 00:27:40.060 --> 00:27:42.780 in the United States much less acceptable. 00:27:43.620 --> 00:27:48.160 Nevertheless, a lot of this awareness is kind of suppressed for a while. 00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:53.800 Again, in large part because Jewish survivors in the United States didn't really want to talk about it either. 00:27:53.800 --> 00:27:59.520 They didn't really want to revisit this incredibly painful and horrendous chapter in their lives. 00:27:59.520 --> 00:28:08.140 It's really only later, a couple decades later, that public awareness of the Holocaust starts to become what it is 00:28:08.140 --> 00:28:10.140 today in the United States. 00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:14.480 But the basic answer the question is no, anti-semitism doesn't go away. 00:28:14.480 --> 00:28:17.960 It just kind of goes underground after World War II. 00:28:17.960 --> 00:28:24.340 It's still prevalent amongst, for instance, like the Ku Klux Klan, who hated African-Americans. 00:28:24.340 --> 00:28:34.160 They hated Jews, they hated anyone who was a non-white anglo-saxon Protestant Christian. 00:28:34.160 --> 00:28:37.440 This is all of a piece with that kind of prejudice, definitely. 00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:45.220 The correlation between racism towards African-Americans and anti-semitism in the United States 00:28:45.220 --> 00:28:50.620 is very close and they almost always go together, not always but almost always. 00:28:50.620 --> 00:29:02.280 [Pause] 00:29:02.280 --> 00:29:03.880 Were there other questions? 00:29:03.880 --> 00:29:08.920 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] I think that might be the last of the questions about that passage, 00:29:08.920 --> 00:29:13.040 so I will go ahead and read our next passage. 00:29:13.040 --> 00:29:18.720 The next passage is coming from "The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught In Between" 00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:20.460 by Michael Dobbs. 00:29:20.460 --> 00:29:24.240 This comes from Chapter 3 titled: "FDR." 00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:25.940 [Pause] 00:29:25.940 --> 00:29:31.620 Roosevelt had made no effort to change American immigration practices after succeeding Herbert Hoover 00:29:31.620 --> 00:29:35.460 as president of the United States in 1933. 00:29:35.460 --> 00:29:41.960 His predecessor had taken steps to further slash immigration following the onset of the Great Depression. 00:29:41.960 --> 00:29:48.100 In September 1930, less than a year after the stock market crash, Hoover ordered the State Department 00:29:48.100 --> 00:29:54.140 to ensure that immigrants would not compete for jobs with Americans or become a financial burden 00:29:54.140 --> 00:29:56.060 on the government. 00:29:56.060 --> 00:30:02.920 Prior to 1930, The Likely to Become a Public Charge Clause had been used mainly to exclude the 00:30:02.920 --> 00:30:05.720 chronically sick and mentally unstable. 00:30:05.720 --> 00:30:11.320 The clause was now interpreted to apply to all those unable to support themselves as soon as they 00:30:11.320 --> 00:30:13.340 stepped off the boat. 00:30:13.340 --> 00:30:20.160 In the fiscal year ending June 1931, for the first time in American history, more people left 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:22.440 the United States than arrived. 00:30:22.440 --> 00:30:32.100 The number of German immigrants admitted to the United States declined precipitously from 27,119 in 1930 00:30:32.100 --> 00:30:39.880 to 10,100 in 1931, to 2,086 in 1932. 00:30:39.880 --> 00:30:46.100 Preoccupied with the domestic unemployment crisis, FDR did little to address the immigration question 00:30:46.100 --> 00:30:48.660 until the beginning of his second term. 00:30:48.660 --> 00:30:56.020 In January 1937, two months after he was swept back to the White House, the State Department quietly relaxed 00:30:56.020 --> 00:30:58.060 the public charge provision. 00:30:58.060 --> 00:31:04.200 Rather than reject anyone who might possibly become a public charge, consuls were now told to reject only 00:31:04.200 --> 00:31:09.020 those applicants who would probably constitute a long term burden. 00:31:09.020 --> 00:31:14.540 Visa applicants were no longer required to produce financial guarantees from immediate family members 00:31:14.540 --> 00:31:16.760 already living in the United States. 00:31:16.760 --> 00:31:22.080 Non-binding affidavits of support from more distant relatives were deemed satisfactory 00:31:22.080 --> 00:31:23.960 under the new regulations. 00:31:23.960 --> 00:31:30.320 Such tweaks in the interpretation of the immigration law led to an immediate increase in the granting of visas 00:31:30.320 --> 00:31:32.640 during Roosevelt's second term. 00:31:32.640 --> 00:31:40.040 The granting of immigrant visas to Jewish applicants tripled between 1936 and 1938. 00:31:40.040 --> 00:31:46.200 It was not until the middle of 1938, however, that consuls began using all the slots in the 00:31:46.200 --> 00:31:48.720 German and Austrian quotas. 00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:54.760 Admissions to the United States rose sharply, but failed to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand 00:31:54.760 --> 00:31:56.700 for German quota visas. 00:31:56.700 --> 00:32:04.540 The tumultuous events of 1938, beginning with the annexation of Austria and ending with Crystal Nacht, 00:32:04.540 --> 00:32:08.160 created a refugee crisis of entirely new dimensions. 00:32:08.160 --> 00:32:14.580 While a president enjoyed some latitude and interpreting the immigration laws, he could not waive 00:32:14.580 --> 00:32:16.660 the quota limits unilaterally 00:32:16.660 --> 00:32:21.700 Admitting 20,000 refugee children into the country outside the quota system 00:32:21.700 --> 00:32:24.100 would require an act of Congress. 00:32:24.100 --> 00:32:30.000 FDR had to carefully consider how much political capital he was prepared to invest in the passage of 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.520 new immigration legislation at the expense of other priorities. 00:32:34.520 --> 00:32:40.660 [Pause] 00:32:40.660 --> 00:32:49.460 So, if you have questions about this passage or want to hear Bradley's thoughts on this passage, 00:32:49.460 --> 00:32:53.080 please send your questions via chat to me or Ana. 00:32:53.080 --> 00:33:15.780 [Pause] 00:33:15.780 --> 00:33:22.780 [Bradley Nichols] You know if there's no questions I'll just comment on the fact that it's important to keep in mind 00:33:22.780 --> 00:33:30.440 that there were efforts within the Roosevelt administration, as well as among diplomats and 00:33:30.440 --> 00:33:34.340 aid workers abroad on the ground in Europe. 00:33:34.340 --> 00:33:42.080 There were efforts, as I sort of hinted at my overview, to help get Jews out of Europe. 00:33:42.080 --> 00:33:43.920 Again, particularly children. 00:33:44.800 --> 00:33:56.880 And Roosevelt, as you heard in the passage, he wanted to do more, but doing anything substantial 00:33:56.880 --> 00:34:02.200 really would have required public attention, would have required an act of Congress in many cases, 00:34:02.200 --> 00:34:06.820 because of these restrictive immigration quotas that were in place. 00:34:06.820 --> 00:34:15.240 So any rescue efforts were conducted kind of piecemeal throughout the Second World War. 00:34:15.240 --> 00:34:17.820 [Pause] 00:34:17.820 --> 00:34:25.200 But there were efforts within the administration, particularly Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, 00:34:25.200 --> 00:34:27.260 Henry Morgenthau Jr. 00:34:27.260 --> 00:34:34.860 He was particularly concerned with staying abreast of efforts, and getting involved in efforts, and 00:34:34.860 --> 00:34:43.000 trying to support efforts to help European Jews before the war of German and Austrian Jews and Czech Jews. 00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:45.740 He was one of these figures who was very invested in this. 00:34:45.740 --> 00:34:55.360 Morgenthau was himself a Jew and his father had actually been the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire 00:34:55.360 --> 00:35:00.260 during World War I during the Armenian Genocide. 00:35:00.260 --> 00:35:08.520 So Henry Morgenthau Sr. passed on to Henry Morgenthau Jr. knowledge of what this kind of prejudice 00:35:08.520 --> 00:35:15.700 could lead to and Morgenthau was among the more prominent officials within the Roosevelt administration 00:35:15.700 --> 00:35:17.380 that were trying to help. 00:35:17.380 --> 00:35:19.480 [Pause] 00:35:19.480 --> 00:35:26.220 That being said, on the flip side, there were many officials, particularly within the State Department, 00:35:26.220 --> 00:35:28.720 who did not want to help Jews at all. 00:35:28.720 --> 00:35:32.300 In part, because they were anti-semites. 00:35:32.300 --> 00:35:40.580 There's one figure by the name of Breckinridge Long, who was an Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs 00:35:40.580 --> 00:35:47.700 who was sort of in charge of trying to get Jews out of Europe and this is like putting the worst possible person 00:35:47.700 --> 00:35:48.980 in charge of this initiative. 00:35:48.980 --> 00:35:50.540 He didn't want to help at all. 00:35:50.540 --> 00:35:58.240 He basically torpedoed all kinds of different rescue operations at various State Department officials and 00:35:58.240 --> 00:36:02.660 diplomats suggested or were engaged in trying to pull off. 00:36:02.660 --> 00:36:14.620 Again, in part, because he was afraid of these "enemy aliens," foreign spies, fifth columnists. 00:36:14.620 --> 00:36:20.220 They were often called a fifth column, being sort of an enemy behind the lines. 00:36:20.220 --> 00:36:28.480 There was a fear that if Jewish refugees themselves weren't agents of the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, 00:36:28.480 --> 00:36:35.840 that spies would would hide and find their way into the United States by sort of mixing in with these refugees. 00:36:35.840 --> 00:36:43.860 But again, Long was a pretty obvious anti-semite too, so it's a mixed bag when we look at sort of the 00:36:43.860 --> 00:36:47.500 federal government's response to this and efforts to help. 00:36:47.500 --> 00:36:49.740 [Pause] 00:36:49.740 --> 00:36:51.480 [Ana Corral] So, I have a question. 00:36:51.480 --> 00:36:53.240 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] I've got a couple too but you go first. 00:36:53.240 --> 00:36:58.260 [Ana Corral] Okay. It seems to me that this rhetoric about immigrants being burdens to the economy 00:36:58.260 --> 00:37:00.920 is a repeating theme throughout our history. 00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:03.300 I just wrote a paper on it and analyzing it. 00:37:03.300 --> 00:37:07.420 Did other countries also have this quota, like Canada or Great Britain? 00:37:07.420 --> 00:37:10.800 [Pause] 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:17.120 [Bradley Nichols] Great Britain did, although there's were not nearly as restrictive. 00:37:17.120 --> 00:37:17.960 They had immigration quotas. 00:37:17.960 --> 00:37:24.980 I mean, most Western countries had immigration quotas of one kind or another after World War I in that period 00:37:24.980 --> 00:37:33.380 because it was a huge refugee crisis after World War I and many of the refugees were Jews fleeing persecution 00:37:33.380 --> 00:37:41.280 in Eastern Europe in what had been the Russian Empire, which became the Soviet Union as well as in these 00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:49.420 smaller so-called successor states that emerged after World War I sort of carved out of the 00:37:49.420 --> 00:37:51.660 old Austrian Empire. 00:37:51.660 --> 00:37:53.900 [Pause] 00:37:53.900 --> 00:38:03.380 In Britain it's not as restrictive, but you still see the same kind of anti-immigrant sentiment 00:38:03.380 --> 00:38:06.520 enhanced by anti-semitism. 00:38:06.520 --> 00:38:08.520 [Pause] 00:38:08.520 --> 00:38:10.440 There is an equivalent. 00:38:10.440 --> 00:38:16.540 So in America they had the German American Bund, which is like basically the American Nazi movement. 00:38:16.540 --> 00:38:19.300 In Britain they had the same kind of thing. 00:38:19.300 --> 00:38:24.700 They had a fascist party there that was pro-Hitler, that was pro-Nazi, that was anti-semitic. 00:38:24.700 --> 00:38:31.720 And both in Britain and the United States, the fear was not that these political movements were, like, 00:38:31.720 --> 00:38:37.240 substantial enough to tip an election or anything like that, but that you didn't want to play into their hands 00:38:37.240 --> 00:38:41.680 by looking overly sympathetic to Jews. 00:38:41.680 --> 00:38:47.740 This is what was meant by sort of political capital in Roosevelt's case and he might not necessarily want to 00:38:47.740 --> 00:38:54.460 spend this when he could use it for other "priorities." 00:38:54.460 --> 00:38:58.840 Canada, I don't know as much about. 00:38:58.840 --> 00:39:06.040 A lot of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors after the war would certainly go to Canada. 00:39:06.040 --> 00:39:13.580 I'm not entirely sure, though, what their immigration system was like in the late 1930s and 1940s. 00:39:13.580 --> 00:39:14.300 [Pause] 00:39:14.300 --> 00:39:22.400 I can sort of infer, though, that it wasn't much better than America because we have numerous instances of 00:39:22.400 --> 00:39:30.360 all kinds of different German Jews who were trying to flee somewhere, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. 00:39:31.540 --> 00:39:35.880 The voyage of the ship St. Louis is the most famous example of this. 00:39:35.880 --> 00:39:41.560 This ship full of German Jewish refugees sort of went all around the Caribbean after crossing the Atlantic and 00:39:41.560 --> 00:39:44.840 went to Havana first in Cuba and no one would take them in. 00:39:44.840 --> 00:39:48.860 The United States would not take them in, I think Canada falls in that as well. 00:39:48.860 --> 00:39:58.700 As far as other Western countries, at least before 1940, France already had a huge number of Jewish refugees 00:39:58.700 --> 00:40:06.300 from Eastern Europe and they were very disinclined, shall we say, to take in many from 00:40:06.300 --> 00:40:09.400 Nazi Germany, at least permanently. 00:40:09.400 --> 00:40:17.600 They allow them to remain as stateless persons, second-class citizens, but they did not want to 00:40:17.600 --> 00:40:21.200 make them actual Frenchmen or French women. 00:40:21.200 --> 00:40:24.340 [Pause] 00:40:24.340 --> 00:40:27.360 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] All right. I have two questions waiting in the chat. 00:40:27.360 --> 00:40:29.520 So, here's the first one. 00:40:29.520 --> 00:40:35.420 At what point, if any, did moral considerations supersede economic considerations when deciding 00:40:35.420 --> 00:40:38.140 how many immigrants to allow into America. 00:40:38.140 --> 00:40:41.060 [Pause] 00:40:41.060 --> 00:40:48.040 [Bradley Nichols] I don't know that it's ever the case that moral considerations superseded economic ones. 00:40:48.040 --> 00:40:57.380 Just, it's more, kind of, they're sort of mixed together and accounted for and balanced against one another. 00:40:57.380 --> 00:41:01.560 In some cases, we know that visas are accepted and granted, I should say. 00:41:01.560 --> 00:41:07.740 Exit visas from Germany, in the equivalent of green cards or nationality papers in the United States. 00:41:07.740 --> 00:41:09.660 These are granted for purely moral reasons. 00:41:09.660 --> 00:41:15.020 I mean, purely for asylum because these people are fleeing persecution. 00:41:15.020 --> 00:41:16.100 [Pause] 00:41:16.100 --> 00:41:22.300 At the individual level, it's almost always moral considerations. 00:41:22.300 --> 00:41:29.120 This was true of American diplomatic officials working in embassies in places like Germany, places like Austria. 00:41:29.120 --> 00:41:30.860 [Pause] 00:41:30.860 --> 00:41:37.380 But at the top level, they're at the higher echelons of government. 00:41:37.380 --> 00:41:42.960 There, it's more of these both economic and political considerations and calculations 00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:45.180 which are intertwined, right? 00:41:45.180 --> 00:41:53.340 I mean you don't want to bring in too many immigrants who are gonna take jobs from Americans who are still 00:41:53.340 --> 00:42:01.960 suffering from the Great Depression because that will then have political consequences for you at the polls. 00:42:01.960 --> 00:42:07.180 So these things are all tied together, but I think they're, sort of, if there's a distinction to be drawn, 00:42:07.180 --> 00:42:13.060 it's between moral considerations among individual officials. 00:42:13.060 --> 00:42:15.380 [Pause] 00:42:15.380 --> 00:42:20.980 State Department officials, diplomats, foreign aid workers, as I mentioned before. 00:42:20.980 --> 00:42:27.240 There's a distinction to be made between their, sort of, moral considerations and the more economic and 00:42:27.240 --> 00:42:32.400 political calculations of those in high office, including Roosevelt 00:42:32.400 --> 00:42:35.520 [Pause] 00:42:35.520 --> 00:42:36.360 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Okay. 00:42:36.360 --> 00:42:41.820 It was mentioned earlier that there was some popular support for Jewish immigration to America. 00:42:41.820 --> 00:42:48.280 Were there any noticeable regional pockets of support for allowing Jewish refugees into the United States 00:42:48.280 --> 00:42:51.920 i.e. northern cities or the Midwest etc.? 00:42:51.920 --> 00:42:56.120 So this is centered in New York, New York City. 00:42:56.120 --> 00:42:57.840 [Pause] 00:42:57.840 --> 00:43:05.300 There are kind of small pockets all over the country. 00:43:05.300 --> 00:43:08.340 Not a lot in the south. 00:43:08.340 --> 00:43:18.800 A pretty substantial sort of branch of this movement on the west coast in California in Los Angeles 00:43:18.800 --> 00:43:25.440 in particular, but it's mainly centered in New York City and Los Angeles. 00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:38.500 In Washington DC itself, you did have a number of, in many cases, Zionists, Jewish political figures 00:43:38.500 --> 00:43:43.540 and leaders who were in favor of establishing a Jewish state in Israel. 00:43:43.540 --> 00:43:53.000 They're the ones who really, kind of, took lead in this grassroots intervention movements 00:43:53.000 --> 00:43:55.840 by petitioning Congressmen. 00:43:55.840 --> 00:43:58.660 [Pause] 00:43:58.660 --> 00:44:04.120 So there's a movement in Washington DC, but it's mainly in the cities I mentioned. 00:44:04.120 --> 00:44:12.080 More prominent in the north than in the south or the Midwest. 00:44:12.080 --> 00:44:23.020 But yes you can definitely see sort of geographical differences between where this was more popular 00:44:23.020 --> 00:44:26.100 or more of an issue for people than others. 00:44:26.100 --> 00:44:29.160 [Pause] 00:44:29.160 --> 00:44:34.660 And I should just add New York City because it already had an enormous Jewish population, 00:44:34.660 --> 00:44:36.240 both native born and immigrant 00:44:36.240 --> 00:44:41.080 [Pause] 00:44:41.080 --> 00:44:44.880 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] So I don't see any additional questions in my chat. 00:44:44.880 --> 00:44:47.600 Ana, do you have any? 00:44:47.600 --> 00:44:49.680 [Ana Corral] No, I don't have any others. 00:44:49.680 --> 00:44:52.740 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Okay. Then let's go ahead and do the next passage. 00:44:53.140 --> 00:44:54.920 [Ana Corral] Okay. That is me. 00:44:54.920 --> 00:45:02.700 So it's gonna be another passage from Wolman's "Crossing Over" and this one is from Anken Ickenberg. 00:45:02.700 --> 00:45:12.420 So the question mentions the Group A, which was a group of Jewish refugees that settled in LA, or sorry, 00:45:12.420 --> 00:45:13.940 Los Angeles. 00:45:13.940 --> 00:45:17.320 So the question is: "In what ways is the Group A still important to you?" 00:45:17.320 --> 00:45:19.160 [Pause] 00:45:19.160 --> 00:45:24.080 Response: "Nostalgic value I would say. It was an important time in our lives. 00:45:24.080 --> 00:45:26.800 We had to get adjusted to a new life. 00:45:26.800 --> 00:45:30.860 And now, also, interest in the children's and grandchildren's development." 00:45:30.860 --> 00:45:38.540 Question: "Now I have a question along a different line. If someone says to you, what are you? What do you say?" 00:45:38.540 --> 00:45:44.200 Response: "American, unequivocally. I don't consider myself a German anymore. 00:45:44.200 --> 00:45:50.060 We never wanted to go back. We never wanted to read a German paper. Nothing again. 00:45:50.060 --> 00:45:54.380 Completely over from the moment we got here, we made this home. 00:45:54.380 --> 00:45:58.460 I told you we had a choice to go back to Germany with full colors. 00:45:58.460 --> 00:46:01.820 It would have been of great monetary value to us. 00:46:01.820 --> 00:46:08.300 Fred could have been reinstated as a full judge and I, as the wife of a high official, would have had 00:46:08.300 --> 00:46:09.860 a very different life." 00:46:09.860 --> 00:46:13.600 Question: "Did you speak German at all when you came to America?" 00:46:14.240 --> 00:46:17.980 And response: "No we did not talk German at home." 00:46:17.980 --> 00:46:21.560 Question: "Did you make that decision when you left Germany?" 00:46:21.560 --> 00:46:27.740 And response: "No, but when I studied medicine I learned that you should raise your child in the language 00:46:27.740 --> 00:46:33.180 of his peers or you make trouble for the child. Some of our friends did not do that. 00:46:33.180 --> 00:46:37.180 Their children were fluent in German, but had difficulty with their peers. 00:46:37.180 --> 00:46:42.020 When my mother was still alive, we did talk in German sometimes, although she knew English. 00:46:42.520 --> 00:46:47.420 Question: "When you came to the United States, did you have anything to do with the synagogue?" 00:46:47.420 --> 00:46:49.200 [Pause] 00:46:49.200 --> 00:46:55.100 Oh. I might not know how to pronounce this, so Ann's response: "We were angry with dear God, 00:46:55.100 --> 00:46:59.620 but it's in German, to tell the truth, because our parents were killed. 00:46:59.620 --> 00:47:05.580 I will still never go to a temple unless I have to because I start to cry and make a spectacle of myself. 00:47:05.580 --> 00:47:07.360 I don't want people to look at me. 00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:13.340 The only temple I sometimes went to was a Leo Baeck temple where Ruthie got married. 00:47:13.340 --> 00:47:17.480 In Germany, we were so assimilated that we rarely went to Temple there either. 00:47:17.480 --> 00:47:23.360 Only my father went. He tried to give my sister and me money to go to synagogue on High Holidays. 00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:28.480 My sister refused to be corrupted. She would not accept his money, but I did. 00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:32.800 By law in Germany, you had to belong to a temple if you were a Jew. 00:47:32.800 --> 00:47:35.640 Some of your tax money went to it automatically. 00:47:35.640 --> 00:47:40.080 On our birth certificates, marriage certificates, everywhere, it mentioned religion. 00:47:40.080 --> 00:47:42.120 Even on the matriculation diploma. 00:47:42.120 --> 00:47:48.260 You could later on refuse to have it mentioned, but I didn't care to refuse. 00:47:48.260 --> 00:47:52.060 My father's parents were Orthodox and wouldn't eat in our house. 00:47:52.060 --> 00:47:57.000 We belonged to a conservative synagogue. Girls sat upstairs, boys downstairs. 00:47:57.000 --> 00:48:02.240 All we did was fool around with the boys until the Cantor, who was our religious teacher in the school, 00:48:02.240 --> 00:48:04.320 came up and reprimanded us. 00:48:04.320 --> 00:48:06.180 Religion class was required. 00:48:06.180 --> 00:48:12.440 I made a nuisance of myself. For punishment, I always had to copy the Prophet three times." 00:48:12.440 --> 00:48:13.660 [Pause] 00:48:13.660 --> 00:48:15.240 Sorry, just a second. 00:48:15.240 --> 00:48:16.720 [Pause] 00:48:16.720 --> 00:48:18.360 I think these are the last two questions. 00:48:18.360 --> 00:48:23.140 Question: "You made a comment earlier that there was more anti-semitism in the United States 00:48:23.140 --> 00:48:24.340 than in Germany. 00:48:24.340 --> 00:48:27.160 Did you ever experience any incidents here?" 00:48:27.900 --> 00:48:32.580 Response: "No I didn't. In all the years, nothing personal. 00:48:32.580 --> 00:48:38.340 Fred, yes. At work in his first job, he was told 'go back to the country you came from.' 00:48:38.340 --> 00:48:41.700 You lie. You cannot even write correctly. 00:48:41.700 --> 00:48:47.060 Although nothing has ever been directed at me, I know anti-semitism is here. 00:48:47.060 --> 00:48:50.540 You read it in the paper, you see it, you just know it." 00:48:50.540 --> 00:48:54.520 [Pause] 00:48:54.520 --> 00:48:57.720 Question: "When did you return to Germany for the first time?" 00:48:57.720 --> 00:48:59.900 Response: "In 1963." 00:48:59.900 --> 00:49:02.060 Question: "How did it feel to be there?" 00:49:02.060 --> 00:49:06.580 Response: I couldn't even recognize the house where I was born and lived because it had all been bombed. 00:49:06.580 --> 00:49:08.300 My school was bombed too. 00:49:08.300 --> 00:49:12.960 I think only the obstetrician, a classmate of mine, was still living there in his old house. 00:49:12.960 --> 00:49:17.060 The rest of the town was destroyed by the Canadian and British Air Force. 00:49:17.060 --> 00:49:22.640 Most people had moved to southern Germany, mostly to Württemberg or to Berlin. 00:49:22.640 --> 00:49:28.620 They couldn't stay in Wuppertal. Everything was destroyed. They too had to run for their lives. 00:49:28.620 --> 00:49:31.120 I visited several friends elsewhere. 00:49:31.120 --> 00:49:37.660 [Pause] 00:49:37.660 --> 00:49:42.780 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Okay. If you'd like to ask a question or make a comment about that passage, 00:49:42.780 --> 00:49:49.040 please send it via chat to Ana or myself and we will read the question or comment. 00:49:49.040 --> 00:49:57.340 [Pause] 00:49:57.340 --> 00:50:00.360 [Bradley Nichols] And while we're waiting I'll just add. 00:50:00.360 --> 00:50:07.280 This is actually sort of a addition to the response that I gave to a question earlier about 00:50:07.280 --> 00:50:08.560 anti-semitism in the United States. 00:50:08.560 --> 00:50:14.860 And I forgot to, sort of, address whether there was ever any formal persecution of the kind 00:50:14.860 --> 00:50:17.660 that African Americans faced. 00:50:17.660 --> 00:50:23.220 And it's worth mentioning it here because of the question being asked about anti-semitism. 00:50:23.220 --> 00:50:34.980 It's more informal. There's nothing, like, official in the way of segregation, for instance, Jim Crow laws. 00:50:34.980 --> 00:50:45.860 But it's more just this, kind of, informal country clubs, for instance, rarely, if ever, accepted Jewish members until 00:50:45.860 --> 00:50:49.900 well into the 1960s and 1970s. 00:50:49.900 --> 00:50:56.840 That's just one example, but also American Jews could sense this in their daily lives that 00:50:56.840 --> 00:50:59.220 people treated them differently. 00:50:59.220 --> 00:51:05.840 Not necessarily badly, but just differently. They were in many ways isolated, excluded in many ways. 00:51:05.840 --> 00:51:18.300 That's the kind of discrimination. But it's not official legal discrimination. It's more informal but it's definitely there. 00:51:18.300 --> 00:51:32.220 [Pause] 00:51:32.220 --> 00:51:37.620 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] So I'm not seeing any questions about this passage. Ana? 00:51:37.620 --> 00:51:39.620 [Ana Corral] No I don't have anything either. 00:51:39.620 --> 00:51:42.400 [Bradley Nichols] My students are out there do you guys have questions? 00:51:42.400 --> 00:51:44.820 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] We just had one pop in. 00:51:44.820 --> 00:51:52.020 Did this informal anti-semitism mirror any of the more subtle persecution and rhetoric that was seen in 00:51:52.020 --> 00:51:54.900 Germany in the lead-up to World War II? 00:51:54.900 --> 00:52:07.600 Yes. You hear a lot of the same arguments about Jews representing this kind of international conspiracy, 00:52:07.600 --> 00:52:14.700 only working for their own ends while subverting the nations to which they belong. 00:52:14.700 --> 00:52:23.360 This was a very common trope in anti-semitic rhetoric in the United States and it stems, 00:52:23.360 --> 00:52:29.860 I mean if we want to go all the way back, it stems from Christian Church fathers writing about Jews, 00:52:29.860 --> 00:52:34.360 but in the modern period, in the 20th century, it stems from a document known as the 00:52:34.360 --> 00:52:42.440 "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which purported to show that there was again this sort of international 00:52:42.440 --> 00:52:46.000 Jewish conspiracy bent on world domination. 00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:51.420 This text, more or less, gets translated into English and published in the United States on by 00:52:51.420 --> 00:52:55.580 Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company. 00:52:55.580 --> 00:53:01.860 He referred to it as "An International Jew," that was the title he used, but it's this same idea, 00:53:01.860 --> 00:53:09.300 the same accusation, the same again trope assumption. 00:53:09.300 --> 00:53:18.540 And you also see in Nazi Germany, anti-semitism, at least official anti-semitism, 00:53:18.540 --> 00:53:27.320 was based on racial ideology: on the idea that Jews were a separate race. 00:53:27.320 --> 00:53:35.580 You see some of that in the United States, but more common would have been religious anti-semitism, 00:53:35.580 --> 00:53:43.960 which you can pick up in all kinds of different derogatory terms and epithets referring 00:53:43.960 --> 00:53:46.120 to Jesus Christ killers, for instance. 00:53:46.120 --> 00:53:48.700 This was extremely common in the United States. 00:53:48.700 --> 00:53:55.660 That's more religious based, but you could find that kind of thing in Germany too. 00:53:55.660 --> 00:54:09.760 The accusation that Jews were greedy and/or stingy or shady, this is just as common and this perception was 00:54:09.760 --> 00:54:15.600 arguably just as common in the United States as it was in any European country. 00:54:15.600 --> 00:54:23.680 But again the difference is that you know see any formal legislation put in place to discriminate 00:54:23.680 --> 00:54:26.120 against Jews or persecute them. 00:54:26.120 --> 00:54:28.440 [Pause] 00:54:28.440 --> 00:54:35.520 The American Constitution, although again allowed for persecution of other groups, namely African Americans, 00:54:35.520 --> 00:54:40.240 discrimination of other groups, at least in the case of Jews, because they were identified as 00:54:40.240 --> 00:54:46.460 a religious minority, there would have been a lot of pushback against that. 00:54:46.460 --> 00:54:59.280 Going against the ideal of freedom of religion, that was more powerful than, say, ideals of racial equality 00:54:59.280 --> 00:55:00.900 between whites and blacks persons. 00:55:00.900 --> 00:55:05.380 But yes, the short answer is yes there are similarities. 00:55:05.380 --> 00:55:16.620 Even in, you know, anti-semitic rhetoric propaganda, the United States was usually not as disgusting and 00:55:16.620 --> 00:55:23.980 semi-pornographic and truly vile in the way that it was in Nazi Germany. 00:55:23.980 --> 00:55:30.140 [Pause] 00:55:30.140 --> 00:55:31.200 Other questions? 00:55:31.200 --> 00:55:34.940 [Pause] 00:55:34.940 --> 00:55:36.500 [Ana Corral] I have a question. 00:55:36.500 --> 00:55:43.240 Did radical white supremacists such as the KKK, who use Christian scripture to justify their actions, perpetuate 00:55:43.240 --> 00:55:47.260 the religious discrimination against the Jews like in Europe? 00:55:48.240 --> 00:56:00.920 Yes they are, but it's more kind of, like, they're way more opposed to integration with blacks. 00:56:00.920 --> 00:56:07.780 I mean that's the main thing they're fighting against, but you find, again, well into the Civil Rights era and 00:56:07.780 --> 00:56:18.860 afterwards this notion that racial mixing integration, what they called miscegenation, 00:56:18.860 --> 00:56:22.000 the interbreeding between races. 00:56:22.000 --> 00:56:31.280 There was a theory within white supremacist groups, within the KKK, that Jews were responsible for this, 00:56:31.280 --> 00:56:42.180 that this was part of this international Jewish conspiracy to weaken the "white race" by having 00:56:42.180 --> 00:56:46.220 whites and blacks intermingle. 00:56:46.220 --> 00:56:56.180 This is an idea that we still see today on the far right,and the white supremacist right, the alt-right, 00:56:56.180 --> 00:56:58.820 whatever they want to call themselves. 00:56:58.820 --> 00:57:07.860 This idea that Jews are instigating and orchestrating the immigration of Latin Americans and Latinos 00:57:07.860 --> 00:57:17.880 into the United States to "weaken" the white race, to cause "white genocide," which is of course ridiculous, 00:57:17.880 --> 00:57:27.260 but you see the influence of these kinds of delusions in the attack on the Tree of Life Center synagogue in 00:57:27.260 --> 00:57:30.080 Pittsburgh, for instance, a couple years ago. 00:57:30.080 --> 00:57:36.500 So yes these ideas are definitely promoted by white supremacists, anti-semitic ideas are promoted by them, 00:57:36.500 --> 00:57:42.860 anti-semitic violence is an outcome of these beliefs as well in the United States up to a couple years ago. 00:57:42.860 --> 00:57:51.900 [Pause] 00:57:51.900 --> 00:57:58.540 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Okay I'm not seeing any additional questions about this passage, Ana? 00:57:58.540 --> 00:58:00.460 [Ana Corral] No, that was the only one. 00:58:00.460 --> 00:58:02.160 [Pause] 00:58:02.160 --> 00:58:05.660 [Bradley Nichols] My students who are out there, do you guys have any questions about the passage 00:58:05.660 --> 00:58:06.760 or just in general? 00:58:06.760 --> 00:58:13.160 [Pause] 00:58:13.160 --> 00:58:15.580 You can send one direct to me too, that's fine. 00:58:15.580 --> 00:58:19.200 [Pause] 00:58:19.200 --> 00:58:20.500 I'll give you a minute. 00:58:20.500 --> 00:58:34.540 [Pause] 00:58:34.540 --> 00:58:37.700 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] I'm gonna go ahead and read the next passage. 00:58:37.700 --> 00:58:43.300 If you have questions, feel free to send them in chat whenever if you want to send it while I'm reading, 00:58:43.300 --> 00:58:50.280 that's fine and we'll have time for more questions after this passage. 00:58:50.280 --> 00:58:56.520 This is returning to "The Unwanted" by Michael Dobbs. This is from Chapter 12 entitled "To The East." 00:58:57.220 --> 00:59:04.160 "In some quarters discussed with Vichy France was accompanied by bitterness toward the United States. 00:59:04.160 --> 00:59:11.400 The head of the Marseilles office of HICEM, Vadimir Shaw, complained about the hypocrisy of 00:59:11.400 --> 00:59:13.640 American refugee policy. 00:59:13.640 --> 00:59:19.600 Representatives of the Great Northern or North American Republic protested against the deportation 00:59:19.600 --> 00:59:25.400 of alien Jews to the east without giving them the possibility to go to the west. 00:59:26.020 --> 00:59:33.380 The discrepancy made it easy for Pierre Laval to argue that he was sending alien Jews to the one country 00:59:33.380 --> 00:59:37.440 that was prepared to accept them, namely Nazi Germany. 00:59:37.440 --> 00:59:43.520 It is difficult to protest against the deportations towards the east when everybody knows that it would have been 00:59:43.520 --> 00:59:48.540 possible to send the unfortunate refugees to the west, provided that the United States had opened 00:59:48.540 --> 00:59:50.400 their doors a little wider. 00:59:50.400 --> 00:59:56.140 Shaw reported to his superiors, 'What harm would two or three hundred thousand Jewish refugees 00:59:56.140 --> 01:00:02.320 threatened with deportation have done to the United States with its 140 million inhabitants?' 01:00:02.320 --> 01:00:07.400 In claiming that two or three hundred thousand Jews might have been saved, Shaw was referring to 01:00:07.400 --> 01:00:11.280 the four years since the Evian Conference on refugees. 01:00:11.280 --> 01:00:16.880 Led by the American delegation, speaker after speaker had expressed sympathy for the victims of 01:00:16.880 --> 01:00:24.520 Nazi persecution and The Intergovernmental Committee had been created to deal with the refugee crisis. 01:00:24.520 --> 01:00:30.240 There had been much well-intentioned talk about creating Jewish homelands in Africa, South America, or 01:00:30.240 --> 01:00:34.560 even Alaska, but little substantive had been achieved. 01:00:34.560 --> 01:00:39.140 By the summer of 1942, mass escape was no longer feasible. 01:00:39.140 --> 01:00:44.700 The borders of Germany and occupied countries such as Poland, Belgium, and the Netherlands were sealed. 01:00:44.700 --> 01:00:50.380 Even supposing that a refugee was able to reach Marseille or Casablanca, obtaining passage 01:00:50.380 --> 01:00:53.700 across the Atlantic was increasingly difficult. 01:00:53.700 --> 01:00:58.700 Without the right connections and a lot of money, it was next to impossible. 01:00:58.700 --> 01:01:01.940 Even so, Shaw refused to concede defeat. 01:01:01.940 --> 01:01:09.020 HICEM had managed to charter two ships from Casablanca at the end of August, one to New York, 01:01:09.020 --> 01:01:10.840 the other to Mexico. 01:01:10.840 --> 01:01:16.600 Shaw believed it might still be possible to send up to 30,000 persons to the United States. 01:01:16.600 --> 01:01:22.080 He urged his American colleagues to persuade President Roosevelt to wave entry formalities 01:01:22.080 --> 01:01:24.100 for the threatened Jews. 01:01:24.100 --> 01:01:29.740 Upon their arrival, they might be placed in concentration camps until investigation is made 01:01:29.740 --> 01:01:31.500 concerning each of them. 01:01:31.500 --> 01:01:40.220 [Pause] 01:01:40.220 --> 01:01:48.200 So if you have any questions or comments that you'd like to make, please send them via direct message and 01:01:48.200 --> 01:01:49.380 we will read them out. 01:01:49.380 --> 01:01:54.260 [Pause] 01:01:54.260 --> 01:02:01.860 [Bradley Nichols] Just to elaborate on some of the policies of the French that are being referred to there, 01:02:01.860 --> 01:02:10.620 this ties back to what I mentioned before about a large number of Jewish refugees, immigrants in France 01:02:10.620 --> 01:02:15.420 already before the war, before the Nazis, before the Germans took over, 01:02:15.420 --> 01:02:18.200 before the Germans conquered France. 01:02:18.200 --> 01:02:26.000 And this is a number that had been steadily increasing again since after the first world war and the tendency 01:02:26.000 --> 01:02:34.900 for French officials in the unoccupied part of France, Vichy France's it was called, 01:02:34.900 --> 01:02:38.440 who collaborated with the Germans. 01:02:38.440 --> 01:02:50.280 Their policy was, basically, we'll hand over these foreign Jewish refugees for you to take to the death camps, 01:02:50.280 --> 01:02:53.900 and they knew what their fate was going to be. 01:02:53.900 --> 01:03:00.480 We'll give you these foreign-born Jews whom we don't really like, but we're not really gonna give you 01:03:00.480 --> 01:03:04.060 native-born French Jews. 01:03:04.940 --> 01:03:11.920 They actually even had a... my students will remember this because we just talked about it recently 01:03:11.920 --> 01:03:21.120 that the native-born Jews were referred to as isriatic days, Israelites, whereas foreign-born Jews, Jewish 01:03:21.120 --> 01:03:28.420 immigrants, Jewish refugees in France, were referred to as JewJews, Jews and it's the latter whom the French, 01:03:28.420 --> 01:03:34.880 the Vichy collaborationist government, they were perfectly fine with handing those people over 01:03:34.880 --> 01:03:39.020 to the Nazis even though they knew they would be murdered. 01:03:39.020 --> 01:03:45.180 They were perfectly fine with that, they just didn't want assimilated native-born French Jews. 01:03:45.180 --> 01:03:49.820 That was a bit too much for them to stomach. 01:03:49.820 --> 01:03:56.020 Hence, this irony you have where the Germans are the ones willing to accept these Jewish refugees because 01:03:56.020 --> 01:04:05.100 they're going to kill them and countries like the United States in particular in the Western Hemisphere were not. 01:04:05.100 --> 01:04:07.700 [Pause] 01:04:07.700 --> 01:04:13.540 So I have a question here directly from from one of my students. 01:04:13.540 --> 01:04:19.300 It asked: were there any Jews that made it to a place like Casablanca and ended up staying and settling there 01:04:19.300 --> 01:04:21.440 after the war? 01:04:21.440 --> 01:04:35.600 In terms of North Africa, I recall some Jews escaping via Spain to North Africa, even some German Jews 01:04:35.600 --> 01:04:41.900 who went all the way from France to Spain to North Africa, but I don't think any of them ever settled there. 01:04:41.900 --> 01:04:49.920 I think this is just sort of like a temporary refuge for the time being. 01:04:49.920 --> 01:05:01.620 Particularly after the Allies seize North Africa, first Morocco and then really the rest of it: Tunisia, Algeria, 01:05:01.620 --> 01:05:02.660 and so forth. 01:05:02.660 --> 01:05:09.220 Before then, it was more difficult because these same Vichy French officials were in charge there because 01:05:09.220 --> 01:05:15.320 they controlled significant parts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. 01:05:15.320 --> 01:05:22.040 These were all French colonies and so these pro-German, pro-Nazi Vichy officials were there for a while 01:05:22.040 --> 01:05:28.480 after the Allies come some more refugees but it's really Jewish refugees go there but it's really mainly a trickle, 01:05:28.480 --> 01:05:29.580 not too many. 01:05:29.580 --> 01:05:31.860 I don't think any of them stayed there. 01:05:31.860 --> 01:05:40.800 I would seriously doubt it, though, given that you're surrounded by a predominantly, if not 01:05:40.800 --> 01:05:42.680 Arab Muslim population. 01:05:42.680 --> 01:05:47.540 [Pause] 01:05:47.540 --> 01:05:50.440 Do you guys have questions coming in? 01:05:50.440 --> 01:05:52.280 [Pause] 01:05:52.280 --> 01:05:53.840 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] I don't currently have any. 01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:55.380 [Ana Corral] I don't currently have questions. 01:05:55.380 --> 01:05:58.920 [Pause] 01:05:58.920 --> 01:06:03.780 [Bradley Nichols] Oh Anthony this one's for you, referring to what HICEM was. 01:06:03.780 --> 01:06:09.520 [Pause] 01:06:09.520 --> 01:06:11.320 Other questions? 01:06:11.320 --> 01:06:17.140 [Pause] 01:06:17.140 --> 01:06:20.960 So I have a comment from another one my students here who notes that it's not the same as escaping 01:06:20.960 --> 01:06:27.040 to North Africa, but the woman whose testimony I listened to for the oral history project in 01:06:27.040 --> 01:06:32.900 our Holocaust class, she left Europe for Africa in 1946 and stayed there for the rest of her life. 01:06:32.900 --> 01:06:43.860 Yeah I mean that after the war, once it becomes apparent what the Nazis have done, then you start to see 01:06:43.860 --> 01:06:53.680 countries all over the world being much more welcoming in terms of allowing Jewish refugees, European Jews, 01:06:53.680 --> 01:07:01.260 in general who survived, to come and live there, whether it's South Africa, the British Dominion countries, 01:07:01.260 --> 01:07:10.920 whether it's South Africa, Canada, Australia was a big location where Holocaust survivors went, New Zealand, 01:07:10.920 --> 01:07:18.980 and so forth as well as the United States, which was numerically the largest other than Israel itself, of course. 01:07:18.980 --> 01:07:30.280 But again it's only like after the war is over when borders are open again and once it's apparent to the world 01:07:30.280 --> 01:07:36.260 that Jews need to get out of Europe, not because of an imminent threat, but because of what has been faced 01:07:36.260 --> 01:07:38.400 and indeed continuing persecution. 01:07:38.400 --> 01:07:48.080 There are pogroms, there are massacres of Jews by the poles, for instance, after the war ends 01:07:48.080 --> 01:07:53.620 and this really motivates a lot of countries to take in more Jews including the United States as well. 01:07:53.620 --> 01:07:59.360 Like, okay, if anti-Jewish violence is still going on after everything they've been through, 01:07:59.360 --> 01:08:01.380 then we need to open the door. 01:08:01.380 --> 01:08:09.040 [Pause] 01:08:09.040 --> 01:08:13.180 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Okay, I'm not seeing any more questions at the moment Ana? 01:08:13.180 --> 01:08:15.320 [Ana Corral] No I don't have any questions. 01:08:15.320 --> 01:08:17.960 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Okay let's do another passage. 01:08:17.960 --> 01:08:21.760 [Ana Corral] Okay, yeah. So... sorry were you gonna say something? 01:08:21.760 --> 01:08:23.700 [Bradley Nichols] No I said sounds good to me. 01:08:23.700 --> 01:08:30.660 [Ana Corral] Okay. So this is from Wolman's "Crossing Over: The Oral History" and so these are questions that 01:08:30.660 --> 01:08:36.900 were asked of Faiza Summers and these questions actually have the person's name like who asked them. 01:08:36.900 --> 01:08:38.180 So I'm gonna go ahead and get started. 01:08:38.180 --> 01:08:44.020 So, Sybil: "How did you feel about the Germans? How did you feel about being German?" 01:08:44.020 --> 01:08:47.940 Faiza: At that time, the Germans were my enemies absolutely. 01:08:47.940 --> 01:08:50.080 But I can't say that I hated them. 01:08:50.080 --> 01:08:54.860 Maybe people who got out of Germany later or were in the camps had different reactions. 01:08:54.860 --> 01:08:59.880 Part of me is German and part of me still has the tendency to see what's good in Germans. 01:08:59.880 --> 01:09:03.340 Ernie has that too, sometimes, I think too much. 01:09:03.340 --> 01:09:07.040 He doesn't see that there's some neo-Nazism going on in Germany. 01:09:07.040 --> 01:09:12.020 He will still try to defend them with 'but the youth is different.' I don't agree with him. 01:09:12.020 --> 01:09:15.060 I'm very much worried about the German unification." 01:09:15.060 --> 01:09:20.380 Debbie: "Did you have any different feelings about Judaism because of what you had just been through?" 01:09:20.380 --> 01:09:24.560 Faiza: "I was naturally Jewish like I was in Germany. 01:09:24.560 --> 01:09:26.960 I was once asked to be on jury duty. 01:09:26.960 --> 01:09:32.320 When the judge said it would be a long trial and asked if anybody would not be able to stay, I felt so proud and 01:09:32.320 --> 01:09:37.800 happy when I said that I couldn't do that because the Jewish High Holidays would be soon. 01:09:37.800 --> 01:09:43.140 In Germany you could never say that. Then, I felt really good to be in America." 01:09:43.140 --> 01:09:47.180 Debbie: "How long did it take you to feel 'American'?" 01:09:47.180 --> 01:09:49.980 Faiza: "This is a very big question. 01:09:49.980 --> 01:09:59.440 Do I really feel American today? I feel German. I feel Jewish. I feel Polish. I feel Dutch. I feel Cuban. 01:09:59.440 --> 01:10:02.420 I feel very much American also. 01:10:02.420 --> 01:10:08.440 I have spent most of my life in America, but basically the first years of one's life are much more important. 01:10:08.440 --> 01:10:13.660 That's where you got your upbringing, your education. So basically I'm still European." 01:10:13.660 --> 01:10:20.660 Sybil: "If you are asked what are you do you unequivocally now answer an American?" 01:10:20.660 --> 01:10:23.520 Faiza: "I would probably put Jew first." 01:10:23.520 --> 01:10:27.560 Sybil: "Are you 100% at home now in Los Angeles?" 01:10:27.560 --> 01:10:33.760 Faiza: "Of course. I'm living here, but I don't have the nostalgic feeling that some people have. 01:10:33.760 --> 01:10:38.840 What bothers me is that you have 50 here and 50 there and Bank of America everywhere. 01:10:38.840 --> 01:10:43.920 The uniqueness that you find in some of the European towns and cities and villages gives you the 01:10:43.920 --> 01:10:46.200 home feeling of 'this is mine.' 01:10:46.200 --> 01:10:51.780 Even when I'm thinking of some of the places where I lived in Germany, I get more of a home feeling. 01:10:51.780 --> 01:10:57.980 I don't have that feeling when I come to Ventura Boulevard and Van Nuys that this is home." 01:10:57.980 --> 01:11:03.340 Debbie: "Don't you think that's because of the times more than the shops themselves? 01:11:03.340 --> 01:11:06.320 There are probably chains of stores in Dresden now." 01:11:06.320 --> 01:11:08.320 Faiza: "You might be right." 01:11:08.320 --> 01:11:12.280 Sybil: "How long did it take you to feel Los Angeles as your home?" 01:11:12.280 --> 01:11:17.220 Faiza: "I think right away because there was no choice. Where else? 01:11:17.220 --> 01:11:21.620 I did not think it was a nice home, obviously, but this was where I was. 01:11:21.620 --> 01:11:26.180 There was my family, my furniture, and my piano. That's home." 01:11:26.180 --> 01:11:30.840 Debbie: "Were you involved in any political groups in the early years?" 01:11:30.840 --> 01:11:34.300 Faiza: "No. We were really very busy. 01:11:34.300 --> 01:11:40.620 Ernie always worked long hours and I was teaching and I made a home and cared for a child." 01:11:40.620 --> 01:11:45.880 Debbie: "When Sybil came to Havana at age three, I guess you spoke to her in German. 01:11:45.880 --> 01:11:50.020 I know that at some point she only wanted to speak English. When was that? 01:11:50.020 --> 01:11:53.700 Faiza: "Especially in the beginning, we spoke German. 01:11:53.700 --> 01:11:57.200 But when other kids were around, she wanted us to speak English. 01:11:57.200 --> 01:12:02.260 If we talked German when her friends were around, she became a hundred and fifty percent American. 01:12:02.260 --> 01:12:06.260 She felt like talking German was equivalent to talking with Hitler. 01:12:06.260 --> 01:12:12.920 I was the same with my parents. When other kids were around, I didn't want my parents to speak Polish to me." 01:12:12.920 --> 01:12:19.980 Sybil: "What about you made you able to make all the adaptations necessary for living a new life?" 01:12:19.980 --> 01:12:26.000 Faiza: "I liked changes. I like adventure. And another thing: this was it. 01:12:26.000 --> 01:12:29.040 There was no choice and this was the best there could be. 01:12:29.040 --> 01:12:32.880 It couldn't have been better. I couldn't have made a better choice." 01:12:32.880 --> 01:12:36.660 Debbie: "Was America what you expected it to be?" 01:12:36.660 --> 01:12:40.260 Faiza: "I thought many things were very funny and I still do. 01:12:40.260 --> 01:12:44.220 And I still find many things should be different and many things I do not like. 01:12:44.220 --> 01:12:49.820 My friend Trudy Glauber told me Americans never grow up. They're teenagers all their lives. 01:12:49.820 --> 01:12:54.460 There is something to this. Much here is superficial, very businesslike. 01:12:54.460 --> 01:12:58.740 I don't know whether people go really into the depths of life and what life can be. 01:12:58.740 --> 01:13:01.640 In many ways Europeans have more substance." 01:13:01.640 --> 01:13:03.160 [Pause] 01:13:03.160 --> 01:13:05.560 And that is it for that passage. 01:13:05.560 --> 01:13:12.520 [Pause] 01:13:12.520 --> 01:13:18.020 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Okay. Again, if you want to ask a question or make a comment on the passage, 01:13:18.020 --> 01:13:25.840 just send a direct message to either Ana or myself or to Bradley and we will read out your question or comment. 01:13:25.840 --> 01:13:54.200 [Pause] 01:13:54.200 --> 01:13:55.220 [Bradley Nichols] Nothing? 01:13:55.220 --> 01:13:56.640 [Pause] 01:13:56.640 --> 01:13:57.840 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Nothing. 01:13:57.840 --> 01:14:04.700 [Pause ] 01:14:04.700 --> 01:14:09.620 Well, if we don't have questions or comments on that passage I can read one final passage from 01:14:09.620 --> 01:14:14.680 "The Unwanted" and then we can look at closing up. 01:14:14.680 --> 01:14:19.520 Okay, so this one, again, is from "The Unwanted" by Michael Dobbs. 01:14:19.520 --> 01:14:23.120 [Pause] 01:14:23.120 --> 01:14:24.960 Turn on my video here. 01:14:24.960 --> 01:14:26.760 [Pause] 01:14:26.760 --> 01:14:32.120 This comes from the epilogue and it's titled "Memory." 01:14:32.120 --> 01:14:37.780 Wealth, education and family ties in the United States all contributed to the ability of Jews 01:14:37.780 --> 01:14:39.740 to organize their escape. 01:14:39.740 --> 01:14:46.920 The attitudes and prejudices of individual consoles and the visa review committees back in Washington 01:14:46.920 --> 01:14:53.360 also played a role, but there was another force at work whose importance should never be underestimated: 01:14:53.360 --> 01:14:55.760 plain dumb luck. 01:14:55.760 --> 01:15:04.600 Elsa Valfer filed for immigration to the United States on August 8, 1938 together with her husband Heinrich. 01:15:04.600 --> 01:15:12.380 They were among tens of thousands of Jewish refugees admitted to Britain during the first eight months of 1939 01:15:12.380 --> 01:15:16.140 on the strength of their low American registration numbers. 01:15:16.140 --> 01:15:24.020 Elsa joined Heinrich in England less than a month before the outbreak of war on September 1st, 1939. 01:15:24.020 --> 01:15:29.800 Had she not left Germany when she did, she would likely have been condemned to years of disappointment 01:15:29.800 --> 01:15:32.720 and heartbreak, ending in death. 01:15:32.720 --> 01:15:40.260 Max and Fanny Valfer submitted their immigration paperwork to the United States 01:15:40.260 --> 01:15:42.580 a few weeks after their daughter. 01:15:42.580 --> 01:15:48.720 As luck would have it, the lines outside the Stuttgart consulate had become unmanageable 01:15:48.720 --> 01:15:50.660 by September 1938. 01:15:50.660 --> 01:15:56.960 A slew of anti-Jewish decrees had resulted in a huge spike in U.S. visa applicants. 01:15:56.960 --> 01:16:00.840 Max and Fanny were assigned high American registration numbers 01:16:00.840 --> 01:16:04.540 which made them ineligible for asylum in Britain. 01:16:04.540 --> 01:16:10.540 They were about to sail for Cuba when that escape route was shut down following the abortive voyage of 01:16:10.540 --> 01:16:13.620 the St. Louis in May 1939. 01:16:13.620 --> 01:16:19.160 They were promised US visas in December 1941 only to see the promised snatched away 01:16:19.160 --> 01:16:22.420 in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. 01:16:22.420 --> 01:16:30.080 A subsequent summons to the American consulate in Marseilles in August 1942 came a few weeks too late 01:16:30.080 --> 01:16:31.660 to save them from Auschwitz. 01:16:31.660 --> 01:16:39.780 [Pause] 01:16:39.780 --> 01:16:46.300 So if you've got any final questions or comments, anything that you'd like to ask about anything 01:16:46.300 --> 01:16:52.020 we've talked about today, feel free to send that via direct message to Ana or me 01:16:52.020 --> 01:16:54.940 and we will read the question or comment. 01:16:54.940 --> 01:17:03.020 [Pause] 01:17:03.020 --> 01:17:06.800 [Bradley Nichols] I'll just underscore that really was in many cases a matter of dumb luck: 01:17:06.800 --> 01:17:09.520 whether people got out or not. 01:17:09.520 --> 01:17:19.840 Being in the right place the right time, when you were able to get into American consulate, whether, 01:17:19.840 --> 01:17:26.960 in some cases, you had family members or connections, as was mentioned, in the United States, 01:17:26.960 --> 01:17:29.300 sort of direct circumstances like that. 01:17:29.300 --> 01:17:33.140 Money, those things matter. But a lot of times it was just dumb luck. 01:17:33.140 --> 01:17:42.140 And it was very, very close in terms of some people getting out of concentration camps, for instance, 01:17:42.140 --> 01:17:47.860 and being allowed to emigrate when they otherwise would have been sent to their deaths. 01:17:47.860 --> 01:17:52.940 In many cases, were sent to their death because they were not granted an exit visa. 01:17:52.940 --> 01:18:08.860 [Pause] 01:18:08.860 --> 01:18:12.100 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] So I have one comment it says 'thanks so much for doing this; 01:18:12.100 --> 01:18:14.300 it was very interesting and enlightening.' 01:18:14.300 --> 01:18:16.200 [Pause] 01:18:16.200 --> 01:18:17.520 [Bradley Nichols] You're quite welcome 01:18:17.520 --> 01:18:19.400 [Pause] 01:18:19.400 --> 01:18:26.580 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] And I put a link in the chat. This is a link to a short survey about the event. 01:18:26.580 --> 01:18:34.080 It's maybe five questions, it shouldn't take long at all to complete. We'd really appreciate any feedback. 01:18:34.080 --> 01:18:41.060 This is the third event that we have done as a library in this kind of virtual format. 01:18:41.060 --> 01:18:51.300 The first one was much more open, but as things have progressed and some disruptive attacks have started 01:18:51.300 --> 01:18:56.180 happening on the Zoom platform, we had to lock things down a little bit more so this was a much more 01:18:56.180 --> 01:19:05.140 restrictive event and I'd love to hear any thoughts that people have on how well this format worked for 01:19:05.140 --> 01:19:09.900 the event that we managed or that we put on today. 01:19:09.900 --> 01:19:14.300 But I don't see any additional comments, Ana do you have anything? 01:19:14.300 --> 01:19:16.360 [Pause] 01:19:16.360 --> 01:19:22.180 [Ana Corral] No I don't have any additional comments, but I did want to mention if anyone is interested 01:19:22.180 --> 01:19:28.000 both those books, they're currently checked out, but they are a part of the library's collection so once Newman 01:19:28.000 --> 01:19:32.400 reopens you should be able to check them out if you're interested in reading more on them. 01:19:32.400 --> 01:19:35.160 Especially the oral histories they were pretty fascinating. 01:19:35.160 --> 01:19:38.100 [Bradley Nichols] Yeah I have them checked out, so. 01:19:38.100 --> 01:19:40.320 [Ana Corral] I didn't want to point fingers. 01:19:40.320 --> 01:19:46.040 [Bradley Nichols] I'll return them soon. Although, again, the library's not open so you're gonna have to wait. 01:19:46.040 --> 01:19:50.360 [Ana Corral] You can just hold onto them until we reopen. 01:19:50.360 --> 01:19:55.400 [Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Definitely "The Unwanted" by Michael Dobbs is readily available. 01:19:55.400 --> 01:19:58.400 You might be able to get it from your public library. 01:19:58.400 --> 01:20:03.520 It's definitely available on Kindle if you have a Kindle and wanted to purchase a copy for yourself. 01:20:03.520 --> 01:20:06.420 [Pause] 01:20:06.420 --> 01:20:10.580 There's a comment in here, 'thank you to everyone for putting on this presentation.' 01:20:10.580 --> 01:20:16.620 And then I did just get a question, 'what was the book the last passage was read from?' 01:20:16.620 --> 01:20:20.540 That last passage was from Michael Dobbs's "The Unwanted." 01:20:20.540 --> 01:20:24.320 [Pause] 01:20:24.320 --> 01:20:29.340 So that one is easily locatable. 01:20:29.340 --> 01:20:39.220 I purchased it on Kindle earlier today for myself so that I could have a good place to read the passages from. 01:20:39.220 --> 01:20:42.460 [Pause] 01:20:42.460 --> 01:20:53.300 But if there's no more questions or comments I think we will go ahead and close out the session. 01:20:53.300 --> 01:20:57.640 We're ending about a half an hour earlier than our scheduled time, but that has been the case 01:20:57.640 --> 01:21:01.140 for all of our previous virtual events. 01:21:01.140 --> 01:21:10.340 I would very much like to thank everyone who came, It's really nice to see people attend and take part. 01:21:10.340 --> 01:21:18.980 Thank you to everybody who asked questions and we do know that we will be getting the related exhibit back, 01:21:18.980 --> 01:21:21.340 likely not until 2022. 01:21:21.340 --> 01:21:28.100 We're just waiting for final confirmation on what the new dates will be, so look for it in a couple years time or 01:21:28.100 --> 01:21:35.160 if you're not local here in Blacksburg, check to see if your local library will be hosting it. 01:21:35.160 --> 01:21:39.120 And with that I think we'll call it a night. 01:21:39.120 --> 01:21:40.220 Thank you everyone. 01:21:40.220 --> 01:21:41.540 [Ana Corral] Thank you everyone. 01:21:41.540 --> 01:21:42.100 [Bradley Nichols] Thanks guys.