[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Kathryn, whenever you're ready.
[Kathryn Walters] Okay! So hi everyone, again I'm Kathryn and today's talk will be about American Immigration and
refugee policy throughout the Holocaust and I helped Anthony and others at the library write the grant to bring
the traveling exhibit to Tech and I'm really excited that it's there but I'm sad that I have to miss it.
I was really excited for this grant because not only that it relates to my thesis topic,
but also I think it's gonna teach a lot of people what we're not usually taught about the Holocaust.
I think so much of what we learn about this time period is about America in World War II
or America's war effort, not really the impact that America had on the Holocaust
or potential impacts it could have had on the Holocaust.
So if you get the chance, go visit it and there's also, of course, the permanent, well,
I don't think it's a permanent exhibit, but there is an exhibit at the Holocaust Museum in DC
and if you haven't been to that museum, it's also it's amazing but it's also very difficult
and today's talk might be a little difficult as well, but I hope that it's interesting and eye-opening.
So, Anthony, if you can go to the second slide for me and if we can start that one off with the poll question.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Yup. So, I'm going to launch the poll now before we switch to the slide.
It's true/false, so it should appear on your screen and if you just indicate what you know.
So true or false: the American government had refugee policies set in place before World War II.
[Pause]
So far no responses.
[Kathryn Walters] If you click the polls button, it's at the bottom of my screen it'll bring up the questions
and you can answer true or false.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Ah okay so you should have a button to click that says polling or polls
and if you bring that up you should see the question and be able to answer it there.
[Pause]
You do not. Hmm,
[Pause]
Well, I'm not gonna sit here and try and troubleshoot this, so I'm gonna end that poll and we will move on.
This is new technology for our presentation purposes, so I apologize for that.
If you want to proceed, you're welcome to now.
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] World War II resulted in the largest scale of human displacement and forced migration in history.
With no official international protocol to address such high levels of displacement,
refugee protections were an unfamiliar concept, especially in American politics.
The outcome of World War I initiated international human rights legislation,
but no international body was set in place to enforce these principles.
In fact, an official policy to implement protection of persecuted refugees would not be created until
the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention.
Throughout the 1930s, it became imperative for German Jews to emigrate due to increasingly intense
and apparent anti-Semitic aggression and legalized forms of racism in German society.
Although the United States government acknowledged the plight of victims of Nazi oppression
in the 1930s and 40s and even later helped create international legislation to assist refugees
throughout 1944 and 1941, the majority of the American government saw threats of national security
and economic constraints as reason to downplay the seriousness of Jewish persecution in Europe,
which prevented the United States from helping Jewish refugees throughout the Holocaust.
Historians of US political history and the Holocaust debate the US government's role
in the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s and 40s.
While some claim that the U.S. government intentionally abstained from interfering with Germany
in order to appease Hitler, others claim that the U.S. government could have done more
in the 1930s to help Jewish refugees.
Additionally, instead of praising Franklin Roosevelt's aid to refugees given at the end of the war,
these historians claim that many more Jews could have been saved
if Roosevelt had created the war refugee board sooner.
This research will examine the Wagner Rogers bill and the war refugee board to analyze ways
in which the United States government approached refugee assistance.
It uses minute meetings and congressional testimonies of the nonsectarian
Committee for German Refugee Children, the organization that created the Wagner Rogers Bill,
to show how refugee need was emphasized in the years leading up to World War II
and materials from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
Dominantly, the diary of Secretary of the Treasury to show how the State Department
dismissed the seriousness of oppression throughout the war.
[Pause]
When, Anthony, if you could go to the second slide or third slide.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Sure. I did want to share, we did manage to get that poll going
and I got ten responses about half and half true and false
as to whether the government had refugee policies set in place before the war.
[Kathryn Walters] Okay. so the answer to that one was false.
The US government did not have refugee policy set in place before World War II.
[Pause]
Before the creation of international refugee law, states abided by what Phil Orchard,
Professor of international Relations at the University of Wollongong,
calls tactic laws or widespread cooperation and understanding
that refugees were distinct from ordinary migrants and that they needed to be protected.
In his 2016 article, The Dawn of International Refugee Protection, Orchard argues
that this protection consisted of the right of exit, or an understanding that persecuted refugees
had the right to leave one state and be accommodated by another.
Susanne Lachenicht, professor of early modern history at Bayreuth University, argues similarly
and refugees and refugee protection in the early modern period, that religious asylum
motivated many states to take responsibility for forced migrants.
After Christian charity ran out, however, many states only wanted to accept refugees
that made their state more economically or militarily competitive.
These unofficial agreements can be considered the earliest forms of international humanitarianism
that set guidelines for protecting refugees or oppressed peoples.
American intervention and the International Humanitarianism on Behalf of Persecuted People's
began in Armenia almost a half century before the Holocaust.
American religious, philanthropic, and charity organizations
called for medical and economic relief in Armenia after Sultan Abdul Hamid II commanded the massacres
of 200,000 Christian Armenians in the 1890s.
The National Armenian Relief Committee held fundraisers to provide goods and services
and the Red Cross was the first American organization to give medical relief to the Armenian victims.
Finally, the American government took political action against the Sultan in 1896
and passed the Cullum resolution, the first international human rights resolution in American history
which condemned Sultan Abdul Hamid the second for the Armenian massacres.
However, in 1915 after the Ottoman Empire systematically killed 1.5 Armenians,
the American political response was much less humanitarian than it was in 1890s.
Although the American public and humanitarian groups adamantly called for similar relief actions
against the Armenians, some of which were answered,
Ultimately the American drived for oil and the Middle East led to the abandonment of Armenia.
From a political standpoint, assisting Jewish refugees in the 1930s
would have impeded American domestic concerns.
The combination of high unemployment rates after the stock market crash of 1929,
the quota women set on obtainable visas established by the 1924 Immigration Act,
an isolationist sentiment after the impact of World War I, and xenophobia caused
the United States government and people to become hesitant to allow outsiders into America.
The United States had a strict immigration policy in place that set of limit
on the number of immigrants that can enter the United States each year according to their country of origin.
This limit or quota system favored Western European immigrants over Southern or Eastern immigrants.
For example, between 1925 and 1928 the quota for Great Britain averaged about 30,000 immigrants,
Germany averaged about 49,000, Sweden averaged about 9,000, in Norway 6,000,
Bulgaria stayed an average of nine immigrants a year, Latvia 137 immigrants, and Yugoslavia 600.
The middle eastern parts of Africa or Asia were restricted to only a hundred immigrants a year
or prohibited from emigration entirely.
[Pause]
Author Lynn Olson explains in those angry days, Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's fight over
World War II, the United States initial hesitation to assist England in France against Germany,
and evaluates the debates between non-interventionists and interventionists.
[Pause]
For the non-interventionists, in her words, "we had been tricked into coming to the aid of Britain and France
in 1917 thereby losing more than fifty thousand of our young men and providing our allies
with loans that were never repaid."
"For these non-interventionists, it was not America's responsibility to assist those countries
who could not settle their own disputes," in her words.
"America's duty was to its own national security,
which would be risked if they tried to bail out the rest of Europe again."
For interventionist, "America had the duty and moral obligation to prevent the Nazi evil
from spreading throughout Europe and taking over the Western world."
In the late 1930s, the United States government believed that, in order to best promote peace
and prevent international conflict, they could not appear to take sides by interfering the armament,
or governing policies of other nations, which, hopefully, would defer Hitler from starting a war.
To American isolationists, assisting German Jews could be perceived as a threat to their sovereignty.
Congress also considered many restricting immigration and deportation bills during this time.
In 1939, representative John Dempsey from New Mexico proposed a bill to exclude and deport aliens
who supported or were affiliated with an organization that advocated the making of any changes
in American forms of government.
Robert Reynolds, senator from North Carolina, introduced five related bills
to prevent immigration or boost deportation.
On the other hand, only two refugee bills were proposed in 1939.
In addition to the Wagner Rogers bill, Representative Emanuel Celler from New York promoted an act
which stated that no alien shall be denied admission or deported if such alien is a refugee for
political, racial, or religious reasons from the country of his origin.
However, anti-immigration and refugee political proposals far outweighed
the bills that would have helped oppressed peoples.
[Pause]
And then, Anthony there is a poll question for the next slide as well.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Yup. I'm gonna try and launch that poll now.
The question itself reads: True or false, the Nazi government created hundreds of policies and mandates
that excluded Jews from German society before World War II started.
So that should be launched live now. If it's not, I will attempt to launch it again.
[Pause]
Did you see it pop up Kathryn?
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] So what I did, is I hit polls again and then there's a down arrow on the right side at the top
and you can click to go to polling to slide four. I have to click on it and it takes me to it.
[Pause]
Did that work for other people?
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] It looks like it's not live now. So, for some reason it's not launching
when I put launch. I have to end it and then relaunch it and then it works.
[Pause]
So we'll give a couple of seconds for people to answer that question.
[Pause]
It looks like about half the people have responded.
I think we'll go ahead and end that and I will share those results.
You should hopefully be able to see the results on the screen.
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] Everyone said true, which is correct, unfortunately.
[Pause]
News had reached America by the mid to late 1930s from government officials and American journalists
that Nazis were persecuting minority groups.
American magazines and newspapers regularly printed reports on rising tensions in Germany.
Americans who followed the news were made aware of Nazi persecution of the Jews which range from:
slandering propaganda, boycotts, book-burning, destruction of Jewish businesses, anti-jewish legislation
and internment in concentration camps.
The Nazi government endorsed and encouraged Jewish segregation from German society throughout the 1930s.
Marion Kaplan argues in "Between Dignity and Despair," that after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933,
the Jews of Germany were stripped of their political and economic livelihood.
An experience what she calls social death, or the deliberate acts of anti-semitism
that progressively isolated Jews more and more from German society.
They had been subjected to anti-semitism for as long as Jews had been in Germany,
but in the years leading up to World War II the tensions between German Jews and non-jewish Germans
intensified due to Nazi propaganda and policies.
In fact between 1933 and 1939, 400 decrees and regulations were created that
restricted all aspects of Jewish public and private life.
This process robbed Jews of their citizenship and enacted laws that affected Jewish employment,
access to education, where they could buy goods, where they could live, and who they could marry.
Jews were harassed, attacked, and turned and deported more and more frequently.
The Nazis anti-semitic scheme ultimately ostracized Jews in their communities and country
and increasingly struck more and more fears into their everyday lives.
Many Jews, in response, attempted to flee Nazi control.
Typically those emigrating from Germany had to register for a waiting list,
present their birth certificate and a certificate of good conduct from German authorities,
find at least one American financial supporter who would take responsibility for them,
collect transit visas, buy passage to America, and be evaluated by the United States consulate.
All of this was necessary to prove that one would not be a financial burden
or a health or national security risk to the United States.
This process was expensive and took months to complete.
The necessary immigration documents one had received prior approval for could expire before the process
was completed, which meant many applicants had to start the process over at least once.
[Pause]
And, Anthony, if you can go to the next slide please.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Did you want to start the poll?
[Kathryn Walters] Is there a poll for the fifth one? Yeah we can start the poll for that one.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] So...
[Pause]
Let's see if that works. It should be live now. Let me know in chat if you don't see it.
[Pause]
All right. I'm going to relaunch.
[Pause]
Okay
[Pause]
So the text of this poll is: had you heard of the Wagner Rogers bill before the introduction tonight?
[Pause]
[Kathryn Rogers] And I picked this question because this is what I wrote my thesis on was the Wagner Rogers Bill.
When I was trying to decide how to do my thesis, I decided that the summers between
1938 and 1939 were when America could have had a really big impact on the Jewish refugee crisis
and I looked at this bill and multiple other events but that was that was a little too broad to tackle.
But I'd never heard of the Wagner Rogers Bill and that's what we're gonna talk about in our next section,
but I had never heard of it before I was in grad school and I don't know if other people are aware of this.
That's why I wanted to ask this question to see if other people have heard of this before.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] All right. The poll has been live now for about a minute.
I'm gonna go ahead and end it and share the results so the results.
[Pause]
So, the results should be popping up on your screen.
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] Some people have heard of it. I wonder if it's the people who helped me make my exhibit for the library.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] It's possible. I will go ahead and move on to the next slide there.
[Kathryn Walters] Thank you. So, during this time the majority of American politicians either
dismissed the seriousness Jewish refugee need or did nothing to ameliorate it.
In July of 1938, 32 countries met in Evian, France to discuss the growing concern for Jewish Germans
and the potential for raising immigration quotas.
Although these countries, including the United States, expressed their sympathy for the Jews,
the majority claimed not to have the political or economic ability to raise quotas.
In response to the government's inaction, Marion Kenworthy, a child psychologist and
Clarence Pickett, the director of the American Friends Service Committee, persuaded Secretary of Labor,
Francis Perkins, and First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, to promote a bill that would challenge the US government's
strict immigration laws and allow persecuted children to come to United States and live in American homes.
The Wagner Rogers Bill named for Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of
Massachusetts and introduced in February of 1939, sought to allow
the entry of 20,000 refugee children from Germany.
Together, Kenworthy and Pickett created the Non-Sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children
and crafted a proposal to place thousands of oppressed children with host homes in the United States
in order to give them back an opportunity for a safer and more normal childhood.
This plan faced a number of challenges, but the United States government's strict immigration laws
were the most serious obstacle.
The Non-Sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children consisted of American child welfare workers,
members of the American Friends Service Committee, members of the German Jewish Children's Aid,
and leaders of American religious organizations.
The American Friends Service Committee was a Quaker relief group founded during World War I
and the German Jewish Children's Aid, a fundraising coalition, initiated in 1934 for young refugees
were two prominent associations that operated for international humanitarianism
during the Jewish refugee crisis of the 1930s.
The committee met several times between December of 1938 and July of 1939 to plan for the prospective
children's selection abroad, transportation to United States, placement in homes, and healthcare.
For the members of this committee, persecuted children in Germany had lost their right to a normal childhood.
Discrimination and persecution caused Jewish children, in particular, to face isolationism in school,
threatened the stability of their home life, and took away their access to medical care.
The committee worked vigorously for months to prepare the Wagner Rogers Bill
with congressional proposals and hearings.
The plan created by the committee became the foundation for the testimonies in support of the bill.
The preparation done by the committee was intended to allow its supporters, dominantly members
of that committee, to succinctly explain why the bill was both humane and practical,
but these objectives were heavily contested.
In late April and May of 1939, subcommittees of the Senate's committee on immigration and
the House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization
held joint hearings on the Wagner Rogers Bill.
Supporters of the bill believed that the Wagner Rogers Bill was not only manageable,
but also a necessary humanitarian response to anti-semitic tragedies in Germany.
While, opponents of the bill referred to American poverty, unemployment, and isolationism
as justifications against.
[Pause]
Anthony if you can do the next slide please.
[Pause]
Senator Reynolds, who I previously mentioned, introduced anti-immigration and deportation bills
in 1939, was the most outspoken member of Congress against the bill.
America was conflicted between staying neutral or assisting Nazi victims,
but Reynolds made his isolationist attitude clear when he pushed five anti-immigration bills in 1939,
including a proposal to stop immigration into United States for five years.
Reynolds fear of admitting refugees was not swayed by the proposal of the Wagner Rogers Bill.
Supporters of the bill stressed the humanitarian basis of it, but Reynolds claimed that this was a false idea used
to create sympathy, to relax existing immigration policies, and later change the quota system
to let in more immigrants.
Reynolds believed that America needed to be protected from alien enemies and exaggerated the idea
of foreigners commonly being criminals for people who wanted to dismantle the American political system
or ways of life.
He spoke out against people who supported increased immigration and who stated
that immigrants positively contributed to American culture.
He remained staunchly against any alteration of American immigration policy,
even in the case of victimized children.
On July 9th, the Senate Committee on immigration submitted an amendment to the Wagner Rogers Bill.
For the 20,000 children to be admitted, immigration into the United States would be prohibited for five years.
This was essentially a compromise between the Wagner Rogers Bill and Senator Reynolds Bill
to stop immigration into the United States for five years.
Wagner pulled the bill because of the injustice of this ultimatum and responded
that his goal was in, by no means, to stop immigration.
Because Wagner refused this amendment and pulled the bill, it never got to the Senate floor.
This bill shows that the members of Congress were willing to find a middle ground
between isolationism and humanitarianism.
In some capacity, Congress recognized that many parts of the bill had the potential
to be carried out successfully because the bill was not thrown outright.
Additionally, their approval meant Congress recognized the emergence of a refugee crisis.
Refugee activists and child care specialists used their experience and knowledge to demonstrate how best
to provide care for displaced persons without disturbing American stability but their arguments were thrwarted.
The bill was ultimately defeated because it was designed to take an active stance on behalf
of the growing number of refugees, but by denying asylum to the remaining Nazi victims as the amendment
called for, Congress chose to ignore a global humanitarian conflict.
[Pause]
And Anthony if you could go to the next slide please.
[Pause]
Thank you.
[Pause]
So, if you guys get the chance to go see the exhibit, one of the things that it'll bring up is the St. Louis
and this is kind of one of the more popular examples of how America could or could not
have impacted the Jewish refugee crisis.
So around the same time the Wagner Rogers Bill was pulled, the St. Louis Ocean Liner
left Hamburg, Germany for Havana, Cuba.
The ship carried 937 passengers, most of whom were German Jews.
Once they arrived in May of 1939, however, the ship and all the passengers were forced to leave
because of nullified landing documents.
The ship then turned to Miami in hopes to unload in America, but the US government also
denied the passengers because they did not have entry visas.
The ship then had to return to Europe and while the United States helped to convince Great Britain, France,
Belgium, and the Netherlands to take in the refugees, much of these areas were later occupied by
Nazi Germany and 254 of the St. Louis passengers died in the Holocaust.
[Pause]
The maximum amount of German visas were issued in 1939, but war also broke out in Europe that fall,
which made it even more difficult for European Jews to emigrate to America.
The US State Department admitted over 27,000 Germans in 1940, almost completely filling their quota,
but over 300,000 remained on a waiting list.
In 1941, the State Department restricted immigration as a national security measure and cancelled
the waiting list in Germany because US consulates in Nazi occupied areas were forced to close
in July of 1941, which trapped refugees and immigrants.
That year only 17,000 German visas were issued and 10,000 were unissued.
[Pause]
And then Anthony I believe the next one is going to be a poll question.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] I'm launching that poll.
[Pause]
The question is true or false: Assistant Secretary of State, Breckinridge Long, helped President Roosevelt
to create the War Refugee Board.
[Pause]
So, hopefully that question is displaying for you.
[Pause]
I'll let it go a few more seconds we're a little over half of the people have voted.
[Pause]
And we'll call it. It has been a minute.
[Pause]
Give me one second here and I will share the results.
[Pause]
I'm showing one vote in the results that I can see, so I'm not sure what's going on there.
[Kathryn Walters] Mine's a little different. I have eight votes for false and four votes for true.
So, again, the question was Assistant Secretary of State, Breckenridge Long, helped President Roosevelt
to create the War Refugee Board, which is false.
I'll explain why.
In 1942, US diplomats in Switzerland made the American government aware of mass persecution
in Nazi controlled territories, but the State Department covered up and ignored Jewish refugee need for years
after discovering proof of death camps in Europe.
In mid-January 1944, Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury, wrote a personal report
to the president summarizing those indiscretions.
In his words, the report began, "One of the greatest crimes in history. The slaughter of Jewish people
in Europe is continuing unabated," and nine pages detailed the procrastination, misrepresentation,
suppression of facts, deliberate interference with rescue efforts, and anti-semitism of
State Department officials, especially Breckinridge Long.
Much like Senator Reynolds, Long, then the Assistant Secretary of State, understated Jewish victimization.
Morgenthau collaborated with lawyers John Powell, who worked for the Treasury Department, and Randolph Paul
to convince President Roosevelt to take political action on behalf of Jewish refugees.
Within a week of seeing this report, the President issued executive order 9417, which established
the War Refugee Board on January 22nd, 1944.
[Pause]
Anthony if you can go to the next slide, please.
[Pause]
The president agreed that something needed to be done for the Nazi victims and the creation of
the War Refugee Board was the first time America had any policy at all to address mass murder.
Roosevelt announced the board would develop plans for the rescue, maintenance, transportation, and relief
of the victims of Nazism and, if possible, oversee safe haven for refugees who escaped Nazi occupation.
Although there remains debate that Roosevelt acted too late or did not do enough, this was a significant
humanitarian step taken by the United States government.
Morgenthou's dominant evidence against the State Department was Long's concealment of their cable
that ordered the suspension of information about the Holocaust.
First in his report to the president, he addressed the fact that the State Department had been receiving
communications from the World Jewish Congress, an organization established in 1936 in Bern, Switzerland
on behalf of Jewish communities and set up financial arraignments for the evacuation
of Jews from Romanian France.
The State Department instructed US officials, in turn, to stop sending reports about the Jewish persecution
and avoided addressing the cable for months until the Treasury Department uncovered the hidden reports.
The State Department also received cables from an individual representative of the World Jewish Congress
confirming mass execution of Jews in 1942 in extensive details of living conditions and deportation to camps,
but the State Department also tried to stop this communication with the excuse
that reports from private individuals should not be accepted.
When the Treasury Department became aware that the State Department was corresponding with
the World Jewish Congress, the State Department told them it was strictly political communication with
little significance to anyone outside the European division.
These cover-ups were proof that the State Department had obstructed information and wanted
to keep the rest of the government from learning about Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews.
They show that the president would have had cause and concrete proof of genocide almost a year and a half
before the creation of the War Refugee Board, but many members of the government purposely
worked to thwart rescue attacks.
Multiple factors contributed to the opposition of refugees assistance including: xenophobia
and economic constraints, but also a fear that it would impede military goals or bring in Communists
and resentment that it contradicted pre-existing immigration laws.
Roosevelt and Morgenthau received numerous anti-semitic letters and Senator Reynolds even questioned
the President's decision in a correspondence with Morgenthau asking as to just what ground
the president based his authority.
Permitting refugees or anyone else to enter the country outside of our quotas were in violation
of our present immigration statutes.
President Long was unsympathetic to Nazi oppression of Jewish refugees.
In his diary he claimed that the U.S. could not do anything for the Jews because they already had
immigration quotas set in place that restricted the number of people allowed to migrate to America,
that communists would disguise themselves with refugees to get into the United States,
and that assisting refugees would impede the war effort.
After the creation of the War Refugee Board, he was removed from his position
with the Visa Division and Immigration Services.
In spite of his opposition, the War Refugee Board helped thousands of Jewish refugees,
albeit a highly controversial measure.
[Pause]
Anthony if you go to the next slide please.
[Pause]
World War II began in Europe within months of the retraction of the Wagner Rogers Bill
and persecution of European Jews intensified exponentially throughout the early to mid 1940s.
In 1939 and 1940, German immigration quotas were filled, but it became almost impossible
for Jews to escape by 1941.
The Nazi government forcibly closed the United States consulates in Germany and their occupied countries,
which prevented Jewish emigration.
Additionally, the United States State Department issued fewer and fewer visas as an act of national security.
Jews trapped in Nazi controlled Europe were murdered, put in ghettos, and sent to concentration camps.
In 1944, the United States President, Franklin Roosevelt, created the War Refugee Board,
an organization to assist Jewish refugees, which saved thousands of lives.
It was the only American rescue attempt during the Holocaust.
Overall, the United States took in about 200,000 mostly Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1945.
After World War II, about 6.5 million surviving people were displaced by the conflict
and the United Nations was formed after the war, in part, to respond to Nazi atrocities.
In 1951, the United States High Commission for Refugees created a legal definition of refugees
and outlined the rights of the displaced as well as the legal obligations of states to protect them.
The American government may have been slow to come to the aid of Jewish refugees
and, in some cases, staunchly opposed to it.
However, certain actors, like the members of the Non-Sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children
and the War Refugee Board, demonstrate that some Americans not only felt responsible
for expanding refugee protection, but they also took action to initiate greater international humanitarian
cooperation throughout the Holocaust, even in the face of substantial opposition.
[Pause]
And Anthony if you can go to the next slide.
[Pause]
I'm gonna give you guys a minute to read over these.
[Pause]
Part of what I did when I wrote my my thesis was I compared rhetoric between historic and modern
anti-immigration attitudes and I made an exhibit that went up in the library and I posted these quotations
next to each other, like comparing them to what people use as arguments against immigration refugees
in the 1930s and 1940s and today's anti-immigration rhetoric.
[Pause]
As a member of the United Nations, the United States is bound to uphold refugee protocol
and shelter displaced persons.
The Refugee Act of 1980 was created in order to help refugees settle and become self-sufficient in America.
Under this legislation, the President of the United States determines the number of people allowed to enter
into a country as refugees.
President Donald Trump set this number to 30,000 refugees for 2019,
the lowest it has been since the Refugee Act was enacted.
In addition to cutting the number of refugees allowed into the United States, the Trump administration
has simultaneously pushed for limited immigration policies.
Similar to historic refugee and immigration opposition, the Trump administration has expressed that
foreigners pose a threat to national security, job safety, and the stability of the welfare state.
This continuation of anti-immigrant stance is reflected by statements for opponents of the Wagner Rogers Bill.
This racist rhetoric displayed in these statements is especially striking when compared side-by-side
with statements made by President Trump.
This rhetoric has profound impact on migrants and refugees today because it gives a sense of
political legitimacy to anti-refugee and anti-immigration attitudes.
[Pause]
And then Anthony, you can go to the last slide. Thank you.
[Pause]
In 2017, Trump signed an executive order, known as the Muslim ban, intended to stop immigration from
six predominantly Muslim countries and prevented refugees of the Syrian Civil War from
coming to United States for 120 days.
In 2018, Trump declared a national emergency when a caravan of migrants from Central America,
many of whom were escaping violence, began moving towards the United States border.
He justified this action by claiming that criminals and Middle Eastern terrorists
were using the caravan to enter the United States.
The German government legally persecuted the people of Europe for their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation,
and medical disabilities.
I hope that the horrors that followed can be used as a lesson to not only listen, but respond to the cry for help
of refugees and that the Holocaust reminds us that legality does not equate morality
and that discrimination of any kind does not belong in immigration policy.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] So, I think we've reached the end of the presentation portion.
We're open for questions.
If you're unfamiliar with Zoom and haven't used it before, if you open the participants window you should
have an option to raise your hand.
So if you want to ask your question verbally just go in and raise your hand there or
you're welcome to submit a question through the chat and Kathryn is available to take your questions.
[Pause]
So, were there any questions? I'm not seeing any in the chat and I don't see any raised hands, I don't think.
I do see some applause.
[Pause]
It looks like we have a question now from Philip Hernandez so I'm going to unmute you.
Philip, if you want to ask your question.
[Pause]
[Phillip Hernandez] So I was trying to ask if you see any parallels with Syrian refugees nowadays
between the Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and Syrian now.
[Kathryn Walters] With their experience, in particular, I'm not as familiar.
[Pause]
I more use my thesis in particular in the exhibit that I created for that to look at the rhetoric against
refugees or immigration policies.
[Pause]
But I do know that the American Holocaust Museum, at least their website, and I believe they also
have an exhibit on the Syrian refugee crisis experience.
[Pause]
I see people asking questions in the chat so I'm gonna go over to those.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Yep. I will read those questions for you and you can respond.
We have a question from Anna.
Could you talk a little bit more about FDR's rationale for withholding support of the refugee bills?
[Pause]
[Kahtryn Walters] Yeah, so this was this was a very big topic of debate when I was doing my thesis.
If you look at the historiography of how we look at America in the Holocaust, right after the war,
in particular, we viewed it as FDR was focusing on the war effort and he was upholding American public beliefs
at that time and a lot of the public during this time thought that, you know, we didn't want to get involved
in Europe, especially before the outbreak of the war.
We wanted to just be self-sufficient.
We remembered the impact that World War I had on us and we did not want to get involved with that again.
Also we were in our own bit of financial crisis after the stock market crash and helping outsiders wasn't seen
as a priority when we had our own internal problems.
And later on you'll see how it progressively became more questioning of "well was that right?"
like "were those things mutually exclusive?"
So for a long time people said that FDR was number one upholding what other Americans thought, that we
shouldn't get involved, and he was just working within the political and economic balance he already had.
Again, the United States had the 1924 Immigration Act already set in place, which didn't differentiate
between refugees and immigrants.
It said this is how many people from this country are allowed in.
So, from his point of view and for many Americans point of view at that time, helping the Jewish people
would not have benefited the United States.
It would have been bad for us economically, or some people even took as extreme as
this is a national security threat. We can't let outsiders in.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Alright and we have a question from Kiera.
Kathryn, you had a list of everything potential immigrants had to go through to apply to come here.
Given the number of items, was there a way for refugees to be in the process and make it as far as the US
only to be turned away?
[Pause]
So like if...
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] If they could like check off all those marks and get to the United States
and still be turned away?
Is that that the question?
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Yes.
[Kathryn Walters] So, we could use the example of the St. Louis Ocean Liner.
Their documents had supposedly expired by the time they got to the United States.
[Pause]
And I think also having the the economic supporter, one of the things that was on that list that you needed
in order to leave Germany, was you had to have proof that when you came to America someone would
financially support you, which was also a very big part of the Wagner Rogers Bill.
As they were gathering letters from people who had agreed to take in these children, who would agree to
pay for them, and you know like house them, and give them food.
So, you know, not being that economic constraint. The economics of it was really impactful as well.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] So Kiera clarified, have most of them checked off and be on the way here only
to be sent back? And I feel like your answer addressed that as well.
[Kathryn Walters] I think they would have had to have all of them checked off because not only was it hard
to leave Germany but they were also being monitored when they left, as well.
So if they didn't check all of these boxes they most likely wouldn't have been able to leave for the United States.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] And we have a question from Jordan.
You mentioned Secretary Long citing fear of communists hiding amongst refugees as part of his
post-war justification of his actions.
Is there any evidence to corroborate this as having been a real worry amongst to the FDR administration
in the early to mid 40s?
[Kathryn Walters] That's a really good question, actually.
[Pause]
I like that question but I don't have an answer for it, but I would like to look into that.
I'm not sure why there was such a communist fear in the early 1940s.
I mean obviously after the war it's more obvious why there's a fear of communists coming into the country.
[Pause]
I don't want to give the wrong answer here but I'm going to guess that the best way to know the answer to
that question is to look into what countries had a lot of Communists during that time that
were threats to America.
But that's a good question. I like that question. I wish I had a better answer for you.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] So if there are any other questions, feel free to raise your hand if you want to
ask verbally, otherwise you can just type something in chat and I will read it aloud.
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] I have a question that I'd like to talk about with y'all.
[Pause]
I had written it down so give me one moment.
[Pause]
It was relating to the Wagner Rogers Bill.
So, again, what happened with the Wagner Rogers Bill is that it was amended and it combined with
Senator Reynolds' proposed bill from 1939 to stop immigration into United States entirely for five years
and with the Wagner Rogers bill, which would have let these 20,000 Jewish children come into United States
and at the end of that section I said "this shows that members of Congress were willing to find
a middle ground between isolationism and humanitarianism.
In some capacity, Congress recognized that many parts of the bill had the potential to be carried out successfully
because the bill was not thrown outright.
Additionally, their approval meant Congress recognized the emergence of a refugee crisis."
So the question that I had for you all that I'd like to discuss is if you agree with that or not.
That because they found the middle ground, does that mean that they accepted that there was a refugee crisis
or what do you guys think of that?
Do you think that that's the correct point of view?
Because that was one of the questions that my thesis advisors particularly went over with me is:
[Pause]
does that amendment mean that they acknowledged that there was really a Jewish refugee crisis
and that they then ignored it?
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] I'm typing it into a poll,
[Pause]
which is an anonymous way to reply, but you're also welcome to reply in the chat.
[Pause]
I'm not seeing the ability to launch that poll, so feel free to indicate in the chat if you want.
Otherwise, I don't seem to be able to get the polling to work properly for one that wasn't prepared in advance.
[Pause]
There's a comment here from Hailey.
I feel like there was acknowledgement of the refugee crisis.
Example: the Evian conference and Wagner Rogers Bill, but I'm not sure I see no action as compromise.
[Pause]
Any other thoughts from attendees or did you have any more to add Kathryn?
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] No. That was just a big part of something I debated when I was working on my thesis.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] There's a comment from Jordan.
It is hard to give an answer here. I am curious how the bill made it through committee since the compromise,
in my opinion, is clearly slanted in such a way to prevent immigration in larger numbers than it allowed.
[Pause]
And there's another comment from Kiera.
I agree. I kind of feel like no action is a bit of typical politics, or the idea that parties could not agree.
[Pause]
Any other thoughts on that topic or other questions for Kathryn?
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] I like different points of views on this because this bill was really difficult, but it was also
extremely interesting to me because when I was first thinking about, like,
how could you say no to 20,000 children?
But I read through so much of the hearings on this bill and if you look at it, their language, the people who are
opposed to the bill don't particularly use the word children a lot or refugees, even. They use immigrants.
And they just frequently go back to "we can't afford this and, you know, even if we take them now, these
20,000 children will grow up to be adults who will take jobs from us."
So that's why I like to get different points of views on this.
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] There's a comment here from Anne.
I think the price of five years with no immigration was so steep that it wasn't much of a compromise.
And then there's a question from Haley.
Was support for this bill divided between parties?
[Pause]
[Kathryn Walters] If it was, it wasn't extremely one way or another because I remember considering that as well.
I was trying to see if like Democrats or Republicans supported this more, and I don't remember there
being one that far outweighed the other.
[Pause]
I do have, um
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] Oh, go ahead.
[Kathryn Walters] I do have one other thing that if people are more interested in especially America's decision
to get involved with not only the Jewish refugee crisis, but also the Holocaust, there was a book that I read.
It's by Christopher Nichols it's called "Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age" and
he's talking about isolationism and interventionism during this time because, again, this was something that
I had to make myself more familiar with.
I just assumed that these things were incredibly similar that if you're isolationist or you were a
non-interventionist, that those are the same thing: that you didn't want to get involved in Europe at all.
And if you would like to learn more about that, I really recommend reading this book because he argues that
isolationism/interventionism we're not usually exclusive as typically assumed when we talk about World War II.
For example isolationism was not a completely neutralist policy, it was a question of American priorities.
So, he's looking at...because isolation is also is usually, when we think of that word, we also think we'd go to
"oh well they're really xenophobic as well."
Or, like, that's the extreme people take it up to.
But in that book he's looking at, well, it shouldn't be so black and white with that.
It's a question of American priorities, so they could have seen that helping from a military point of view,
and that would be interventionism, that was beneficial, but that helping refugees was not beneficial to
American economy, for example.
So again that book is called "Promise and Peril."
It's by Christopher Nichols and it just it takes a bigger look at interventionism during that time,
if you're interested in that.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] There is a question in here from Jordan.
It seems so strange for the members of Congress to be obsessing over the cost of immigration while instituting
New Deal politics... policies. Excuse me.
It seems so strange for the members of Congress to be obsessing over the cost of immigration while
instituting New Deal policies and overseeing the biggest expansion of socialist policy in American history.
How are such projects getting approved when Congress seems to turn around and say that they cannot afford
to accept a relative handful of working people?
[Kathryn Walters] Again, this is relating to what's in America's best interest at that time.
So the New Deal policies were created to help Americans already in America and to help them
come back from that economic crisis.
And, from many people's point of views, bringing in these outsiders would be competition to what
the New Deal policies are trying to create.
[Pause]
[Anthony Wright de Hernandez] I've included in chat a link to the entry for "Promise and Peril" by
Christopher Nichols on the WorldCat library search.
WorldCat should allow you to find a copy in a library located nearby to you if you want to find that book.
[Pause]
Any other comments or questions?
[Pause]
Seeing none, I will throw up a link here for a survey about this session.
I will also throw that link into the chat so that you can access it.
It is a relatively short survey, about five or six questions and most of them are multiple-choice.
We'd really appreciate your feedback.
This is the first time that we've done a fully Zoom online presentation like this,
so I'd love to hear what you think of it.
Or, you can also access the survey using the QR code on the screen.
So I'd like to thank everyone for coming.
I'd really like to thank Kathryn for being willing to adapt this talk into an online format and for putting in the
effort to do polling as a part of it to make it a little more interactive in its online format.
Kathryn is located out in Colorado and joined us from there, since she was not able to physically travel here
due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, we do have a couple of additional programs that will be coming up that are also in this online format.
You're welcome to join.
Some of them are in the middle of the day, one of them is in the evening again, but you can find them at
tiny.cc/VTaath and I just threw that link into the chat so information about that is there.
And yeah I think we'll call that a presentation.
Thank you everyone for coming.
[Kathryn Walters] Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. Thank you