#4: FDR, America & Jewish Refugee Policies

In the spring of 1938, after the Anschluss in Austria, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt undertook a conspicuous but feeble rescue program to try and resettle overseas victims of the German Nazi party, both Jews and Christians. The President been under pressure from Jewish leaders as well as notable publicists such as Dorothy Thompson and the Anschluss focused attention on the plight of Jews in Austria.

Roosevelt wanted to aid the Jews, but his hands were tied by both Congress and the American people. If there was less of the virulent anti-Semitism in America that was exhibited in Europe, there was still plenty of prejudice, which led to exclusions of Jews from some residential neighborhoods, resorts, and clubs, and also made it difficult to obtain work in some occupations. In the 1920s, many of the elite colleges and universities had instituted quotas.

The opposition to admitting refugees into the United States was very strong in 1938. It was believed the refugees would compete for scarce jobs during the Depression, and there was a danger of outbursts of anti-Semitism -- even though anger toward the Nazis was strong. The restrictions had already been agitating to FDR who had been expediting the flow of refugees from Germany within the limited quota. As in matters of collective security, the President had little room to maneuver.

In March 1938, Roosevelt informed the State Department that he wanted to liberalize procedures under existing legislation, to appeal to Latin American republics to take in refugees, and on a long-term basis to expedite travel documents and circumvent legal disabilities. The first immediate step was to make full use of existing quotas.

On March 25, 1938, sitting with Ambassador Bullitt in his Ford roadster at the side of the road in Warm Springs, Georgia, Roosevelt told reporters that since Germany had absorbed Austria, the government had merged their immigration quotas, making it possible for 26,000 refugees per year to come to America -- the actual number was over 27,000. When asked if that would take care of all who wanted to leave, the President said he had no idea, but he did emphasize that Christians as well as Jews would be among those granted sanctuary.

The change, which FDR did not point out, was that he would encourage full use of the German quota. Since the Hoover administration in 1931, as a response to the Depression, had placed impediments o the way of immigration, it had flowed far below quota levels. There is little indication that Roosevelt could have done more within the United States as Congress protested sharply to even this mild gesture. A July 1938 Fortune poll indicated that less than 20 percent of the American people supported Roosevelt's action, while more than two-thirds agreed that "with conditions as they are we should try to keep them out." Only 4.9 percent supported the raising of the quotas.

Even though public opinion was against him, the President persisted with his program, regretting all the while that the U.S. could accommodate no more than a small proportion of the political refugees. Between the Anschluss and the attack on Pearl Harbor, some 150,000 refugees entered the United States; only Palestine, which admitted 55,000, came close in number.

A bigger effort by FDR was to persuade other nations to take in refugees and to seek private funds to finance the enterprise. While the League of Nations had a refugee program and there were also three international refugee organizations, Roosevelt wanted to establish a new entity under his own auspices, and this resulted in the Evian conference. The President invited thirty-two nations, of which Italy and South Africa declined to attend, and the conferees agreed with the principle that discrimination against minority groups and the disregard of human rights were contrary to accepted standards of civilization. But then one after the other, the delegates explained why his country could not accept refugees. On the Domincan Republic offered to accept refugees, of which nearly 500 had arrived by June 1942.

Growing out of the Evian conference was the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, which sought means to resettle those being persecuted by the Nazis. After war broke on in September 1939, Roosevelt was eager to further the success of the committee and urged it to study uninhabited areas in order to prepare for the 10 or 20 million refugees he thought would need to be resettled after the war ended.

In 1940, FDR created the secret "M" Project under the leadership of Henry Field, an archaeologist and anthropologist, to compile studies on possible areas for settlement throughout the world. A favorite plan involved irrigating North African deserts with desalinized water to make them habitable for refugees. But the scheme the President pressed with the most energy was to settle the grasslands of Venezuela with "a virile, democracy-loving white population over a period of four or five generations." The Venezuelan government balked, even as FDR tried to make his scheme look like something more than a refuge for Jews.

The territory of Alaska refused to accept an elaborate proposal which Roosevelt baited with the promise of considerable funds for new development. The Alaskan territorial legislature, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and Senator Homer Bone of Washington successfully lobbied against bills before Congress. The proposal, wrote historian David Wyman, foundered "on the rock of nativism, anti-Semitism, and economic insecurity."

The Nazi pogrom of November 9-10, 1934, which became known as Kristallnacht -- the Night of Broken Glass -- created a strong wave of revulsion in America -- 94 percent of Americans polled said they disapproved of the Nazi treatment of Jews. Yet this reaction led to little actual help for Jewish refugees. Roosevelt read a statement of protest and recalled the U.S. ambassador to Berlin -- and did not send him or any other ambassador back to Berlin. The Pogrom did not help Roosevelt increase the number of refugees accepted by the U.S., but it did help him in increasing American defense measures.

Source:

Freidel, F. (1990). Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny. Boston: Little, Brown.