Eva Lassman Memorial Writing Contest: Could America Have Helped More?

Rosie Zhou, an eighth-grader at Chase Middle School, won first place in the middle school division of the Eva Lassman Memorial Writing Contest. Here is her essay:

“(The refugees) were welcomed nowhere and could be assimilated nowhere. Once they had left their homeland they remained homeless, once they had left their state they remained stateless; once they had been deprived of their human rights they were rightless, the scum of the earth.” – Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was a Jewish-American political theorist. She was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906 and forced to escape her home during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen in 1950. She spent the rest of her life until her passing in 1975 teaching and writing to ensure the Holocaust could never happen again. Arendt lost her home, but she was actually one of the lucky ones. In the years prior to the Holocaust, many Jews and other victimized peoples tried to flee from Europe to start a better life in another country. They sensed that conditions in their homeland would continue to worsen, and wanted to escape the increasing hate and mistreatment toward them. However, rescue of these refugees was not a priority for most countries. In fact, they were often turned back to Europe, all hope driven out of them, feeling like nobody wanted them and that they no longer had a home or place to feel welcomed. Similar to most other countries, the United States did not welcome refugees from Europe. Although the U.S. could have helped many more refugees, it chose not to because of the negative public and government attitudes toward the issue.

America was having a hard time itself in the 1930s. The Great Depression had just begun, soon after the stock market crash of October 1929. Many people were jobless, homeless, and struggling to live. They did not want more refugees to come into America because that would have meant more competition for jobs. At that time, jobs were at an all-time low. In fact, “By 1930, 4 million Americans looking for work could not find it,” and in 1931 “that number had risen to 6 million.” With all of these struggling people living in a country that was going through the worst economic depression it had ever seen, few Americans really cared about what was going on in other countries, and even fewer wanted to help them. It is important to remember, however, that although economic concerns partially explained why American attitudes toward immigration were so unwelcoming, strong feelings of xenophobia, mistrust, and even anti-Semitism also played a big role.

Anti-Semitism and other hateful feelings were propagated by leaders like Father Charles Coughlin and Henry Ford. Coughlin, known as “the Radio Priest,” was the first to offer Catholic religious services over the radio and reached millions of people through each broadcast. In addition to his religious message, Coughlin taught anti-Semitism, “accusing the Jews of manipulating financial institutions and conspiring to control the world.” He also published a newspaper in 1938 called Social Justice, which was directly aimed at attacking Jewish people. At a speech Coughlin gave in the Bronx – perhaps his most famous – he gave a Nazi salute and yelled out, “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing!” Industrialist Ford was another prominent voice spreading anti-Semitism. He published anti-Semitic material in his newspaper the Dearborn Independent. This newspaper was then spread through Ford Motor dealerships all across the country. These two Americans, and many more, influenced millions of people with their hateful words. Soon, many people began to have strong feelings of hatred toward refugees, Jews, and in reality, anybody who was “different” from themselves. The Great Depression intensified these feelings. In 1939, 83 percent of Americans were opposed to the admission of refugees.

As a result of the American public and government’s dismal attitude toward immigration, many people fleeing for their lives were not allowed into the U.S. and forced to go back to Europe. Perhaps the best example of this is what is now known as the Voyage of the St. Louis. On May 13, 1939, a German ocean liner named St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, to Havana, Cuba. There were 937 passengers on board, and almost all of them were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most of them were German citizens, and had applied for U.S. visas. They planned to stay in Cuba only until they could enter the United States. However, the passengers were denied entry to Cuba because of immigration policies similar to those of the United States. From there, the St. Louis sailed for the docks of Florida, but this journey was pointless. U.S. officials said visas could only be granted to the passengers by denying visas to the thousands of Jews further up on the waiting list and therefore refused to allow entry. (This waiting list was a result of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924, which limited the German-Austrian immigration quota to 27,370 in 1939. This quota was quickly filled, and there was a waiting list of at least several years.) The refugees, after being denied entrance to Cuba and America, were deported back to Europe, where many of them perished during the next few years. President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to let in the St. Louis refugees, but political concerns such as the general public’s hostility toward immigrants and his consideration of running for a third term stopped him from doing so. Roosevelt was not the only one who could have saved many lives but chose not to because of the public’s attitude. Three months before the St. Louis sailed, congressional leaders in both U.S. houses allowed to die in committee a bill that would have admitted 20,000 Jewish children from Germany above the existing quota.

The United States could have helped many more refugees from Europe, but it chose not to because of the negative general public and government attitudes. Despite these obstacles, “more than 200,000 Jews managed to escape to the U.S. from 1933 to 1945, most of them arriving before the end of 1941.” Unfortunately, “by the time the United States entered the war in December 1941, American consulates had already closed in most of Europe and it became nearly impossible for refugees to escape the continent.” If Americans had been more open to immigration and set their fears aside, we could have saved many more people from the atrocities happening in Nazi Germany. After the Holocaust, many Americans felt that they should have helped more. But that was hindsight, and the Holocaust was already over. Eleven million people had already been killed. Today, history seems to be repeating itself in America. Recent immigration policies have sent thousands of refugees back to where they tried to leave from. Many people’s attitudes toward immigration are very similar to those during the Holocaust.

Have we learned too little from history? If we see people in need of sanctuary, we must help them and give them refuge. It is our responsibility as mankind to help our fellow human beings in need, no matter their religion, gender, or ethnicity. For the sake of humanity.