The U.S. and the Holocaust

1
The U.S. and the Holocaust

• 1933-1945

2
Nazism

• 1933- Hitler in power
• Anti-Semitism became the official policy of
  Germany
• 1933-1937- 130,000 Jews flee Germany
• 1935- Nuremberg Laws- stripped German Jews of
  their citizenship
• November 1938- Kristallnacht- Nazi organized
  attacks against Jews mass arrests of Jews and
  sent to concentration camps

3
U.S. Reaction

• 1938- Evian France Conference-29 nations met to
  discuss the growing number of Jewish refugees
  U.S. does not change its immigration laws
• U.S. had rigid national quotas and no provisions
  for asylum for racial, religious or political
  persecution
• 1939- St. Louis carrying 900 German Jews were not
  allowed to enter the U.S. they returned to
  Europe and many were killed in death camps

4
WW II

• September 1939- Germany invades Poland
• 2 million Polish Jews under Nazi control
• June 1941- Germany invades U.S.S.R.
• 1942- Wannsee Conference- Nazi officials decide
  on the final solution to the Jewish question
  established death camps to carry out the genocide
  of European Jews

5
U.S. Reaction

• 1942- government officials in Washington have
  evidence of the Holocaust
• Government indifference
• 1944- Allied bombers flying close to death camps
• War Department rejected a plan to bomb the
  railroads leading to the death camps
• 1944- FDR created the War Refugee Board that
  helped finance rescue attempts
• 1945- estimated 6 million Jews killed