Americans and the Holocaust
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Through 2021
What did we know and when did we know it? And what could have been done?
These are the questions posed by a new long-term exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Americans and the Holocaust.” And behind them is a long-simmering indictment. The accusations: that there was a continuous refusal before World War II to accept larger numbers of Jewish refugees; that there was a seeming refusal during the war to accept the scale of the murders; and that there was an outright refusal late in the war to expend any military effort in disrupting the Nazi killing machine.
We see the newsmagazines of the 1930s that reacted to Hitler’s rise; newsreels giving voice to native-grown American fascist wannabes; polls that revealed a resistance to getting involved in the growing conflicts; and excerpts of movies like “Casablanca” and “The Great Dictator” that began to confront the storm. The narrative carries considerable weight, partly because of the effort expended in understanding American action and inaction. It would have carried still more had other impulses not interfered.In treating the history chronologically the exhibition draws our attention to the sentiments of the period. There is, for example, the strong pull of isolationism in the 1930s (a force that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to placate) as well as fear of economic collapse and wariness of foreign refugees. These attitudes, we also see, were not the result of ignorance. A crowdsourced sampling of American regional newspapers from the 1930s is offered on a touch-screen map, showing that Nazi mistreatment of Jews was widely reported. Touch-screen access to later reporting gives cogent evidence of how much was known about Nazi atrocities.
The refugee issue gets particular attention in a gallery dominated by graphics that suggest an ever increasing need was met by ever increasing resistance. The Immigration Act of 1924 permitted a maximum of 25,957 visas from Germany annually. But in 1933, only 1,241 were issued and there was a three-year waiting list. In 1939, when Nazi territories included Austria (with a 27,370 quota) and others (2,874), the limits were met but left a 11-year waiting list. In 1939, bills that proposed admitting 20,000 German refugee children never made it through Congress. After late 1941, there was no escape: Germany banned Jewish emigration from its territories.More affecting still are stories accessed through a touch-screen table. In 1939, Flora Hochsinger, living in Nazi-occupied Vienna, wrote to a woman referred to her: Harriet Postman in Waltham, Mass. Hochsinger said she had a Ph.D., worked for 32 years as a mathematics teacher, studied psychology with Alfred Adler, ran a children’s home in Vienna, knew needle-work and belt-making, and sought work. Ms. Postman contacted the White House, the State Department, celebrities, the agency B’nai B’rith and friends, but never found a sponsor. Hochsinger was deported from Vienna in 1942 and executed by a Nazi killing squad.To where do these accounts lead? In the final galleries, we see the duplicity of at least one official at the State Department— Breckinridge Long —intent on keeping out Jewish refugees. We learn about the too-little-known War Refugee Board established by Roosevelt early in 1944 to help address a problem belatedly acknowledged; among its modest achievements was a camp of 982 refugees from 18 countries established in Oswego, N.Y. And why wasn’t say, Auschwitz bombed? An animated map shows the slow Allied progress compared with the killing centers’ speedy work: By D-Day more than 5 million Jews had already been murdered. But even in late 1944, something might have still been done. Two letters in the exhibition capture the vexed nature of the issue: Dohn Pehle, director of the war Refugee Board, urges that bombing take place; Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy responds that the priority must be “the earliest possible victory over Germany.” CONTINUE AT SITE
