Complex social and political factors shaped America's response to the Holocaust, from Kristallnacht in 1938 through the liberation of the death camps in 1945. For a short time, the U.S. had an opportunity to open its doors, but instead erected a "paper wall," a bureaucratic maze that prevented all but a few Jewish refugees from entering the country. When do you think the government should have become involved in helping the Jews and what should it have done? What were the factors that prevented the government from helping Jewish refugees enter the country?
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I believe the government should have become involved with helping the Jews when the government had a better plan. I dont think the US was ready for all these people to come into the country and start taking away jobs from people who were already living here. I also argee with James and Sarah with if we let a large amount of people into the country, they would need food, shelter, and a job which would have taken away from people who are already in the US. The factors that prevented the government from helping the jewish refugees enter the country was that the government didnt quite know what was going on with the death camps that were happening.
I wasn't in school on Tuesday
I wasn't in class on Tuesday
The factors that prevented America from intervening were the citizens already residing in the country. The country was coming off of the Great Depression and the people worried that if new immigrants came into the country jobs would become scarce again and then possibly lead to a recession or another depression. There was also a perception in Newspapers and magazines that Jews were causing trouble across the country so adding more Jews was not a popular decision at all for U.S. Despite coming off the Great Depression and such America should have intervened by declaring war early on Germany and getting the U.N. involved and get Hitler taken out of office. America got involved in the war and was too late for 6 million jews. If America intervened sooner who knows how many lives could have been saved.
I believe that the government should have been involved in helping the Jewish people earlier on the in the war. However, they should have had plans on how to help all these people without having to give away a lot of american jobs. I think what prevented the government from helping was a lack of knowledge of the death camps, and that there was such an unemployment crisis as soon as they started bringing the Jews into the country.
I believe that America should've gotten involved in the Holacust when they first had a chance to. At that time the Americans were capable of assisting the Jewish people, but neglected to due to their prejudice against immigrants taking jobs in America. Along with the Jewish people taking American jobs, many people in America didn't fully comprehend the treatment the Jews were recieving.
I believe that our government should have had a more active role in aiding the Jewish people as soon as it became apparent that their entire people was in danger until Nazi rule. I beleive that it was apparent early on, before the mass killings began, and it's dissapointing to know that we, as a country, did very little to ease their suffering. I do understand the government's hesitastion to help the Jews due to their stigma coupled with the fact that they were all refugees now with no home. They could become a liability to America's already weak socio-economic structure.
I think that the government should have gotten involved when the nazis started captureing the Jewish people and putting them in the concentration camps. The U.S. should have steeped in to try to help them and they should have gotten support from there allies that were against the Germans. Some things that prevented the U.S. from helping Jewish refugees is that we had our own war to fight and it was with the Japanese. So it was difficult because we had troops fighting in Europe and fighting for the country in Japan and in the U.S. So it was difficult for the U.S. to fight to wars at a time and that made it hard to help the Jewish people.
I think that the US should have become more active in helping the Jews search for another place of refugee and if another place couldn't be found, they could come to the US until the situation was resolved. The government should have done this because Hitler had written that it was his goal to exterminate the Jews; since we didn't help, thats what he did.
There were several factors that prevented the Jews from coming to the US. The first is the immigration act of 1924 that was ratified. It limited the number of immigrants from certain countries and the German Jews had too many immigrants to enter according to the act. The other factor was the level of anti-semitisim by US citizens. Much of the population was also anti-semetic, this also didn't help the Jews in Germany.
I think the government should have started hepling the Jews as soon as the Nazis began their extreme discrimination against them. The issue was though that the american government wouldn't have been able to do much for them. Even in america, people had very stong anti semetic feelings. If the US government brought in even a portion of the Jews being tormented in Germany, the american people would strongly oppose this. I think another factor that prevented the government from helping the Jews was the sheer number of them in germany. American would not have been able to bring in the Jewsih refugees without many issues. When they got here, they would need a place to live, a job, food, and many other things. I just dont think america had the resources to provide these things to the jews during this time.
I think the U.S government should have gotten involved in helping the jews when the Nazi's started deporting Jews into Ghettos. the enviornemtn in the Ghetos were extrememly horrid and thats when the death began to climb, so i thnk that would have been a good starting point for the Americans to join in. Jews weren't exactly wanted in the U.S because they were seen as people who were going to take away jobs from other American citizens.
In my opinion,the U.S government should have been much more acttive in helping jews in europe and letting them into the country.Despite the problems this would cause such as loss of jobs for Americans, I believe it is fsr more important to protect millions of people who are all in danger of being mass murdered.
The American governmeny should have gotten involved with helping the Jews when the Holocaust started. The should have gotten involved at the first chance they had. I believe they didn't get involved because they didn't want America to be harmed and have jobs taken away. They probably didn't want to start a war with Germany in America so they stayed out of it, but definitely could have prevented the harsh treatment and deaths of millions of innocent people.
America could have done more to stop the Holocasut from being as brutal is it was. Also the U.S had issues of its own that it had to attend to although I do not think that this should havce taken precedence over the biggest genocide of all time. the bystanders were the fuel to this awful tragedy.
I believe that the American government should’ve become involved sooner than it did, however I also think that their approach, although it was late, was affective. Once America was aware of the monstrosities that were occurring in Nazi Germany, it would’ve been ideal for their involvement to begin then. I think the hesitation to assist the Jews and allow them to come into the country originated from the American people, not its government. The Jewish people that were entering the country took the jobs of some Americans, which of course did not go over well with the American people. Similar to immigration issues today, American citizens feel as if they are entitled to the best jobs and economic standing; this is why the Jewish immigrants became an issue. There was also a smaller number of American’s that began believing in the way of the Nazis, and began Anti-Semitic organizations. Although the numbers were smaller than that of the German Nazi party, this aspect also had an effect on the resistance of Jewish immigrants. I think America’s involvement was practically necessary, and it’s approach was effective and supportive, but ideally there could’ve been a higher level of involvement supporting the Jewish people at this time in history.
I think the United States should have made an effort to help the Jews as soon as they had learned of the situation in Germany. The United States enabled these events in Germany to happen and allowed for them to continue. If the United States had at least allowed more than a few refugee Jews enter the country, many lives would have been spared. In addition to simply allowing the Jews to enter the country, I think the United States should have also made other attempts to help those Jews that were stuck in Germany. By passing the new immigration laws, the US made it impossible for the Jews to enter the country and ultimately sent them straight back to Germany. There were feelings of antiseminism in the US at this time and the Americans also believed that the Jews would have damaging political effects on the country. The new immigration policies were developed as a result of these feelings in the US.
I think that the government should have taken action for the Jews the moment they realized what was going on. They should have been more proactive in allowing more Jewish immigrants into the country, instead of having blatant bias prejudice reflected through their Immigration Laws. They also could have intervened by sending US troops into Europe. Some factors that prevented the government from helping the Jewish refugees enter the country were a lot of the US citizens. The growing number of Jews were considered as an imposed threat to Americans and they thought that the Jews brought them down financially. The attitude of US citizens was also a factor that prevented the government from bringing in the Jewish refugees. Antisemitism became a way of life throughout America and certain places were closed to Jews. There were also job restrictions on certain occupations that could not be practiced, due to one being Jewish.
So this is the unpopular opinion, but I think that increasing the Immigration Laws was somewhat of a good thing. The paper wall prevented an over population of immigrant jews in America, it prevented us from becoming Germany's dumping ground. Immigration is still a tricky subject today because it really comes down to sounding racist to a particular group when it is not. If there are to many people in one place there will be less jobs, less food, less homes and for those who are born in America and have worked hard in their home country to make a name for themselves, to have that taken away by someone who has just moved here quickly becomes a problem. I have nothing wrong with immigrants. Once a person has done all of the steps and filled out the paperwork, htye are free to come in as they please. But people who just appear one day in large masses just becomes to much for us as a country to handle. I do believe that Military wise the U.S should have gotten involved sooner. Once any words of these horrors were happening the U.S should have begun preparing itself to confront Germnay. As one of the super powers of the world, as well as people with morals, it seemed like it was the right thing to do. I understand if the military needed some time to prepare, bu they seemed incredibly late to arrive.
I think that the US should have become involved from the start. The problem though is that the public opinion at the time was very negative. People held very antisemetic views and not many people were ready to go back to war after the first World War. There were also problems with the sheer number of refugees who required shelter, food, and all of the other essentials. All of these issues prevented action but turning refugees away from entering the US often times meant death. In the end even though action would have brought on a whole lot of problems it would have saved possibly millions of lives.
If this was a perfect world, then the government would not have needed to erect a paper wall preventing Jewish refugees, but we had our own problems going on in the country. We were still recovering from the great depression, and many Americans wanted to shut the borders to immigrants so that they could get jobs first. Unemployment, antisemitism and the Immigration Act of 1924, along with our involvement with Japan during WWII, kept the focus of the US on recovery and away from other countries.
I think the US could have done something earler than it did. Even though FDR was the only national figurehead in the world to speak out against Hitler, his policy was to help the Jews by "winning the war." But they could have attempted to liberate camps and attack the Nazi party, as well as offer asylum in our own counrty.
I think that the United States should have become more involved in helping the Jews, especially when they learned about the violence that was taking place. I believe the United States should have let the Jewsih refugees into the country, because it was one of their only ways out of the horrific sitution. The government did not want the Jews in the country because of the rise of anit-semitism feelings.
I think the U.S. should help the Jews, the Germans killed everyone they met and many Jews wanted to enter this country but do not let them pass, to take refuge in the United States thinking that Jews essentially focusing on U.S. problems
I wasn't in class on Tuesday.
I feel as though the United States should not have formed a maze of legal traps and setbacks to discourage the immigration of one particular people. As one of the major world powers, America should have the responsibility to respond to cries for help from other people. America claims to be the "land of the free and the home of the brave". By not accepting Jews, they were not only taking away their chance at freedom, they were also indirectly condemning many of them to death, whom otherwise may have been saved. Additionally, it is not very brave to shy away from the problem due to the associated risk. The brave thing to do in this case would be to stand up for our country's morals and ideals, rather than let people die for our own apathy.
I think the United States should have helped the Jews when they entered this country ilegally because their country is dangerous. People just killed them at that time. They needed help because when they came here they didn't have money , jobs or food.
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