Read Online 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany by Steven Pressman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steven Pressman
Tags: NF-WWII
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Austria, combining the quotas actually resulted in better odds for Austrian Jews to obtain visas for the United States.
Gil was surprised, meanwhile, to discover that the annual quota for Germany had never been filled throughout the 1930s. This was largely due to a combination of procedural roadblocks and an initial reluctance on the part of German Jews to fully grasp the severity of Nazi policies. In 1933, during Hitler’s first year in power, only 1,445 German immigrants—slightly more than 5 percent of the quota—came to the United States. Three years later, as Hitler’s policies began to weigh more heavily on Germany’s Jewish population, the quota had still only been 27 percent filled, with 6,642 refugees entering the country. Even as late as 1938, at which point there was no longer any doubt about the gravity of the Jews’ plight, the quota remained less than two-thirds filled. During Hitler’s first six years as Germany’s Nazi dictator, more than 106,000 quota spaces for would-be refugees from that country went unused.
The Anschluss, reinforced by the shocking violence of Kristallnacht, dramatically altered the algorithm of the combined German and Austrian quota. Suddenly Jews seeking visas inundated the American consulates in Germany and Austria. Unfortunately, those seeking safe haven in the United States were stymied both by America’s immigration laws and the burdensome bureaucratic responses on the part of American government officials responsible for interpreting and carrying out those laws. “The Department of State was not set up for rapid action or for humanitarianism,” Henry Morgenthau, President Roosevelt’s treasury secretary, wrote in his diary at the time. “The typical foreign service officer lived off paper. His instinct was always toward postponement, on the hallowed theory of all foreign offices that problems postponed long enough will solve themselves. Moreover, many State Department officials had small personal sympathy for the humble and the downtrodden. . . . The horrors of Dachau or Buchenwald were beyond their conception. They dealt with human lives at the same bureaucratic tempo and with the same lofty manner that they might deal with a not very urgent trade negotiation.”
It hardly helped matters during this period that the State Department was filled with senior officials who were openly anti-Semitic or did little to conceal anti-Jewish attitudes. As early as 1934, James Wilkinson, a senior official in the State Department’s visa division, warned that a more sympathetic view of the inflexible 1924 immigration law would create “a grave risk that Jews would flood the United States.” In a memo to A. Dana Hodgdon, chief of the visa division, Wilkinson also wrote: “Experience has taught us that Jews are persistent in their endeavors to obtain immigration visas, that Jews have a strong tendency, no matter where they are, to allege that they are the subjects of either religious or political persecution [and] that Jews have constantly endeavored to find means of entering the United States despite the barriers set up by our immigration laws.”
Sitting in his law office with the dizzying array of immigration figures and quota numbers spread out in front of him, Gil almost certainly had to question his own ability to overcome the monumental challenge of bringing Jewish children into the United States. He quickly realized that he would need to find someone at the State Department in Washington who could better explain the intricacies of the quota system and perhaps offer at least a sense of whether there might be even a remote chance of getting children out of Germany and into America. Gil himself did not know anyone at the State Department, but he knew someone else in Washington who might be able to help.
Leon Sacks was a few years younger than Gil, but the two men had come to know each other through various Philadelphia connections. Sacks was born and raised in
Gil was surprised, meanwhile, to discover that the annual quota for Germany had never been filled throughout the 1930s. This was largely due to a combination of procedural roadblocks and an initial reluctance on the part of German Jews to fully grasp the severity of Nazi policies. In 1933, during Hitler’s first year in power, only 1,445 German immigrants—slightly more than 5 percent of the quota—came to the United States. Three years later, as Hitler’s policies began to weigh more heavily on Germany’s Jewish population, the quota had still only been 27 percent filled, with 6,642 refugees entering the country. Even as late as 1938, at which point there was no longer any doubt about the gravity of the Jews’ plight, the quota remained less than two-thirds filled. During Hitler’s first six years as Germany’s Nazi dictator, more than 106,000 quota spaces for would-be refugees from that country went unused.
The Anschluss, reinforced by the shocking violence of Kristallnacht, dramatically altered the algorithm of the combined German and Austrian quota. Suddenly Jews seeking visas inundated the American consulates in Germany and Austria. Unfortunately, those seeking safe haven in the United States were stymied both by America’s immigration laws and the burdensome bureaucratic responses on the part of American government officials responsible for interpreting and carrying out those laws. “The Department of State was not set up for rapid action or for humanitarianism,” Henry Morgenthau, President Roosevelt’s treasury secretary, wrote in his diary at the time. “The typical foreign service officer lived off paper. His instinct was always toward postponement, on the hallowed theory of all foreign offices that problems postponed long enough will solve themselves. Moreover, many State Department officials had small personal sympathy for the humble and the downtrodden. . . . The horrors of Dachau or Buchenwald were beyond their conception. They dealt with human lives at the same bureaucratic tempo and with the same lofty manner that they might deal with a not very urgent trade negotiation.”
It hardly helped matters during this period that the State Department was filled with senior officials who were openly anti-Semitic or did little to conceal anti-Jewish attitudes. As early as 1934, James Wilkinson, a senior official in the State Department’s visa division, warned that a more sympathetic view of the inflexible 1924 immigration law would create “a grave risk that Jews would flood the United States.” In a memo to A. Dana Hodgdon, chief of the visa division, Wilkinson also wrote: “Experience has taught us that Jews are persistent in their endeavors to obtain immigration visas, that Jews have a strong tendency, no matter where they are, to allege that they are the subjects of either religious or political persecution [and] that Jews have constantly endeavored to find means of entering the United States despite the barriers set up by our immigration laws.”
Sitting in his law office with the dizzying array of immigration figures and quota numbers spread out in front of him, Gil almost certainly had to question his own ability to overcome the monumental challenge of bringing Jewish children into the United States. He quickly realized that he would need to find someone at the State Department in Washington who could better explain the intricacies of the quota system and perhaps offer at least a sense of whether there might be even a remote chance of getting children out of Germany and into America. Gil himself did not know anyone at the State Department, but he knew someone else in Washington who might be able to help.
Leon Sacks was a few years younger than Gil, but the two men had come to know each other through various Philadelphia connections. Sacks was born and raised in
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