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U.s. Indifference And The Holocaust

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U.S. Indifference to the Holocaust

On November 25, 1942, approximately three years after Hitler started World War II The New York Times ran their first report that the Nazis had created a policy to eradicate the Jews of Europe. This story, confirmed by the State Department, did not run on the front page. It appeared on page 10 (Ostrow). President Franklin Roosevelt could have made this a major issue, but he said and did nothing. Other popular magazines such as Time, Life, and Newsweek reported virtually nothing on this topic (Ostrow). The people of the United States preferred not to know. If the United States had not practiced an isolationist foreign policy rooted in anti-Semitism, the Holocaust death toll could have been reduced because the killing would have been limited.
The reasons behind this compulsion are complex and disturbing. However, the facts are clear. In Robert Schulzinger’s book U.S. Diplomacy Since 1900, he explores how World War I created an environment of isolationism where the U.S. felt justified in remaining silent against Hitler’s tyranny. David Wyman goes a step further and explains that it wasn’t only the effects of World War I that were behind these policies, but anti-Semitism that drove America’s choice to remain silent. This choice to remain silent manifested itself in the immigration laws that were passed during the World War II era that capped immigration from areas under Hitler’s rule.
Following World War I, the United States entered a period

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