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
When one looks through the history of the last century, many great atrocities can come to mind. However, the one that is the most common is that of the Holocaust during World War II. People often wonder how something like this could have been allowed to happen. These same people wonder this without realizing that something similar has happened, right within their own shores. Not only this, but they do not realize how previously close we could become to having this happen again.
Chapter 25 discusses the United States and the Second World War from 1939-1945. The United States wanted to stay out of international affairs but the newly elected Roosevelt advocated for an active role in it. Though he wanted a role in this, his priority was to attack the domestic causes of the depression which appealed to many poor Americans who were suffering from the Great Depression and had just lost everything. During this time, fascist governments threatened military aggression and the rise of Hitler created a controversial and war-like atmosphere. Hitler had a goal to avenge the defeat of WW1 which lead to the accusations of Jews, and the eventual full-blown Holocaust. Neutrality acts were put into place during this time to prohibit the exchange of arms to nations during the war.
This article has information on how the world reacted when they heard about what the German Nazis were doing to the Jews. The article has information titled: News Of Exterminating Reaches of U.S, President Roosevelt’s Apparent Reluctance To help Europe’s Jews, The Bermuda Conference, War Refugee Board, and bombing Railways And Auschwitz. In August 1942, the representative of the World Jewish Congress, Gerhart Riegner, in Switzerland heard about as German plan to obliterate the Jews in Europe. Riegner immediately took the information he had and show it so the American consulate in Geneva, where Riegner asked The Vice-Council, Howard Elting Jr., to show the information to Washington and other Allied governments. After the State Departments established
Through out history there’s a ground breaking event that forces society to reform its beliefs. The Holocaust was one of these events, refugees were persecuted in a number of ways and society had a choice to help, become isolated, or to confirm any persecution as ok or right. In every choice our society has depicted that there's a right and a wrong decision to everything; it was wrong for U.S legislation to not give their best efforts to help refugees of the Holocaust it lead to future prejudices and the suffering of millions.
Antisemitism, the hatred for the Jewish people, has been called the longest hatred in history. This history is deep rooted and has existed for thousands of years, taking different forms throughout its existence, and intensifying up until and through the Holocaust, to then diminish to an extent but still be prevalent in most societies. Antisemitism exists in different forms, religious, ethnic, and political. The presence of Christianity as the predominant religion in Europe can be noted as a driving factor in religious and ethnic antisemitism, as can the Holocaust. Whereas instances such as the Islamic view on Judaism can be
The human tragedy of the Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II. The adversity of this persecution influenced not only the European arena, but also peoples from all over the globe and their ideas.
The extermination of Jewish people during World War II was a horrific and merciless event that was effectively stopped by the Allies. Once the Allies became aware of the Holocaust, they immediately took action to end it. There have been countless suggestions of what the Allies could have done to prevent the Holocaust, however those would not have been as effective as the solution the Allies had put in place. Despite arguments that the Allies did not make a strong attempt to saving the Jews, by putting all their resources into the complete defeat of Nazi Germany, they were essentially doing all they could.
Antisemitism is to blame for the lack of concern among non-Jews during the up rise of the Holocaust.
In the years of the Second World War, American leaders were aware of the plan of the Germans to exterminate all the Jews in Europe, yet they did not act to save them. The attitude in society and the state of the economy in the years leading up to the war made for conditions that did not make saving them likely.
Eventually, President Roosevelt, under stress from the community, agreed to issue a declaration condemning the German government for its genocidal procedure against the Jews. Other support trailed. The Pope demanded that his diplomats help hide Hungarian Jews. In September 1944, the British demolished factories and the train track lines of Auschwitz.
The United States’ response to the Holocaust is a much-discussed and very sensitive subject for a variety of groups close to or related to the situation. The opinions on the subject are diverse and far-reaching, and the analyzations and comparison of some of these can lead to a greater understanding of not only the happenings of the Holocaust itself but also the social reactions to the event by the many groups involved. Four sources I intend to compare include Martin Gilbert’s Auschwitz and the Allies, David Wyman’s The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945, W.D. Rubinstein’s The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved the Jews from the Nazis, and Peter Novick’s The Holocaust in American Life, because I believe that these four sources make up a diverse and widespread selection from which nearly all opinions, or the most conflicting ones, can be observed and interpreted. The first work uses an investigatory style that proposes pieces of evidence from the period shortly before the Holocaust that could have allowed the allies further and more prudent action. Similarly, the second work argues that there is substantial evidence that the United States and the rest of the allies could certainly have saved thousands of lives with earlier and more aggressive action, but argues from a more opinion and theoretical style that focuses less on
Holocaust. A word of Greek origin that means sacrifice by fire. The Holocaust is a terrible event in our world’s history. During the course of the Holocaust six million men, women and children of the Jewish faith were murdered by Aolf Hitler and his Nazis in concentration and death camps across Europe. “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” Elie Wiesel----cite correctly with Ms. G. By remembering the victims of the Holocaust we are breaking the silence and honoring the lives that were taken too soon.
In the world during the time of the Holocaust, there was indifference towards the suffering of millions of Jews. When individuals reflect about the Holocaust, the majority of the time the responsibility of the terrible events is placed upon the perpetrators. However, bystanders and witnesses indirectly affected the victims of the Holocaust as well. The silence of these people played one of the largest roles in the Holocaust, they influenced it by avoiding any type of involvement and by becoming blinded towards the suffering of others. In his Academy Award acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel says, “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”. This exert from his speech reveals the importance of the role that bystanders played in the
With the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of WWII, the issue at hand was what to do with the Jewish peoples with no place to go.
People are never evil just for the sake of being evil. They always justify to themselves in some way that all of their actions are for the greater good and that the actions they have committed are not atrocities. This has to be done since normal individuals cannot justify to themselves that they are immoral. Both western imperialism and the Holocaust had their atrocities justified by the illusion of progress. Even though numerous millions of people were slaughtered in these campaigns, many of the people doing the killing, believed that it was for the greater good. Western imperialism used the notion of bettering the native population and expansion in order to justify their mass killings. On the other hand, the Holocaust rationalized its