1939 letter found, plea to FDR to save Jewish kids

[Chuckt]

England took in almost all of the 669 children. Winton, now 104 years old, told 60 Minutes he had made a desperate plea for help to the United States back in 1939. He said he had written a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, describing the plight of the Czech children and asking that America grant refuge to a number of them.

1939 letter found, plea to FDR to save Jewish kids - CBS News

 

[Jroc]

FDR 's "compassion" on goes so far

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

England took in almost all of the 669 children. Winton, now 104 years old, told 60 Minutes he had made a desperate plea for help to the United States back in 1939. He said he had written a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, describing the plight of the Czech children and asking that America grant refuge to a number of them.

1939 letter found, plea to FDR to save Jewish kids - CBS News

This letter is utterly heartbreaking, Chuck..

from your link........Winton's full letter to President Roosevelt is as follows:

"Esteemed Sir,

Perhaps people in America do not realize how little is being and has been done for refugee children in Czechoslovakia. They have to depend entirely on private guarantors to get into England, which means that somebody has to take full responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and education, until they are 18 years of age. No other country is taking an interest in them except for Sweden, which took 35 children last February. We at this office have case-papers and photos of over 5000 children, quite apart from a further 10,000 whom we estimate have to register. Actually, so far, we have brought only about 120 into England.

In Bohemia and Slovakia today, there are thousands of children, some homeless and starving, mostly without nationality, but they certainly all have one thing in common: there is no future, if they are forced to remain where they are. Their parents are forbidden work and the children are forbidden schooling, and apart from the physical discomforts, which all this signifies, the moral degradation is immeasurable. Yet since Munich, hardly anything has been done for the children in Czechoslovakia. Many of the children are quite destitute having had to move more than once since they originally fled from Germany.

Is it possible for anything to be done to help us with this problem in America? It is hard to state our case forcibly in a letter, but we trust to your imagination to realize how desperately urgent the situation is.

____________________________________

What kind of person could ignore such a plea for help? When America falls under judgment people should keep in mind it isn't only the sins of this generation that will bring this judgment but also the history of our nation which has yet to be repented of. This is why I will never ever accept that FDR was a decent man. No decent man could ever send innocent children, innocent people to their deaths like this... his decision to do nothing horrifies me.

 

[natstew]

FDR was a disgusting human being.
Ever hear of the S.S. Saint Louis? (google S.S. Saint Louis, holocaust)

FDR also prolonged the great Depression so he could gain the most from it politically. If WW2 had not interfered with his plans we would have become a Communist Country by the time he died.

 

[Political Junky]

The vast majority of Jews in the US vote Democratic.

 

[Coyote]

We - as a Nation - turned away Jewish refugees. To our ever lasting shame.

One of the greatest and wealthiest nations in the world then did nothing.

 

[Coyote]

FDR 's "compassion" on goes so far

I don't think it was that simple Jroc.


What was the United States’ response towards Jewish refugees and eventually the Holocaust?

What Historians Think

Most Americans did not recognize the moral imperative of Jewish immigration during the 1930s and 40s. Instead, they viewed immigration’s potential impact on the economy. At this time, the United States was coming out of the worst depression ever experienced; jobs were scarce and Americans did not want to compete with cheap foreign labor coming into the country. Most Americans firmly believed that every new refugee admitted into the United States would cost some American their precious job...(the article outlines arguments little different from the anti-immigration arguments that preceded it and those still being made today)....Any politician who campaigned for increasing immigration for refugees was condemning himself politically.

Some American Jews were against immigration themselves, fearing that the new Jews entering into America would do a disservice to the Jews already here. They worried new immigrant Jews would disrupt the already complacent assimilated Jewish relationship with the rest of the United States, triggering an anti-Semitic backlash.


Historian, Peter Novick, claims the reason the American government did not lift the strict immigration law was because no one knew the severity of Jewish plight. Yes, they were escaping religious persecution, but certain death? Novick argues that this ignorance contributed to the enforcement of restrictionist laws despite the urgent exodus from Europe during this period. (It's hard to believe people couldn't see what was happening, but then - we're lookingn through the lens of history. I think I can understand the reluctance to believe it - that was an era we think of enlightened and civilized and while barbaric genocides happened they did not happen in Europe, in the minds of western people).

Rabbi Haskel Lookstein contends the United States should have created temporary havens for Jewish refugees in other countries. Indeed, there were over six hundred resettlement schemes examined by the Roosevelt administration. The Wagner-Roger Bill was introduced to allow 20,000 refugee children to enter the United States twice a year. This bill was supported by many Americans because they believed that children, being young and easily influenced, could still Americanize. The bill failed at the committee level and was never passed. ...(here too - the rhetoric echo's today's "concerns" that immigrants won't/can't "Americanize". A bill to allow refugee children in (how tragic without their parents) couldn't even make it out of the committee).

One newspaper argued against the suggestion to relocate them to the African jungle. The newspaper retorted that settling a population of intellectual urban people into a land of “jungle and wild animals was highly improbable.” ...(can you believe people actually proposed this crap seriously?)


A Baltimore Jewish Times article suggested to “distribute them throughout the country so they don’t centralize in the urban cities.”

The Dominican Republic offered to accept 150,000 “political refugees” but only five hundred were able to land near Puerto Plata on the northern side of the island. (...a nation far more poor and tiny was willing to accept some)

The turning point in mobilizing American Jewish opinion came in 1939 when the St. Louis, a refugee ship carrying close to a thousand Jews fleeing the Nazis terror in Europe, was denied admittance into the United States...with no help from the United States, they eventually were able to find refuge in Belgium, Holland, France and England....(and we know what happened in Belgium, Holland and France)

News of this reached American opinion. A New York Times article from June 1, 1939 headed, “Fears Suicide Wave On Refugees’ Ship,” and article, “Refugee Ship Idles Off the Coast of Florida,” informed Americans of the severity of St. Louis ship. News of the St. Louis passengers “crying desperately” for admittance and “attempts of suicide by slashing wrists and jumping overboard,” did not change the public’s stance on protecting United States’ borders from immigrants and fleeing refugees. Many Americans upheld their anti-immigration attitude due to their nativists and isolationists views; unemployment was at its peak and America was not willing to give an immigrant a job when Americans needed it first...

The entire article offers more on Roosevelt, his administration, anti-semitism and what was and wasn't done.

We as a nation have a responsibility for what happened and what was and wasn't done. We need to remember it as well as our treatment of Japanese-Americans and German Americans during that time. Maybe next time a people is demonized or refugees are turned away - we won't look the other way - we'll remember 20,000 children we could have taken.