(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Holocaust Remembrance Days [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-04-23

In the United States April 21 is “Days of Remembrance,” Yom HaShoah in Hebrew, an annual commemoration of the World War II era European Holocaust. In Israel, Thursday, April 24th, is called “Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day.” Observations are in April because April was the month of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 and of Soviet troops entering Berlin in 1945. As Donald Trump pushes for a sanitized “patriotic history,” while remembering victims and celebrating heroes, there also needs to be recognition that the United States did not extend itself to assist Jews facing extermination by Nazi Germany.

These where strong antisemitic movements in the United States in the 1930s and they frequently attacked Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt as being unduly influenced by Jewish interests. They included Henry Ford and the Dearborn Independent, Charles Lindberg and the America First Committee, and Roman Catholic priest Charles Coughlin who had a large following on radio, the social media of the 1930s. In February 1939, 20,000 people attended a “Pro-America Rally” at Madison Square Garden sponsored by the pro-Nazi German American Bund.

In May 1939, over 900 Jewish refugees from Europe on the ocean liner St. Louis were denied admission to the United States and forced to return to Europe where over 250 were murdered during the Holocaust. The family of Anne Frank, starting in 1938, was repeatedly denied admission to the United States before they were forced to go into hiding in Amsterdam. They were later discovered by German occupation authorities and Anne Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February or March 1945, the exact date is unknown. These details should also be included in any “Days of Remembrance” ceremonies.

The United States knew about the “Final Solution” from the beginning, and despite statements condemning Germany, took no action to save European Jews. Quotas preventing Jews from escaping to the United States remained in effect prior to, during, and after the war. The annual quota for visas issued to German citizens was about 25,000. In 1939, the waiting list was over 300,000. Then on July 1, 1941, the U.S. State Department made “applicants with close relatives remaining in German-occupied countries” totally ineligible for visas. In December 1943, Congressman Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn accused the State Department of lying to Congress about the assistance it was providing to European refugees. “We may as well take down that plaque from the Statue of Liberty and black out the “lamp beside the golden door.”

While barring Jewish refugees from the country, the United States issued a series of statements denouncing events taking place in Europe. On October 25, 1941, President Roosevelt condemned the execution of hostages by Germany. The White House issued additional statements condemning German atrocities on August 21 and October 7, 1942, and the United States and its wartime allies issued a joint statement on December 17, 1942 condemning Germany's "bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination" of Jews. This statement declared that "such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny" and warned Germany that those responsible for the mass murder of European Jews and other persecuted groups would be held accountable after the war. The text of the declaration accused Germany of transporting Jews from all occupied countries to Eastern Europe where they are “deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.”

That the United States knew about events in Europe and was unwilling to intervene is part of an exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that is accessible online. On a December 13, 1942 broadcast on CBS radio, Edward R. Murrow described the Nazi persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe. “What is happening is this: millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered.” At this point, about 1.5 million Jews had been murdered. Despite this a January 1943 Gallup poll found that fewer than half the people questioned believed the stories about the extermination of Jews were true. In May 1943, an American Zionist group ran an advertisement in The New York Times condemning the United States efforts to assist Jews as a mockery of past promises. The Polish underground sent a representative to the United States in 1943 to plead with President Roosevelt to stop the mass killings. Allied reconnaissance aircraft first few over Auschwitz in April 1944, but in July the U.S. War Department refused requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, and in August the United States government decided it would not bomb train lines to the concentration camps or to destroy the gas chambers and crematoriums because humanitarians effort to save Jewish lives was a diversion from the primary war goal of defeating Germany. Meanwhile an I.G. Farben industrial complex three miles from the Auschwitz was bombed four times between August 20, 1944, and December 26, 1944.

It is estimated that 6 million Jews were exterminated by Nazi Germany including 2 and 3 million between January 1943 and May 1945 when World War II in Europe ended. On Holocaust Remembrance days, we should remember the consequence of the United States refusing to act to intervene to save Jewish lives.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/23/2318315/-Holocaust-Remembrance-Days?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.