The passivity of the outside world
Foreign institutions and governments did little to deter Germany or save the Jews. There were only a few boycotts. An extremely effective form of Nazi manipulation was the threat of immigration by large numbers of impoverished Jews. In 1938 the Evian Conference, called to discuss the rescue of German Jews, collapsed because nations were unwilling to allow Jewish immigration.
The official SS newspaper, the Schwarze Korps, stated explicity in 1938 that if the world was not yet convinced that the Jews were the scum of the earth, it soon would be when unidentifiable beggars, without nationality, without money, and without passports crossed their frontiers.
A circular letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to all German authorities abroad shortly after the November pogroms of 1938, stated: “The emigration movement of only about 100,000 Jews has already sufficed to awaken the interest of many countries in the Jewish danger Germany is very interested in maintaining the dispersal of Jewry... the influx of Jews in all parts of the world invokes the opposition of the native population and thereby forms the best propaganda for the German Jewish policy.... The poorer and therefore more burdensome the immigrating Jew is to the country absorbing him, the stronger the country will react.12
In the United States there was strong resistance to immigration, even of refugee children. The number of immigrants actually allowed into the United States during the war years was well below the number that could be admitted without special legislation. The legal quota allowed sixty thousand immigrants a year, but only about six thousand actually got into the United States. An official obstacle course successfully kept them out. As David Wyman has shown, the U.S. State Department and the British did not want to rescue Jews; they did not want to worry about where to put them.13 The same was true of Canada. The Roosevelt administration did not establish the War Refugee Board until 1944, when threatened by scandal over the administration’s inaction. Britain blockaded Palestine to keep out refugees and returned those who were caught. The pope did not speak out and the International Red Cross showed little daring. American Jewish organizations, in part because of their anxiety about the prevailing mood of anti-Semitism in the country, did not press the U.S. government hard enough.
The Nazis, in secret correspondence, used such euphemisms as “solution possibilities” and “special treatment,” which limited even their own awareness or facing of what they were doing. The victims themselves used euphemisms, such as “final act of the drama” and “tempting fate” (the fate of being gassed).14 The bystander could evade awareness of the victims’ fate by inattention.
The U.S. press wrote little about the genocide during the war years, even though the facts became known in 1942.b How different might the U.S. response have been if newspapers had reported in huge headlines the incredible fact that millions of people were being gassed in death factories? (See Chapter 17 for a discussion of press self-censorship.)
A request by some Jewish organizations to bomb the gas chambers or the railroads leading to Auschwitz was not seriously considered.15 The reasons given were the unavailability of aircraft and the overriding need to bring the war to an end. These justifications were belied by the bombing missions against factories near Auschwitz and flights bringing supplies to surrounded Polish partisans who faced certain annihilation.
How can we explain the conduct of the United States, Britain, Canada, and other countries? Individuals and groups preoccupied by their own immediate needs and pressing goals are inclined to ignore others’ need and pain. But resistance to helping began before the war.
One cause was cultural anti-Semitism, rooted in a heritage of Christian anti-Semitism. This was intensified by the worldwide depression. In the United States, workers feared that immigrants would take away scarce jobs from them, and so they scapegoated Jews and other minorities.
A second cause was the perpetrators’ ability to increase already existing anti-Semitism. The whole world was exposed to Nazi propaganda representing Jews as evil and bent on world conquest. Serge Moscovici’s research suggests that extremely negative statements about groups are not discredited; they can affect basic, general attitudes and beliefs more than moderate statements. His findings imply that people would not immediately accept the content of such statements – for example, that Jews are murderers and seducers of children – but would devalue Jews in a general way in response to them.16 The 1930s and early 1940s saw a worldwide increase in anti-Semitism. According to public opinion polls, anti-Semitism was at its highest point in the United States between 1938 and 1944.c17 Fifty-three percent of Americans believed that Jews were different from other people and their behavior should be restricted.18 In the United States the wildly anti-Semitic radio programs of Father Coughlin were highly popular until it was discovered that he was repeating almost verbatim statements by Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.19 It was not what he said that was opposed, but that he used the words of a clearly defined enemy.
A third cause of inaction was that the passivity in the course of the increasing mistreament of Jews resulted in changes in people, institutions, and governments. In the end, many people probably had a vague, inarticulate feeling that the Jews somehow deserved what was happening to them. A final reason for passivity is that states have traditionally not
