HEADLINE: Anne Frank was refused sanctuary by the U.S.

[Bluebear]

This makes me sick. Anne, I am so sorry. Lady Liberty had no welcome for you that would have spared your life. We had to watch out for those immigrants, you know. Homeland security. :cry:

===

The father of Anne Frank sent desperate letters to the U.S. pleading for cash and help so his family could escape Nazi-occupied Holland, according to papers released yesterday.

It casts new light on the wartime lives of Otto Frank and his family, who hid for more than two years from July 1942 in an annex in an Amsterdam warehouse before being arrested...

He tried to arrange U. S. visas for his family - wife Edith, daughters Margo and Anne and mother-in-law Rosa Hollander - before they went into hiding. 'I know that it will be impossible for us all to leave.... but Edith urges me to leave alone or with the children,' he wrote to college friend Nathan Straus.

In another letter he wrote: 'I would not ask if conditions here would not force me to do all I can in time to be able to avoid worse. It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance.' His efforts were hampered by restrictive American immigration policies designed to protect national security, Holocaust experts said.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23385642-details/Anne%20Frank%20was%20refused%20sanctuary%20by%20the%20U.S./article.do


"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."-Anne Frank

[Syrinx]

1. kicked

[Behind the Aegis]

2. The result of anti-Semitism.

The bigotry that just won't die has sent many people to their deaths. This revelation is sad on so many levels.

[Name removed]

101. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Swamp Rat]

3. Anne Frank

O8)

Her house was one of the first places I went to see in Amsterdam many years ago.

[ConsAreLiars]

10. One of my first visits also.

Seeing the hiding place made the "story" real. One of those formative things,

[Bluebear]

12. Me too. Amsterdam was having record warmth

It was just a few summers ago, and being in the hot, stuffy annex was so sad and claustrophobic.

[goclark]

60. My visit to the Home was a Memory that I can't forget

Excellent Post

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. There was a ship full of Jews that was refused entry also, I believe.

[Behind the Aegis]

6. The "St. Louis"

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/stlouis/

[sutz12]

5. This is sad, but have a little perspective...

300,000 people on waiting lists makes it more of a bureaucratic tie-up than active anti-semitism on the part of the US Gov't. As far as I'm concerned, that part of it was probably just bad luck. After all, Anne Frank's well deserved fame was posthumous. If she had been famous before the war, she would have had a better chance.

Restrictive policies? What country would allow 300,000 refugees in over that short of a time, and if they got visas would they have found passage on ship or plane?

There was plenty of anti-semitism in America, yes. But the real villain here is Nazi Germany, that used centuries of European anti-semitism to further their evil agenda.

[Bluebear]

7. Well, she died a child because of that 'bureaucratic tie-up'

No amount of perspective can ease my sadness over this, having learned this only an hour ago. Curious that it took 65 years to come to light, no?

[girl gone mad]

89. Not really curious.

Germany has withheld this information for decades, citing privacy concerns.

You can't blame America entirely for this. Her father chose to delay re-submitting paperwork. Most experts say that if he had been persistent, his family would have gotten in. Many Germans targeted by the Nazis felt more secure staying put. Their rights were only slowly being eroded and they had no way of knowing how bad it would ultimately get. Let's not forget that he had a back up plan which almost worked. Who knows if the Franks would have actually come to America, even if they had been immediately allowed entry.

[mmonk]

9. Darn

if she had just been "famous" before the war.

[Behind the Aegis]

13. Perspective.

World War II and the Holocaust
In 1939 a Roper poll found that only thirty-nine percent of Americans felt that Jews should be treated like other people. Fifty-three percent believed that "Jews are different and should be restricted" and ten percent believed that Jews should be deported. <10> The United States’ tight immigration policies were not lifted during the Holocaust, news of which began to reach the United States in 1941 and 1942 and it has been estimated that 190 000 - 200 000 Jews could have been saved during the Second World War had it not been for bureaucratic obstacles to immigration deliberately created by Breckinridge Long and others.<11>

Rescue of the European Jewish population was not a priority for the US during the war, and the American Jewish community did not realize the severity of the Holocaust until late in the conflict. Despite strong public and political sentiment to the contrary, however, there were some who encouraged the U.S. government to help victims of Nazi genocide. In 1943, just before Yom Kippur, 400 rabbis marched in Washington, DC to draw attention to the plight of Holocaust victims. (See "The Day the Rabbis Marched.") A week later, Senator William Warren Barbour (R; New Jersey), one of a handful of politicians who met with the rabbis on the steps of the U.S.Capitol, proposed legislation that would have allowed as many as 100,000 victims of the Holocaust to emigrate temporarily to the United States. Barbour died six weeks after introducing the bill, and it was not passed. A parallel bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D; New York). This also failed to pass. (Davis S. Wyman Institute) Even after the Holocaust, the US did not change its immigration policies until 1948.

Over 550,000 American Jews served in the US armed forces during World War II, or about 50% of all American Jewish males between 18 and 40.

source

[AliceWonderland]

61. Thank you for posting this -- also for the post on the St. Louis

I was in the middle of posting this to GD when the thread was moved here? Why was it moved? In any case, thank you -- there was much institutionalized anti-semitism in the U.S. -- Canada too, since I believe we turned away the St. Louis as well -- and that prevented the saving of lives. This subject can't be white-washed.

[raccoon]

69. Thanks for that reality check. nt

[Octafish]

79. A good friend of my father-in-law was a B-24 pilot...

...His plane was hit over Germany. He stayed at the controls until the nine others could bail out, including one airman who was too badly wounded to jump on his own. The crew put him in a 'chute and dropped him out the open bomb bay.

Anyway, my pop's friend had to lie about his heritage in the POW camp. He is Jewish.

[Leopolds Ghost]

74. Yeah, if she had been famous she would've got in. What's the big deal? n/t

:sarcasm:

[SoCalDem]

78. "...What country would allow 300,000 refugees ..."

a country with a heart & soul.

In a country the size of the US, we could have easily offered asylum to ALL the Jewish people in Europre (hell...probably most of them already HAD family members here already)

That one act of decency might have prevented a lot of "issues" we have now in the Middle east too.. Had those people been welcomed here, there might have been no "need" to create a special homeland for them..

[Usrename]

96. Syria, Jordan, Egypt for starters.

Syria bars Iraq refugees, crisis worsens

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer

Mon Feb 12, 3:31 PM ET



DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria, the last Arab country welcoming large numbers of Iraqi refugees, is now all but closing the gates and leaving 40,000 Iraqis who flee their country each month with almost no place to go.

The new rules — imposed without any official announcement — also strike fear of deportation into the 1 million Iraqis already here. The worsening humanitarian crisis has resulted in calls for action by members of the U.S. Congress and a plea from the United Nations for more countries to help out.


snip>

Syria kept its doors open even after others, including Jordan and Egypt with 700,000 and 130,000 Iraqi refugees respectively, said they could take no more. But the strain on its small, state-controlled economy apparently has become too great.

Until last week, Iraqis could come to Syria without a visa and stay for up to six months. At that point, they could drive to any border, leave briefly and re-enter immediately and stay for another six months — meaning they essentially were allowed to stay indefinitely.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070212/ap_on_re_mi_ea/syria_refugees_in_a_bind

[izzie]

8. Read about the ship the USA sent back some time.

In this time the world was not willing to take in Jews. Go back into that time and you will see it was a small group that got out and hardly in the class of the Franks. Also many Jews in those countries waited until it was to late to get out. I would think that if I had been a family who lived in Germany since early 1800 and was a Jew it would have been hard to figure you had to leave. Many of them even fought in wars for Germany. Also you are not thinking how the people in those days were thinking. People did not have such open minds as they do to day. Keeping people out of the country was much on peoples minds and we had very odd laws. The system let in a percent and they sure had to look like the people that were already here. WASP were high on the percent. It does seem a shame but you must looking at it in the time it was done to understand it better. We often have that problem with things that happen in history. Yes and it was wrong but do recall the times

[Bluebear]

11. "People did not have such open minds as they do to day" Oh my heavens.

I am wondering if perhaps you see any similar group of people who people want to keep out today, to the point of building a wall at our southern border. I don't think that this day and age is in the least more enlightened.

[kdmorris]

16. Yet any Cuban that touches American soil

Is greeted as Royalty and allowed to stay, without having to prove that their life would be harmed by returning to Cuba or even that their life was bad back there. Meanwhile, they round up all the Haitians they can get their hands on and send them back to a war-torn, grindingly poor country.

Our immigration policies have always favored the rich or powerful. We didn't do what we should have when we KNEW what Germany was doing. However, it was decided that the best way to do anything about it was to defeat Germany, rather than try to help the Jewish people directly. Immigration policies SHOULD have been changed to allow humanitarian immigration. Hell, set up refugee camps if you have to. But we should have done more.

[Bluebear]

19. They set up 'camps' for Japanese-Americans, after all.

Was there no Halliburton back them who would have benefited from assembling refugee camps?

[kdmorris]

24. Exactly!

They managed to get camps set up for Japanese and for German prisoners of war, but not for Jews.

http://www.remember.org/guide/wit.root.wit.res.html

"United States. Despite the fact that the U.S. received early reports about the desperate plight of European Jewry, procrastination and inaction marked its policies toward rescue. Immigration quotas were never increased for the emergency; the existing quotas, in fact, were never filled (see Evian Conference, Chapter 9).

(Wagner-Rogers legislation) - Legislation was introduced in the United States Congress in 1939 by Rep. Robert Wagner to admit a total of 20,000 Jewish children over a two-year period above the refugee quota applicable at the time. The legislation was inspired by similar efforts by the Dutch and British government to save Jewish children from Nazi terror. The legislation was amended in committee to admit the 20,000 children only if the number of Jewish refugees admitted under the regular quota was reduced by 20,000. The bill died in the House after the sponsor withdrew his support for the bill in frustration."

Some Americans tried to help. One wonders how many Anne Franks would have been saved and, indeed, if Anne Frank herself would have been among the 20,000 children that Wagner-Rogers was trying to save.

[Bluebear]

26. "The bill died in the House" ugggh

Oh I know nothing about any of this, what an ugly period of time.

[Behind the Aegis]

27. "The bill died in the House"

And countless numbers died in Concentration Camps because of it. It is yet one of the many, many examples of man's inhumanity to others!

[sabbat hunter]

90. different time

different place the US is now. and this is speaking as someone raised jewish. there was a lot of antisemetism in the US back then. it was hard for FDR to give arms to England prior to pearl harbor because many americans actually sympathized with or backed hitler.

[REP]

31. I Was Not Aware That Mexico Was Rounding Up and Executing Its Citizens

I do not support the idiotic fence and I am grateful to the migrant workers who provide us with (among other things) safe food and who risk their lives for these crappy jobs, but I think comparing them to people fleeing certain death in their own countries does them no favors. Conflating the two only confuses the issue. The only point in common is that the US government has dealt with both issues in an ineffective and merciless way.

[Bluebear]

37. Oh I don't think anyone will confuse the issue with my little thread, friend.

It's only a little thread remembering Anne Frank and commenting on xenophobia and keeping people out because of "homeland security" Nothing more, OK? I am not writing a thesis here, it just made me sad.

[EFerrari]

42. When Golda Meir tried to tell the British about what she was hearing

out of Europe, they dismissed her, "Do you believe everything you hear?"

And at the time, Jewish emigration to Palestine was restricted as well. People paid huge sums of money for their passage and in bribes to escape Europe in leaky boats that were often turned away when they didn't go down. Iirc (read this many years ago), there were camps set up on Cypress for Jews who had managed to make it that far but who were being denied entrance to Palestine.

[druidity33]

45. then pay more attention

Have you looked into the Governer Ruiz situation? Just a couple of months ago, a few hundred people were disappeared during demonstrations. The Natives there have been decimated for years and no one says a peep about it. Not to mention the theft of their Presidency by a right wing Bush crony. This is really a lot more similar than you think...

[Gormy Cuss]

63. You are right that it was a product of a different era.

A time when "separate but equal" was the official policy on race, when only one generation of American women had been raised with suffrage and workplace discrimination was rampant. It was also not a time to announce that you were homosexual in most parts of the country, and being Jewish wasn't easy. Heck, being Catholic was suspect in some parts of the country. Another undercurrent was xenophobia fueled by the Great Depression, an economic calamity which occurred after a long period of massive immigration. It was a different time. Of course as others have noted in some ways we've been regressing in recent years( e.g. border walls, and a rise in hate speech.)

[Taxloss]

64. The "St Louis", IIRC. n/t

[msmcghee]

65. Important observations in Evolutionary Psychology.

It is important to realize that having strong beliefs about things that can greatly effect our survival - and the survival of our children and descendants - is in our wiring. This is easy to understand when we see that extended family groups and clans had to count on access to limited resources within their home range - and that this arrangement accounted for 99% of our genetic history.

Based on our needs it was necessary to evolve the ability to develop mistrust and antagonism against others - that allowed early humans to threaten and kill competitive clans that threatened their resources. Also, those other clans that looked most different were less likely to have shared genetic histories.

Like Chimpanzes, we evolved an antagonistic lifestyle that allowed us to gently nurture and care for siblings and offspring while treating competitive bands with extreme hatred when necessary. It's a bipolar lifestyle.

Reason is the way we humans can overcome those prejudices whose wiring still exists in all of us. However, when war threatens and life becomes precarious, those ancient urges find greater strength in our fear and other emotional centers. There's no reason to believe that they are any less dangerous in any of us today than they were in the average German 70 years ago or a US Southerner in the 1850's.

The US military, currently led by racially fearful civilian leaders - Repuke neo-cons - is encouraged to give vent to such primal urges in places like Abu Graib. IMO all it will take for any of us (neo-con or not) is a suitably serious threat - and we'll all be more than ready to find our inner Nazi. It will be experienced, just as it was in ancient humans 100,000 years ago, as a wave of hatred that finer emotions and reason will be impotent to disarm.

You can see these emotions in some of the posts in this thread (some of which have already been deleted). They are especially near the surface in the I/P forum IMO - because the discussions here center around an ongoing war between two opposing factions (clans) both sides of which members here identify with. You can see in many of these posts how easily reason is reduced to impotence and the strong emotion of other-clan hatred rules one's words - even when the opposite evidence is irrefutable and when deleted posts and tomb-stoning is the penalty for crossing the line.

It's in our wiring.

[lligrd]

14. All I Can Say Is

k&r How sad. Ignorance is bliss.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Behind the Aegis]

17. How trite.

A reference to the Holocaust and the plight of Jews evokes yet one more anti-Israel screed.

[dEMOK]

41. I am totally unsympathetic to the enemies of Israel...

...All I'm saying is that I have experienced (first hand) some alarming arrogance from some Israelis. You can't talk a person out of his/her own experience.

Does this make me an anti-Semite? -- of course not! I have always been extremely sensitive to the plight of Jews throughout history. I have always been a defender of Israel; but I can't defend the actions of every Israeli. Does this make me an anti-Semite?

If you think I'm an anti-Semite because I disagree with a minority of Jews -- that's your choice. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are many Conservatives who have issues with Bush's actions -- does this make them un-American??? Give me a friggin' break; and grow up.

[Behind the Aegis]

71. And yet....

It doesn't matter whether you are "totally unsympathetic to the enemies of Israel." The discussion was about Anne Frank, the Holocaust, and the refusal of a visa by the US. It also isn't germane to the discussion on your personal experience with some Israeli's arrogance, of which I was not trying to "talk you out of your personal experience;" what ever that means.

Now, we get to the "meat" of the situation.

"Does this make me an anti-Semite? -- of course not!"

Well, we agree on that point, but I fail to see why it is important to say, as no one called you an anti-Semite.

"I have always been extremely sensitive to the plight of Jews throughout history. I have always been a defender of Israel; but I can't defend the actions of every Israeli. Does this make me an anti-Semite?"

Considering, once again, that no one called you an anti-Semite, I fail to see the importance of that little 'speech.' But, for the sake of argument, not defending the actions of every Israeli does not make one an anti-Semite. Seems we agree, once again.

"If you think I'm an anti-Semite because I disagree with a minority of Jews -- that's your choice. Nothing could be further from the truth."

This is your own faulty conclusion, don't place it on me as if it were fact. I never said anything about anti-Semitism! You've stated your opinion, despite declaring it fact, I will now state mine: The real issue here is that any poster like me, a pro-Israeli (having a Star of David avatar(?)) will be accused of leveling the anti-Semitism charge, even when we have not. I don't see how that is any different than wrongly accusing someone of anti-Semitism. Basically, you have accused me, because I disagreed with your post, of saying something I did not!

"There are many Conservatives who have issues with Bush's actions -- does this make them un-American??? Give me a friggin' break; and grow up."

:shrug: Again, you draw an erroneous conclusion based on a projection YOU made, to which you end by insulting me. No where in my one sentence post, did I say, or even imply, that disagreement with a government indicates being "anti-" that group of people, be they Israeli or American, as per the examples. No, what I took issue with, so that we are crystal clear, is that you posted in a thread about Anne Frank's family being denied a visa to the US and turned it into an anti-Israeli screed by stating that because of your encounters with a few arrogant Israelis, they have become like the Nazis they once fled. THAT is why I called you out on your post and labeled your post "an anti-Israeli screed!"

[Hippo_Tron]

36. I don't agree with every decision Israel makes, but I empathize with them

The allies weren't even willing to accept Jewish refugees after the Holocaust. Nobody wanted to protect the Jews so they decided that they had to stand up and protect themselves. Yes, what they may call protection you may call aggression. But they do have a reasonable case for their actions.

Fortunately, the world is a much better place for Jews than it was in the late 1940's.

[Behind the Aegis]

40. "Fortunately, the world is a much better place for Jews than it was in the late 1940's."

Don't be so sure. While I agree with much of what you wrote, do click on my sig line and read the articles provided. Is it as bad as the late 1940's? No. However, is it comparable to the lead up to the late 1940s? Well, you read those articles and tell me what you think. Is it another "build up" to a major humanitarian crisis?

[Hippo_Tron]

94. While the articles convey troubling information

I don't think it's comparable to the lead up to the 1940's. While there is a minority of anti-semitic thugs, the governments of the civilized world are for the most part not anti-semitic, which was not the case in the early 20th century.

[Behind the Aegis]

95. I agree, in part.

While most of the rising anti-Semitism we see is in the "private" sector and not the government levels, there are cases where that is happening. Recently, we had that idiot in Texas blaming Jews for evolution. :wtf: We have had a number of politicians in this country that blame their ousting from office on the "Jewish Lobby," though, some will say the "Israeli Lobby" in polite company. Not too long ago there was a push in the Russian government to outlaw Judaism. In China, Judaism isn't even an officially recognized religion. Poland is currently experiencing some problems within her government. The Arab/Muslim world...well, I really don't have to say much about them. In Africa, many of the governments blame Jews for disease and their civil wars, including new weapons, like the "penis-shrinking ray." South and Latin America have their share of Jew-hating politicians. So, while the governments are not "wholly" anti-Semitic, the seeds are there, and considering the rise of Jew-hate in the general populace, it is easy to conceive that a similar rise of someone like Hitler could be devastating for the Jews again.

Then again, we are a paranoid people. :) But even paranoid peoples have real enemies.

[Hippo_Tron]

97. Most of the governments you cited aren't exactly beacons of tolerance to begin with

The hatred by those particular regimes and nations isn't exclusive to Jews which is why I don't see the problem of the late 1930's.

And in the US, I think blaming the Jews is akin to blaming the gays or the blacks. But I agree that charges that the "Israeli Lobby" made a politician lose an election are absurd. Although I don't agree with some stances that AIPAC takes, last time I checked they aren't in the business of smearing candidates who don't agree with them. Mostly they raise money and lobby.

[Behind the Aegis]

99. Again, we agree, fellow night-owl (and NOLA resident).

While those governments are hardly "pinnacles of light and truth," the same could have been said of war-torn Germany in the 1930's. Jews weren't the only targets then either. However, hate and distrust of Jews was at an all-time high, something we are starting to see again. The only difference was, then, there was no Israel. Some of the same anti-Semitic charges leveled against Jews are now being leveled against Israel. DISCLAIMER: This is NOT to say all charges of misdeeds by Israel are anti-Semitic, or that Israel should not be criticized for her policies and actions!!!!

I agree that blaming the Jews is akin to blaming gays and blacks, when people blame African-Americans for things it is usually called on the racist bullshit it is; not always, though. Gays, like Jews, make a popular target (thus, my avatar); though a politician would have a harder time using anti-Semitism, than homophobia. I have been targeted more because of my sexual orientation, than my religion. However, it is shocking just how much hate still exists against Jews. My youngest brother is getting married in June. His wife-to-be comes from a VERY fundamentalist Christian home. When she announced she was marrying my brother, my soon-to-be SIL was asked by her mother, "why would you marry a dirty Jew?" Let's just say between my mother and me, if that woman says anything like that in our presence at the wedding, you'll read about it at DU in LBN...."Crazy Jews throw Christian wacko off wedding cruise: Pandemonium ensues!"

With the rising tide of hate against Jews, I have a voice in my head that warns me to be vigilant.

[Hippo_Tron]

104. Perhaps I just have not experienced too much anti-semitism first hand

I'm Jewish as well but the idea of Israel as a safe haven for my people or even the need for such a safe haven never really resonated with me at least not in this day and age.

Granted I admit that I do have the luxury of living in the United States which outside of Israel is the best country for Jews to live in. But even in Western Europe and other civilized nations, I don't think we are seeing the antisemitism that we were in the 1930's.

Yes we are in the Arab world but the Jewish population in the Arab world is extremely small and the antisemitic leaders of the Arab world will never garner nearly the power that Hitler did.

When I hear Ahmadinejad raving about how the holocaust never happened I don't get particularly upset. I laugh at how deranged the man is and how he can't even get the support of his own people in a society that is hardly democratic. Ahmadinejad and the other antisemitic leaders in the region simply don't pose the threat that Hitler did. They will be complete irrelevant as soon as we find alternative fuel sources.

[Behind the Aegis]

105. I am glad you haven't experienced much anti-Semitism.

You don't have to see Israel as a safe haven, but that is the intention of its creation because of the circumstances of the world and over 3000 years of anti-Semitism.

I wasn't in NOLA for more than three weeks before I saw four people, in a gay bar of all places, giving the Nazi salute and saying, "Seig Heil!" Two days later, I heard someone say, after seeing a boy with a kippah, "did you see that little kike?" This was in June of 2006! In Oklahoma, I was told to go to a certain car dealership because I could "jew them down" easily. I am sure I don't have to tell you about all the 9-11 bullshit that is attributed to us.

"Yes we are in the Arab world but the Jewish population in the Arab world is extremely small and the antisemitic leaders of the Arab world will never garner nearly the power that Hitler did."

So you say. However, until the world has a source of power that doesn't require oil, the leaders of those nations do pose a problem. They would not be able to rise like Hitler, but with the help of allies, Russia and China, we could well see another Holocaust.

You say that we are not seeing the level of 1930's anti-Semitism in Western Europe and other places. I would say you are mostly correct. We aren't seeing them in "traditional" terms. However, the rising numbers of attacks, politics, and other issues, we are seeing it in new ways. The hate is old, but the face has had a recent "lift."

[Hippo_Tron]

106. We'll have to agree to disagree

I do agree with your philosophy of same shit new asshole. But I think that's true for all types of prejudice. Quantitatively I just don't see antisemitism on the rise and that's where we probably won't reach an agreement.

[loyalsister]

102. ours?

There is some debate. The eugenics policies that resulted in marriage restictions, ideas of a news science called "raceology, and immigration restrictions were the result of a partnership between government and privately funded projects. One was particularly disturbing.
Henry Laughlin headed the Eugenics Records Office which had been funded by the Carnegie institute. The mission was to provide records to justify policy. He studied inmates at state institutions. He had a very sophisticared classifications system for immigrants. He used the term "race" for Jewish people and classified them geographically.
Source Henry H. Laughlin "Classification Standards To Be Followed In Preparing Data For The Schedule "Racial And Diagnostic Records of Inmates of State Institutions" (Washington DC; Government printing office 1922pp. 4,7
The ingredients Hitler brought were megalomania, hate, and madness. Our creepy ideas and some of the technical stuff helped make the holocaust a reality.

[cali]

39. Oh please. So you've actually met a few Israelis

and from that you've arrived at some warped conclusion that enables you to freely posit that Israelis as a whole are arrogant and Nazi like. Disgusting application of shit with your broad brush there. The Israeli government is indeed wrongly occupying the WB and is oppressing the Palestinians but the comparison to Nazis is revolting. And dead wrong.

[dEMOK]

44. You have greatly exaggerated my thoughts...

No on on this planet is beyond reproach. I personally have always had a great empathy with the plight of the Jews; but I can't argue away the arrogance I've experienced from some Israelis.

In fact, it's because of my lifelong identification with the Jewish struggle that I found the attitudes of some so disturbing (and I emphasize the term "some").

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

18. Good souls like Anne Frank were refused entry while after the war

known Nazis like former SS Officer Wernher von Braun and others were assisted by the CIA in getting away from Soviet occuped Germany and allowed entry to the U.S. or assisted in escaping to South America through the so-called "rat line".

I know that this happened a long time ago under very different circumstances and sometimes difficult decisions look clear-cut and easy with hindsight. But hopefully we can learn from our past mistakes and never repeat them again.

[Hippo_Tron]

20. For what it's worth, FDR tried to get some immigration restrictions loosened in the late 1930's

But not with too much success. Peter Gay mentioned in his book that Roosevelt basically said that he would do what he could but that real reform was impossible. The country was still afraid of communists (hence the restrictions in the first place) and they didn't really believe that the Nazis were doing these terrible things to the Jews because there was World War I propaganda that accused Germans of similar atrocities and it turned out to be false.

There was also indeed antisemitism within the State Department. By 1941 the allies knew about the mobile killing units and the early death camps. Still we didn't accept refugees because we didn't want people to think that we were fighting the war just for the Jews.

[Bluebear]

22. La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose

As I mentioned to izzie above, the more things change the more they stay the same. We still have "undesirables" today. Instead of communists, they pick lettuce and make beds. :(

Thank you for the historical insight. Can you imagine knowing about the early death camps and mobile killing units and not saving people because of what people would "think". Uggh.

[Hippo_Tron]

34. We also could've bombed the train tracks that led to Auschwitz as well

The British also could've warned Jews in Eastern Europe without compromising their intelligence because the Nazis would've more likely believed that the tips came from escaped Jews.

I'll give them the fact that the we didn't know EXACTLY what was going on until afterwards. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to gather the intelligence and combine it with Hitler's antisemitism. If somebody didn't walk into the oval office by 1942 and say "Mr. President we have good reason to believe that the Nazis are planning to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Eastern Europe," then our intelligence guys were either complete morons (which I doubt) or more likely someone in the bureaucracy didn't care about it and wanted to keep it off the agenda.

[Bluebear]

35. "Nobody could have imagined Hitler building death camps"

Depends on who the National Security Advisers were at that time :eyes:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

23. I don't know what World War I propaganda you are referring to

but I know that the Germans even in World War I committed the grossest attrocities on civilian populations in Belgium, France, Russia and elsewhere. There was an hour long documentary on the Military Channel that I recently saw and it really opened my eyes, with eye witness accounts of murder, starvation, torture, public executions, and wholesale slaughter of civilians in many occupied towns. Maybe some of it was propaganda, but a lot of those stories were real.

[The Straight Story]

21. Top O the morning to ya bluebear - who is today's Anne Frank?

One of the reasons we do well in this country to remember this and other things (slavery, indians getting jacked, etc) is so that we have a reference point when we see such things occurring again.

Problem is - I don't know what all we have learned. Who is today's Anne Frank?

The core lesson of the tragedy here, to me, is that we have people reaching out for help against a force they cannot stop, and others turning their head to other issues.

We can replace Nazi's and Anne/family with today's homeless, those lacking health care, etc and so on - fighting for their life against things they cannot control fully (for any variety of reasons).

Somewhere in America today (and elsewhere of course) a young girl and her parents are staving off death from hunger and the cold, and one could go on with such analogies of things going on here that plague people and little is done about (god bless those that do do things, from churches to local volunteers, some govt programs and funding, etc).

The scale is different, the story is different, the intent of those in power are somewhat different - but the cure is the same, those who can help should help. With great power comes great responsibility (I think spiderman's uncle ben said that once).

[Bluebear]

25. "Anita Franco"

Morning to you! Funny you should ask, today's Anne Frank to me is "Anita Franco." As I said in #22 just as you were typing, her father picks lettuce, her mother makes beds, they are here trying to make a buck and hoping someone from the "Minuteman Patrol" doesn't shoot them to smithereens. :(

[The Straight Story]

28. Sadly, like the jews of yesterday some see illegals as terrorists

I mean, look at what they have done to our country! Oh wait, that was bush that did a lot of those things to this country.

[Bluebear]

91. .

[ncrainbowgrrl]

85. Riverbend? Salam Pax? (book jacket refers to that;..)

:shrug:

[REP]

29. Many Jews Were; We Just Know This Family's Name

The Franks's weren't the only Jews who were denied entry by the US. Is it just because we know her name or have read her diaries that this denial seems more outrageous than the others?

[Bluebear]

30. Anne is the symbol. We "know" her through her writing so she is intimate to us.

As you mention, when you think of the tens of thousand of children who met her same fate, it is more than you can bear to think about.

[REP]

32. Millions of Men, Women and Children

Every one of those deaths is sickening, regardless of how old the person was.

[Bluebear]

33. Yes it is.

[Gman]

38. I think that's the context we need to see this in

that many were excluded, including the Franks, because of fears for national security. We know what happened and how this policy contributed to the millions of deaths of Jews.

[Solly Mack]

43. I often wonder, how in the future, if people will be saying of this time

- the time we occupy right now, that what America is doing now must be seen in the "context of the time"

Seems little more than an excuse to explain away so many wrongful acts

[The Backlash Cometh]

46. Was America the only place they could go?

[TZ]

48. very few places in Europe were safe.

Russia was out. And of course Afrcia and the Muslim states were out. My family is all Eastern European Jewish. Outside of one distant cousin in Israel the rest of my family is dead outside of the US. Had they not migrated here around 1900 or so, I have no doubt me and the rest of my relatives would have died at the hands of the Nazi's. Thats why my dad to this day refuses to buy any German made product.:(

[The Backlash Cometh]

50. What about Central America?

Mexico? Trinidad?

[TZ]

52. It was much easier to get to America or Canada

Many people leaving Europe had little or no resources. And shockingly they believed that America was the land of freedom and liberty. Some did no doubt go to other countries in these places. And until the last 20 years there was even a decent population of Jews in Iran of all places.

[kskiska]

57. Some even traveled across Russia to Shanghai, then ended up in Japan

There's a fascinating book about this - The Fugu Plan.

[AspenRose]

77. I saw an excellent documentary a couple of years ago on PBS about that

Fascinating.

[Bluebear]

88. That I will have to look up! Thanks! nt

[dysfunctional press]

59. what about england?

it seems to me that it would have been easier to get there, than the u.s.

[EFerrari]

49. I haven't read about this topic for many years, but iirc, fleeing Jews

had very limited choices for emigration and as Hitler overran Europe, they became fewer and fewer. That was one reason the Zionists in Palestine were so desperate at the time, "fighting the White Paper as if there was no Hitler, fighting Hitler as if there was no White Paper". That document (1939) limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 for five years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Paper_of_1939

Russia wasn't a good choice, Europe was overrun, America was awash with xenophobia and Palestine had strict immigration quotas.

[The Backlash Cometh]

51. To my knowledge, there was no anti-semitism in latin America.

I could be wrong, but I never saw any signs of it while I was there.

[EFerrari]

54. I believe that some people did wind up in South America.

But to be honest, I don't remember this morning if that was a destination in the first place or a resort when other plans didn't work out. And there are other considerations, right, like logistics and resources to pay for your passage.

[TZ]

47. This is the dirty secret of FDR and American

during WW2. They were well aware of what the Nazi's were doing but didn't want to be flooded with a lot "jews". In fact alot of what you hear about "illegal mexican immigrants" today was said about European Jews to justify limiting emigration here. The Holocaust Museum in DC has a really really good discussion of this issue. Its very depressing. I have not ever been able to see FDR in quite the same light.

[Missy M]

53. Every time I see Anne Frank's photo it haunts me....

the US should have let in any European Jew they could during those times. How could "national security" been compromised by people who were being systematically slaughtered and tortured. We should have welcomed any we could save with open arms. I have never bought the story that the German people didn't know or that our government didn't know until later. They had to, to me it is impossible to think they didn't know.

[spoony]

93. Me too.

It's so damn awful, these crimes of indifference or willful ignorance or whatever it is that makes people blink away the horrors they could have helped stop. :(

[lynne]

55. Really Sad -

- I have to wonder why he didn't attempt to go to the UK or to Switzerland - anyplace closer than the US?? :shrug:

[kdmorris]

72. Well, in all fairness...

The first emigration they undertook was from Germany to Holland in 1933 to get away from the rising Nazis. Maybe after the Nazis invaded Holland, Otto Frank didn't believe that any place in Europe was safe.

[diamidue]

83. I had family from Switzerland

not by blood, but by marriage on my father's side. It was not safe there. This man had to flee thru Portugal with his parents. I have a box of photos of his extended family who were left behind - and who all were killed. It's heartbreaking to look at their faces in the pictures. I did read that the US did not trust Germans coming into the US at that time. They feared that if these refugees had family remaining in Germany, that the Nazis could hold those family members hostage, thereby forcing the refugees into possibly becoming spies or otherwise working against the US.

[Octafish]

56. Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

As Aint_no_life_nowhere and others stated above, it's easy to see in retrospect the errors we've made. The thing is, many people at the time, knew exactly what they were doing.

Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

Edwin Black Sunday, November 9, 2003

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a so-called Master Race.

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the 20th century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little-known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles Goethe, as well as members of the California state Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists from such prestigious universities as Stanford, Yale, Harvard and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

Stanford President David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, confinement or forced sterilization.

CONTINUED...

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.sfgate.com/index.html

Harriman? Harriman worked big time with Allen Dulles and Prescott Bush.

[AliceWonderland]

62. And my second thank you on this thread to Octafish. n/t

[Octafish]

80. IBM and the Holocaust

You're welcome, AliceWonderland. Here's something else you might want to know about:

IBM and the Holocaust

by Edwin Black

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.

IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.

Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.

Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews -- how did Hitler get the names?

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Here's the book's introduction:

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/black-edwin/ibm-and-the-holocaust.html

Wish more people understood the danger we are in today.
These NAZIs did not give up in 1945.

Thanks for understanding, AliceWonderland.

[truedelphi]

70. I once spent two days in a librarry reading

Every Life magazine that i could find - some all the way back to the nineteen twenties.

I was amazed to find that people writing letters to the editor would rail against Jews.
Or serve indirect insults - "I thought that Jews had a poor sense of design until I saw this spectacle in Harlem"

As you can tell by remark above, Insults against blacks were frequent also.

If you really want to know the flavor of a country during any given time period, read the magazines.

[AspenRose]

81. If you saw the documentary "Jazz" (Ken Burns) you'll see some examples of

Nazi propaganda railing against jazz music....I was amazed to see a caricature of a black jazz musician...wearing a Star of David.

Louis Armstrong wore a Star of David in tribute to the family who gave him his first horn, so it may have been a caricature of him. :shrug:

There was a lot of that kind of racism coupled with anti-semitism on both sides of the Atlantic during that time. Like two sides of the same coin.

This is so sad about Anne Frank; I feel sick.

[Octafish]

86. Prejudice is the direct result of ignorance.

Was it the Buddha who said all sin results from ignorance?

In our time we have seen what it brings to those "different" from the mainstream, the Other, the Stranger.

And that is why we all do our best to build bridges of understanding, making it easier to bring new ideas -- like the idea all people, even those different from one's self, are equal -- from one place to another.

Perhaps one day, we will live in a world where everyone is valued for just being a human being. In my opinion, that understanding about a man or woman's life represents an object of infinite value -- a complete and unique universe. Our world would be so much better off if we all realized it, and did what Jesus and the other religious leaders said was our main mission: Do for others the things that we wish would be done for us.

Until that day, perhaps we can make like Bodhisattva: Work to enlighten every living being, until the last blade of grass is awakened.

[bleedingheart]

107. I also want to add to what you have listed that all new immigrants

were screened before they could enter the country.

People with diseases that were either contagious or which could cause disability were turned away.
Kids/Adults with physical deformities were sometimes sent back to Europe, and even sadder sometimes children were sent back alone as parents stayed behind in the US.

All part of the eugenics movement.

[Lilith Velkor]

110. Wasn't Harriman involved in the Business Plot of '33?

I seem to recall that was one of the names Smedley Butler named.

[byronius]

58. When I was ten years old, I stuck my head inside an oven at Dachau.

Ever since that moment, I have felt a deep rage toward all things responsible for THAT. I clearly see portions of the GOP as THAT. IT is what drives me to be a better, stronger person. I studied German history extensively for years in an attempt to find out why my genetic forebears had such a catastrophic weakness in their souls. But it is spread everywhere, mostly in little bits and pieces, but spread everywhere.

They are among us, genetics notwithstanding. And they love George Bush.

Anne Frank. You've made me tear up and get angry all over again. This'll happen until I die, I suppose. Goddamn them. Goddamn us. Goddamn the flavor of the human soul that permits THAT thinking.

:grr:

[mzmolly]

66. How very tragic.

:(

[Bluebear]

67. HOW did this end up in "Israel/Palestine"?????

Is Anne Frank Israeli now?

[ProdigalJunkMail]

68. Jewish=Israeli???

:shrug:

[femmedem]

76. Agreed. This makes no sense.

I know our volunteer mods are doing their best, but this seems ill-considered.

[wicket]

109. Glad to see it moved back

Made no sense. :shrug:

[Leopolds Ghost]

73. Have any of you guys read "The Conquerors" by Michael Beschloss?

Over 20% of Americans -- including many Republicans -- wanted us to enter the war on the Nazi side.

As Al Franken pointed out, many centrists and center-liberals saw FDR as a potential American Hitler -- and admired him for it.

Many leftists supported -- or feared -- an authoritarian populist would be elected by running to FDR's left. It was commonly assumed that Huey Long would play that role.

Conservatives wanted to replace him WITH an American Hitler.

Authoritarianism was considered the way of the future. It was modernism.

Charles Lindbergh, a "national hero" and top officials in the future Truman administration condemned Treasury Secretary Morgenthau's "Jewish plan" to stop the Holocaust and punish the Germans while it was ongoing.

[msmcghee]

75. Shows how close to the surface such . .

. . inherited emotional forces lie.

That's why I can understand the Europeans' low tolerance for holocaust denial. Reason has no chance once such strong emotions are unleashed in a large group of humans who collectively imagine some common threat.

In this respect holocaust denial can easily lead to the equivalent of calling fire in a crowded theater. The line between free speech and causing the death and destruction of innocent people is not nearly so clear as many believe it to be.

[Annces]

82. More heartbreak about this girl

This is very sad.

[treestar]

84. Today there is no way she would get in

The immigration authorities interpret everything in the strictest way possible.

We are now officially a nation of elitists (we were born here, and we'll only take your best of the best, cream of the crop).

Our immigration laws are very, very restrictive. Instead, apparently, we attack the other country to make it more of a democracy. :sarcasm:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

87. Ironic timing for the story.

Because we just learned that we forced the evacuation of 2 million Iraqis after killing 650,000 of them, yet only let 600 refugees into the states.

[fortyfeetunder]

92. Oh noooooooooooooooooo.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Anne Frank house. I was in complete peace there. Her diary was a favorite childhood story. I cried at the end knowing she was no longer alive.

But now to know the US was culpable in not allowing the Frank family to escape truly breaks my heart.

Had she escaped, we could have marveled at the woman she would have become. A woman of peace becoming her own, but instead her precious life was cut short...

:cry:

[Raine]

98. Anne Frank is a hero of mine

sometimes when I have a difficult time dealing with problems in my life Anne and all those in hiding have been a major inspiration to keep on and never give up. It makes me sick and so angry to think of how her and so many should have and could have been saved. :cry:

[Behind the Aegis]

100. Not to sound trite or dismissive,

...but you give her life, and her death, meaning. From her tragedy, and those of the 13 million other lives lost, is why Jews say, "Never Again!" I think your post honors her memory.

[Raine]

103. Thank you

:hug:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

108. It was the (mostly) Southern bigot Congresspeople who did this.

Whenever FDR showed any intention to do anything to help the Jews of Europe, that band of shitheads (which were mostly Democrats at the time and now are mostly Republicans) would scream bloody murder an threaten to stop the government dead. Had the votes to do so, too.

This is a preventative measure against those who like to blame FDR.