The Response of the United States to the Holocaust - Essay Example

Consequently, this war created a refugee problem in the west and raised a lot of concerns in the world. There was a need to solve this problem and relocate the displaced Jews who were termed as refugees (Rossel, p13). The first response by the United States of America to solve this crisis was made by President Franklin D.

Roosevelt was the then US president. He acknowledged that the Jews problem was becoming an international crisis and convened the Evian Conference on 6th July 1938. The conference was attended by 33 countries including Britain and her colonies, and other European and Latin American countries. The purpose of the conference was to come up with solutions to the problems that the Jews were facing as a result of the rise and expansion of Nazi Germany (Grobman, p124). However, the conference failed to produce any constructive results.

Most of the western countries including the US were very reluctant in opening their borders to the Jews who were being persecuted in Germany. They argued that the great depression had greatly affected their economies and increased the rate of unemployment in their countries thus accepting the Jews would increase competition for the jobs and cause further problems. The only country that agreed to open its borders to the Jewish immigrants was the Dominican Republic; it agreed to take in about 100, 000 refugees.

The only achievements of the conference were the documentation of a series of superficial and oral statements which implied that there was a refugee problem that required a solution and the creation of the intergovernmental committee on refugees (ICR) which was to continue working on the refugee crisis(Grobman, p299). In 1939, some Americans became concerned with the problems of the Jews in Germany and tried to rescue them but failed. For example, in response to the plight of the Jews, Senator Robert F.

Wagner introduced a refugee aid bill in the United States Senate on February 9, 1939, to help the refugees but failed. The bill called for the admission of about 21,000 refugee children below 14 years to the US over the next two years. However, in the House of Representatives, the bill was strongly opposed and defeated. Organizations supporting restrictive immigration argued that refugee children would deprive children of American aid (Grobman, p328). Generally, before 1944, the United States of America was very reluctant in responding to the problems of the Jews who were being persecuted in Germany and if they did then the response would be inadequate.

For instance, in 1942, the US state department received a cable revealing the plans of the Nazis to kill the European Jews but failed to publish the report. The report was addressed to Stephen Wise (American Jewish leader) but it did not reach him. It was intercepted by the US government and the state department asked Wise not to announce its contents (Museum, p2). The US government never acted decisively to help the victims of the Holocaust. In 1943, representatives of the US and British governments had a meeting in Bermuda to come up with solutions to the wartime problems of the refugees but failed to arrive at a concrete decision.

The conference never yielded any significant solutions. In the same year, Jan Karski (a Polish underground courier) told President Roosevelt about the reports he had received concerning the mass killing of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto but the US president failed to initiate any action to rescue the refugees (Museum, p3). The United States of America only took action to rescue the Jewish people in 1944. This year, US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, created the War Refugee Board (WRB) whose aim was to rescue the refugees.

The board set up a port in Oswego, New York to help in facilitating the rescue of the imperilled refugees. The port was called the Ontario refugee centre. This response by the US was helpful but it came late since at this time most of the Jews were already dead (Museum, p3). ConclusionDuring World War II, the period in which the Holocaust occurred, the United States of America was very reluctant in joining the war and support any country. It had adopted the policy of Isolationism in which they could not involve themselves in other countries’ domestic and international problems.

Rescuing the Jews and other people or groups who were being persecuted and killed by the Nazis was not a priority for the US government. Therefore, this explains why the response of the United States of America towards the killing of the Jews was poor and never constructive.