Posted on 02/20/2007 5:43:48 AM PST by SJackson
A new chapter in the teenager's tragic saga.
Anne Frank's family tried to escape the Nazis by immigrating to America - but they were turned away.
This extraordinary new chapter in the teenager's tragic saga emerges from seventy-eight newly-discovered documents from the correspondence of Anne's father, Otto Frank. They detail his efforts, in 1941, to gain permission to bring his family to the United States.
The new correspondence presents an opportunity - and an obligation - to tell the rest of the story.
At the time of the correspondence, the Franks were living in exile in Holland, having fled their native Germany after Hitler's rise to power. By 1939, with anti-Semitism spreading throughout Europe, the Franks began thinking about how to get to America. Otto had already lived in the US from 1909 to 1911, working as an intern at Macy's Department Store, in New York City.
But by 1939, it was a different America. After World War I, in response to the public's intense anti-foreigner sentiment, Congress had enacted restrictive immigration quotas. The quota system was structured to reduce "undesirable" immigrants, especially Italians and Jews. The original version of the immigration bill had been introduced in Congress with a report by the chief of the United States Consular Service, Wilbur Carr, characterizing Jewish immigrants as "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits... lacking any conception of patriotism or national spirit."
The new annual quota for Germany and Austria allowed a maximum of 27,370 immigrants - far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian Jews searching for haven from Hitler.
Remarkably, even those meager quota allotments were almost always under-filled. American consular officials abroad were directed by Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to "postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas" to refugees. They created a bureaucratic maze - "paper walls," to borrow the phrase of David S. Wyman - to keep refugees far from America's shores.
And so, during the period of the Nazi genocide, from late 1941 until early 1945, only ten percent of the quotas from Axis-controlled European countries would actually be used. Almost 190,000 quota places remained unused - representing almost 190,000 lives that could have been saved, even under the restrictive quotas.
Anne's mother, Edith, wrote to a friend in 1939: "I believe that all Germany's Jews are looking around the world, but can find nowhere to go."
In May 1940, the Germans conquered and occupied the Netherlands. Emigration was forbidden and the Franks' hopes of going to America appeared to be dashed.
But they didn't give up. In 1941, Otto began writing to his American friends and relatives, and to US officials, in the hope of securing permission to immigrate. But at the same time the Franks were seeking shelter in America, State Department officials were seeking new ways to shut the nation's doors even tighter. In the summer of 1941, Breckinridge Long implemented new procedures to further reduce the number of immigrants.
Long had the full backing of President Roosevelt. When refugee advocate James G. McDonald appealed to FDR against Long's policies, the president dismissed his pleas as "sob stuff."
As a result of the new restrictions, less than half of the German-Austrian quota places were used in 1941.
Otto and Edith Frank, and their daughters Margot and Anne, were turned away by the United States that year. Not because the quotas were full. Not because this successful middle-class couple and their two young daughters would have been a burden to American society. But simply because so many Americans considered Jewish refugees undesirable, and because too many politicians feared losing votes if more Jews were admitted.
Today, Anne Frank has become the best-known victim of the Holocaust to people all over the world, especially as the subject is taught to schoolchildren. Anne's diary of the two years that her family hid in an attic to elude the Germans is the centerpiece of classroom instruction about the Nazi genocide. The betrayal of the Franks, and their final months in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, provide the grim climax to a story that represents the fate of millions of Jewish victims.
But now a new chapter must be added to the Anne Frank saga. The new correspondence presents an opportunity - and an obligation - to tell the rest of the story. Every sixth-grade student in America needs to know that Anne's death was not inevitable. The Franks were turned away from America by callous bureaucrats and politicians, even though there was room in the immigration quotas.
We need to teach our children why America cast aside its proud tradition of welcoming "the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free" and closed its doors. Only then can we hope that such moral failures are not repeated by the next generation.
Maybe that's so, but espionage was a rare event in the US and even if most espionage acts were done by home-grown German-Americans, the probability of a home-grown German-American committing an act of sabotage is small.
Yes. "Shame on us for not being able to stop the murderer for killing." It's a common ailment in the modern era.
I'm not familiar with Tancredo's statement, but the issue raised last week pertained to Iraqi refugees, we're starting with 7 or 8,000, not individuals who have aided the US. We've been letting a few of them in when necessary, 400 or 500 I believe.
Petain was a Nazi puppet. They pulled his strings, and he danced. Oh no, they weren't complicit; they were actively involved. To date, pétainisme is a French synonym for treason.
But the French also displayed incredible courage and resourcefulness. When France fell to the Nazis, thousands of citizens joined in, assisted, or simply turned a blind eye to the Maquis. I'd bet that at least one person reading this has an American ancestor who got safely home thanks to Frogs smuggling his Yankee butt over the border.
Certainly there was nothing directed specifically at the Franks. The article describes his time in the US as an intern, at Macy's before WWI. I assume it was study or work related.
I'm just curious as to the circumstances of his stay in America. Given the distinct lack of jetliners, it's inconvenient to cross the Atlantic without intending to stay. It doesn't matter, of course, I'm just curious.
But then there has been a scurrilous commentary from Weasley Clark lately about how it's all Israel's fault that we are concerning ourselves with Iran.
Exactly. Hard to think of a family more beset by consistent mortal tragedy since that time.
My premise as that if you had to choose one (American) individual, he was as good or better than any I can think of. Very often in history, one person has been the critical mass inciting or inhibiting a key event. FDR went as far as violating the law to assist England prior to 12/07/1941. Joe Kennedy worked hard to influence public opinion in order to soften the image of the Nazi regime and prevent any steps towards war. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I am certainly not the first to point the finger at him as a key culprit. Any way you slice it, Joseph Kennedy was certainly one of the most vile Americans in history.
Sadly, thousands of Jews were turned away by the US, even after it became clear that they were being marked for extinction by the Nazis.
****Petain was a Nazi puppet. They pulled his strings, and he danced. Oh no, they weren't complicit; they were actively involved. To date, pétainisme is a French synonym for treason.
But the French also displayed incredible courage and resourcefulness. When France fell to the Nazis, thousands of citizens joined in, assisted, or simply turned a blind eye to the Maquis. I'd bet that at least one person reading this has an American ancestor who got safely home thanks to Frogs smuggling his Yankee butt over the border.****
It is definitely true that the French Resistance was active and courageous.
But, the Vichy government was the only West European country that actively rounded up its French Jewish citizens to have them deported and killed.
The Danes, on the other hand, were a model of how to protect their Jewish citizens to whatever extent possible.
Sounds like Wilbur Carr would have been quite at home on his forum. A very substantial minority (hopefully a minority, I sometimes despair) share his opinion about foreigners wanting to come the the US.
The Franks were turned away from America by callous bureaucrats and politicians, even though there was room in the immigration quotas.
Every sixth-grade student in America needs to know that AMERIKA's obscene politics are STILL keeping the poor, harrassed undocumneted workers away from safe haven!!
"When you get old enough to vote, my darlings, remember what you've learned here.
Together we can re-make the World into a safe and secure village!!
Why?
24 posted on 02/20/2007 8:13:59 AM CST by Alouette
Why is a good question. We're busy taking in all the Mexicans; one country at a time, please!
However, political refugees are not immigrants. These are temporary guests. The proper recourse had been proposed at the time. We could have and should have opened internment camps in Cuba.
The Nazis tried to deport the German Jews in the 30's but nobody wanted to take them. Britain refused to let them into Palestine, so the nazis tried to buy the island of Madagascar and exile the Jews there, but Portugal wouldn't sell the island. Plenty of little-known history surrounds the holocaust.
Bullshit. The politicians dutifully executed the will of their constitutents.
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