The Mormon Senator Who Tried To Save Anne Frank

Jewish Press ^ | February 29th, 2012 | Rafael Medoff

[SJackson]

The news that a Mormon temple in the Dominican Republic recently conducted a posthumous proxy baptism of Anne Frank, the most famous diarist of the Holocaust, undoubtedly will cause some offense in the Jewish community. Evidently the baptizers believe they were saving Anne’s soul. Of greater significance, however, is what Mormons tried to do to save Anne’s life.

Millions of Americans know the story of the German Jewish teenager who hid for more than two years in an Amsterdam attic until she and her family were discovered by the Nazis and sent to the death camps. Anne Frank’s heartbreaking diary is required reading in schools throughout the United States.

What was not known, until a few years ago, is that before they went into hiding, the Franks requested permission to immigrate to the United States but were turned away. 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.”

Immigration to the U.S. was determined by quotas that had been set up in the 1920s to reduce the number of “undesirable” immigrants – particularly Jews and Italians. Even those quotas were almost never filled because the Roosevelt administration imposed bureaucratic obstacles designed to disqualify visa applicants. As a result, during the Holocaust, only 10 percent of the quotas from Axis-controlled European countries were utilized – and nearly 190,000 quota places went unused.

Most Americans opposed more immigration. Fear of foreigners and the difficulties of the Great Depression hardened many hearts. But there were exceptions. One was the most famous and influential Mormon in America, Sen. William H. King, Democrat of Utah. In early 1939, refugee advocates in Congress proposed legislation to admit 20,000 German Jewish refugee children outside the quota system. One of the children who theoretically could have qualified to come to the U.S. under the bill was Anne Frank. Senator King supported the bill, although that meant defying most of his Democratic colleagues, as well as President Roosevelt.

Laura Delano Houghteling, a cousin of FDR and wife of the U.S. commissioner of immigration, typified opposition to the bill when she remarked that “Twenty thousand charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.”

Unfortunately, Houghteling’s sentiment carried the day. The legislation was buried. On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands and completed its conquest in five days. Trapped under the heel of the Nazi jackboot, the Franks and other Jews in Holland now found themselves in an increasingly desperate position.

Coincidentally, that same week in Washington, the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on legislation sponsored by Senator King to open Alaska to European Jewish refugees. This bill, too, might have enabled Anne Frank and her family to come to America.

Sparsely populated and strategically located, Alaska was in urgent need of development. Immigrant laborers could serve a vital national purpose. The Labor Department and the Interior Department endorsed King’s bill. But President Roosevelt told Interior Secretary Harold Ickes he would support only a watered-down version of the plan in which just 10 percent of the workers would be Jews, so as “to avoid the undoubted criticism that we would be subjected to if there were an undue proportion of Jews.”

The State Department and anti-immigration groups strongly opposed using Alaska for the resettlement of any refugees, and Roosevelt soon dropped the whole idea. The bill went nowhere.

Meanwhile, throughout 1941, Otto Frank continued writing to American friends and relatives, and U.S. government officials, in the hope of securing permission for his family to immigrate.

Little did he know the Roosevelt administration was quietly inventing new ways to shut the nation’s doors even tighter. In the summer of 1941, the State Department began automatically disqualifying all visa applicants who had “close relatives” in occupied Europe – on the specious theory that the Nazis might hold the relatives as hostage to blackmail the emigrants into becoming Axis spies. (No such spies were ever discovered.)

The new regulation may have disqualified the Franks, since one of their “close relatives,” Anne’s paternal grandmother, Rosa Stern Hollander, was ill with cancer in late 1941 and probably would not have been able to make the cross-Atlantic journey.

William H. King concluded his Senate service in 1941 and returned to Utah having failed to open America’s doors to European Jewish refugees – but not for lack of trying. His state had few Jewish voters, and his party was largely against more immigration, but King was driven by his Mormon faith to aid the downtrodden. Another Mormon U.S. senator from Utah, Democrat Elbert Thomas, would soon pick up where King left off and help lead the campaign to rescue Jews from the Nazis in the 1940s.

Anne Frank occupies a special place in the hearts of Jews, and any affront to her memory naturally arouses Jewish ire. Some members of the Jewish community have even urged presidential candidate Mitt Romney, today America’s best-known Mormon, to speak out against posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims.

Before rushing to inject the issue into the presidential race, it is worth recalling that leaders of the Mormon church have already pledged to refrain from posthumously “saving the souls” of Hitler’s victims, and no doubt will remind their Dominican Republic branch and their other followers of that pledge.

And it is especially worth recalling that when the issue was not saving Anne Frank’s soul but saving her life, the most powerful Mormon political figure in America did what he could at a time when too few were willing to do anything at all.

Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. He is also the author of a number of books including the forthcoming “Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Vote’ and Bipartisan Support for Israel,” co-authored with Professor Sonja Schoepf Wentling.

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

[Diogenesis]

Mormon authors Alan F. Keele and Douglas F. Tobler, in "The Führer's New Clothes," wrote,
"Hitler enjoyed at least as much popularity among German Mormons
as he did among the population in general. His apparent dynamism and self-confidence seemed
to show a way out of the chaos and weakness of the Weimar years...
Some Church members even saw Hitler as God's instrument,
preparing the world for the millennium." The Borks, above,
were among thousands of Mormon families who sent their sons
to fight for the Reich. The vital importance of "Aryan" ancestry
gave new significance to genealogical research, the writers
added in their Sunstone article. "And the Führer himself,
the non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian who yielded
to no one in his desire for absolute law and order, seemed
to embody many of the most basic LDS virtues."

It was clear, the authors emphasized, that the Church's priority
was to maintain its strength and continue to make converts under the Third Reich.
It actually launched a public relations campaign to reassure
Germany of its fealty. Indeed, an article written for a special issue
of the Nazi Party organ Der Volkische Beobachter by the LDS Mission President
to West Germany, Alfred C. Rees, "abounds in such loaded terms as Volk
and Rasse (race), and a picture of Brigham Young bears the caption,
'Führer der historischen Mormonenpioniere.' Very disturbing
is the way President Rees blatantly parallels Mormonism with
Nazism…Mormonism sounds like a fulfillment of Nazi teachings."

LDS Temple Ordinance records indicate that Adolf Hitler was
"baptized" and "endowed" on December 10, 1993, and "sealed"
to his parents on March 12, 1994. These events took place
in the London Temple, in England. Hitler was "sealed" to Eva Braun
on September 28, 1993, in the Jordan River Temple, Utah, and
on June 14, 1994, in the Los Angeles Temple. According to the
Church, these names -- and the names of other high-ranking
Nazi officials and of Mussolini -- have been removed from the registry.
The issue of Mormons posthumously baptizing Jewish people into the
Church continues to resurface regularly.

There appears to have been considerable support for Hitler
within the Mormon cult.... and even substantial collaboration."

[Graybeard58]

Before rushing to inject the issue into the presidential race, it is worth recalling that leaders of the Mormon church have already pledged to refrain from posthumously “saving the souls” of Hitler’s victims

Does anyone have an up to date count of how many times the mormons have made that "pledge"?

[Utah Binger]

I would hope this is true, however have never heard of it before now after seventy years as an historian and Utah native and Mormon apostate.

Ping to those who may know.

[Utah Binger]

Meant to ping you too.

[svcw]

The story does not match the headline.
Theoretically Anne Frank maybe have possibly been one of the children saved vs the mormon senator who tried to save Anne Frank.

[RoosterRedux]

Cults behave in ways that are hard for outsiders to fathom.

The LDS is not an exception.

This is why no one understands Romney...all we see is the tip of the iceberg (in fact, the tip he has so studiously prepared for our viewing)!

[Utah Binger]

Sorry not to ping you too. Anne Frank was Dutch and not German if I remember correctly.

[svcw]

Even if Romney pleaded with SLC lds to stop the dead dunking of Jews, and SLC lds said they wouldn’t any longer except they have promised at least six times in the last year this practice would end and it hasn’t.

[Fiji Hill]

The Franks were originally from Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

[SJackson]

That’s true, though no reflection on his actions.

[Utah Binger]

Thanks for the info. My wife and my family went through that building in Amsterdam back in 1982. Kids have never gotten over that experience. Tour guides were very good but I don’t remember that fact being stated. I am sure that is right. Today I learned that Statins causes loss of memory. That is my excuse and I’m sticking to it. No more damn Crestor for me.

[SJackson]

I would hope this is true, however have never heard of it before now after seventy years as an historian and Utah native and Mormon apostate.

I've not heard of this before, but frankly it doesn't sound like his efforts went anywhere, so that's not surprising. If the article is correct regarding legislation, that part of the record should be out there.

[Utah Binger]

From my perspective there is a lot of bragging going on about the sanctimonious perfection of Mormonism and their intent.

Sometimes it is all made up. I would hope there is a record. If not, it is just more of the same.

[reaganaut]

I have never heard/read of it either and considering the number of LDS officials who were Nazi’s, Nazi Sympathizers (even in SLC) and SS soldiers, and having read extensively on Nazi/Mormon connections during the war, I don’t believe it.

It looks to me to be more of a puff piece in the wake of the Wiesenthal scandal. LDS often lies and rewrites history to save its sorry *** and THAT is documented.

[SJackson]

Don’t know, but Rafael Medoff and the Wyman Institute are serious individuals/institutions with no reason to promote the LDS. I’d believe them. Given the nature of the times, an effort like this was doomed to failure, but I’m willing to give the Senator credit for his attempt. I’d speculate that the timing of the article might be related to the recent controversy over baptising dead Jews.

[SJackson]

Note post 17, it’s not from LDS isn’t, Medoff and the Wyman Institure are legitimate sources. As I noted the timing is, well, the timing.

[Utah Binger]

Sorry ass indeed. Live *** translation.

[Fiji Hill]

I went through the house in 1966—At the time, I don’t believe it was as big a tourist attraction as it is today. If I remember correctly, the tour was self-guided.