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.
Goes without saying.
The quota rules imposed in 1921 and 1924 were not directed against Jews and Italians only, but against all the European groups that the WASPs of that day considered undesirable--Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, any Eastern Europeans. It was just that the Jews were hurt the most by the policy because they had the greatest incentive to get out of Europe once Hitler came to power and had a much higher likelihood of being killed if the Germans took control of the country where they lived.
One of my professors was on the last passenger ship that crossed the ocean to America in 1939 before the war started--he was then about 4 years old. His family was lucky to have some American relatives sponsor them.