Adaptation Process for Jewish refugees in their transition to America

The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 severely damaged the refugee’s attempts flee the Nazi persecution. As the Germany military began to conquer through Europe, it became increasingly more difficult for refugees to flee to new places. In German-occupied Poland, the SS prevented Jews from migrating. Jews in Germany could only legally leave until fall of 1941. In 1944,  President Franklin D. Roosevelt began to take action to rescue European Jews, under the pressure from officials in his government an an American Jewish community. Encouraged by the Treasury Department officials, Roosevelt signed an executive order that established the War Refugee Board to stand for the rights of the imperiled refugees. With the help and assistance of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the World Jewish Congress and the assistance of other relief groups in America, the WRB assisted in rescuing and protecting tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary, Romania, and other places in Europe.

Many Americans disagreed and wanted to prevent the income of American refugees. In 1939, sixty one percent of Americans opposed the settlement of ten thousand refugee children, most of them Jewish, into America. In May that same year, twelve percent of Americans said they would support a widespread campaign against Jews in the US and another eight percent said they would be open to one. By June of 1944, polls citied in the “Jews in the Mind of America” showed twenty four percent of Americans believed Jews were a “menace to America.”

However, at the same time, seventy percent of Americans said in an April 1944 poll commissioned by the White House that they supported creating a temporary but safe haven in the United States where the refugees would be able to stay until the war’s end. Unfortunately, only one camp was set up at Fort Ontario Owego, New York, in which 982 refugees were paced there in August until 1944.

It was not until 1944 when America took specific action to help Jewish refugees, when Roosevelt, with pressure from his own government and American Jews, established the War Refugee Board to help bring Jews in Europe. Up until that point, several thousand refugees had  gained admittance into the United States under the German-Austrian quota from 1938 to 1941, which was not strictly limited to Jews. However, in June 1944, Roosevelt directed that Fort Ontario, a vacant US Army based in Oswego, New York, became an Emergency Refugee Shelter. Almost one thousand refugees in Allied-occupied Italy-most of which were Jewish-were brought to update of New York despite the existing immigration laws. Roosevelt told Congress that these refugees would be returned to their homelands after the war ended.

Many Jewish refugees tried to begin their new lines outside Europe after more than one hundred fifty thousand Jews fled eastern Europe due to antisemitism, violence, and Communism. Palestine ended up being one of the more favored destination of Jewish Holocaust survivors of Jewish holocaust survivors, followed by America. Immigration restrictions were still in effect long after the war, and any legislation to allow the admission of the Jewish refugees was slow in coming into existence.

It wasn’t until the years 1945 and 1953 that four hundred and fifty Jewish refugees were settled into the United States. A law was made in 1948 that was passed by Congress following intense lobbying by the American Jewish community, in which a legislation was passed to admit 202,000 displaced persons to the United States. Nearly eighty thousand of them were Jewish. However, entry qualifications were so privileged towards certain refugees to such a drastic extent, that President Truman declared the law “flagrantly discriminatory” against Jews. The law was amended by Congress in 1950, but by that time most of the Jewish refugees in Europe had gone to the newly established state of Israel. 

In all, 137,450 Jewish refugees has settled into the United States by 1952, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Biography: 

"United States Policy Toward Jewish Refugees, 1941–1952." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
<https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094>.

“What Did Americans Say About Jewish Holocaust Refugees?” Uriel Heilman. December 03, 2015, 10:53 AM.

<http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/1.689782 >