It is generally thought that anti- semitism lay at the root of our immigration policy, but I suppose that is disputable. The Nuremburg Laws were enacted in 1938, which also saw Kristallnacht, when Nazi riots ruined a lot of Jewish businesses. The very fact that immigration was at an all time low meant there was little harm in taking more people escaping known Nazi persecution.
We, in fact, habitually do what we can. For the most part, for example, we took in the Vietnamese boat people. We inserted troops in Bosnia and bombed Serbia to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo. It is not so strange to say we could have done more in that case, and to wonder why we did not.
By the way, the first S.S. Einsatzgruppen began mass executions in 1942, in Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Although some of it was dismissed as Jewish propaganda, there was documentary evidence being smuggled out pretty early, to show mass graves and shootings. By 1943, the Allies noted the peculiar pattern of German rail transshipment, to detention camps, and the strange way that they kept taking in prisoners, and had evidence that intentional death was being inflicted. And yet none of these things altered immigration policy much, as, gradually, the Germans closed off all chances of escape...... |
