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- [Narrator] The history of the Holocaust
raises challenging questions
about our responsibility as a nation
to offer refuge and rescue
to persecuted people from beyond our borders.
In the spring of 1939,
before the outbreak of World War II,
the MS St. Louis set sail from Germany.
Most of its 937 passengers were Jews fleeing
from Nazi persecution.
Five years later, with the world now engulfed in war
and well after the United States had learned
about the Holocaust,
over 400,000 Jews were deported from Hungary
to German killing centers.
In both instances,
public opinion and government policy determined
how the United States responded.
What can we learn from American action
and inaction in the face of these events
that could help us prevent future genocides?
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On November 9, 1938,
the Nazi Party engaged in a campaign of violence
against Jews throughout Germany and Austria,
an event that became known as Kristallnacht,
"Night of Broken Glass."
- Kristallnacht started for us early in the morning.
My uncle wanted to close the shutters,
leaving the outside world outside,
and my grandmother said to him, "Stop that.
It's too late.
That's not going to protect us."
- [Narrator] After five years of Nazi rule,
hundreds of thousands of Jews were desperate to escape.
The problem was, few countries were willing
to take in more refugees.
Many looked to the United States
but did not yet have immigrant visas.
Some hoped that Cuba might offer temporary refuge
until their US visas came through.
This set the stage for the voyage of the St. Louis.
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- On May 13, 1939,
the St. Louis left Hamburg to go to Cuba,
and onboard were 937 passengers.
The vast majority of these were Jews.
This was the beginning of something new, something good.
But when they arrived in Havana Harbor,
those dreams were kind of shattered.
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- [Narrator] The Cuban government reversed its policy,
invalidating most of the passengers' landing certificates.
Only those with valid immigration visas
could disembark in Havana.
- The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
sent a delegate to Cuba,
but the negotiations fell apart.
And the St. Louis had to leave Cuban waters.
The captain decided that they were going to sail
to the United States.
They were America-bound anyway,
so it was believed that there would be some flexibility.
They sent telegrams to government officials,
to President Roosevelt, and to the State Department,
asking for entry.
The State Department stated
that though they had waiting numbers
to get into the United States,
they would have to wait their turn
and leave American waters.
- By 1938, 1939,
public opinion is clearly against Nazi Germany.
But that doesn't translate
into a willingness to bring in refugees.
- Even confronted with specific lives
right off the coast of Miami Beach,
American public opinion was so against
increasing the immigration quota.
- [Steven] Immigrants coming to the United States
might represent a competition for jobs.
Bad economic times fueled xenophobia.
It also fueled antisemitism.
- So the St. Louis left American shores on June 7, 1939.
Fortunately, with the intervention again
of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee,
a deal was brokered with four Western European countries
to take in the passengers:
Belgium, Holland, France, and England.
- This was kind of celebrated,
that these refugees had finally found homes.
What nobody knew at that time
is that Europe would be engulfed in war
just a few months afterwards.
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- [Narrator] In December 1941,
the United States was officially at war
with the Axis powers, Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan.
For Europe's Jews,
the situation had greatly worsened
and they were increasingly trapped.
By the middle of 1942,
information about the Nazi policy to murder Jews
began to reach the United States public.
We now know that almost two million Jews had been killed
by that time.
- The persecution of the Jews in Europe
had reached a really unimaginable scale,
and that millions of people were now threatened with death.
There was a new wave of interest in doing something,
a sense that there had to be some kind of effort
on behalf of the refugees.
- This creates a mood among Jewish organizations
to call public attention to what's happening
and to urge action to save what remains
of Europe's Jewish population.
- So, by the end of 1943,
there is enough public awareness of the murder of the Jews
that the Senate and the House of Representatives issued
what is called the Rescue Resolution,
calling for a US government agency designed
for the relief and rescue of Jews
and other persecuted minorities.
Simultaneously in the Executive Branch,
a battle was going on between the State Department
and the Treasury Department.
The Treasury Department,
who needed to approve licenses for relief and rescue,
realized that the State Department was delaying assisting
some of these Jewish aid organizations
to send money into Europe.
- [Steven] Treasury Department officials compiled a report
that is placed before President Roosevelt
in January of 1944.
And almost immediately,
Roosevelt decides on the creation of the War Refugee Board.
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- [Rebecca] The War Refugee Board staff came
from the Treasury Department.
It was a group who worked with sending money overseas.
John Pehle, as director of the Foreign Funds Control,
became the executive director largely because
of the good work that his group was doing.
- These were people who were really committed,
morally committed as well as politically committed,
to saving lives.
- [Rebecca] The board organizes some relief,
but for the most part,
they're working through other agencies,
streamlining the process.
They are able to facilitate sending millions of dollars
into Europe and have a much greater impact.
- [Narrator] Still, the War Refugee Board
confronted a daunting task.
The people it hoped to save remained far behind enemy lines.
And the board could not divert vital military resources
from the Allies' goal of winning the war
as soon as possible.
Options were very limited.
- In the spring of 1944,
the War Refugee Board was faced
with one of its greatest crises,
which was what to do about Hungary.
- The Hungarian government had engaged
in secret negotiations to leave the Axis.
When the Germans found out about this,
they sent troops into the country.
And along with the troops came Adolf Eichmann's team
of deportation specialists.
- [Narrator] At the time of the German invasion
in March 1944, Hungary was home
to the largest Jewish community left in Europe,
about 800,000 Jews.
Within two months, at the request of the Germans,
Hungarian authorities began deporting Jews by train
to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
- President Roosevelt held a news conference
in which he warned the Hungarian government
not to cooperate with Germany and its persecution.
Government shortwave broadcasts to Eastern Europe
threatened the Hungarian government
that war criminals who cooperated with Germany
in mass killings would be prosecuted after the war.
This was not enough.
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- There was a long line of railroad cars,
and then order came to mount the cars.
And I remember even at 13,
I was, I had to help people like my grandmother,
people like my aunt, to get up on the high car.
And eventually, the doors were closed,
the locks were put on,
and I don't know how many hours wait
and then the trains took off.
- And we just couldn't believe that this is possible
to transport people like this.
It was of course standing places only,
and there was a small window under the roof
and a pail in the corner.
It was unbelievable.
People became hysterical.
They were screaming.
Some people were yelling, some people were fainting,
some people were crying.
It was a situation that I never ever could imagine
to happen to human beings.
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- [Narrator] On July 7, 1944,
the Hungarian ruler announced his order
to halt the deportations to Auschwitz.
A variety of outside pressures,
including a US bombing of Budapest on July 2, 1944,
influenced his decision.
By that time, over 400,000 people had been deported.
Hungary's decision to halt the deportations
offered the Jews remaining in Budapest
a chance to survive,
an opportunity the War Refugee Board seized.
- There were approximately 120,000 Jews in Budapest
in July of 1944.
For the moment, they were spared.
But no one knew how long they would be spared.
- The War Refugee Board petitions and cables
to all of the neutral nations of Europe,
to Portugal, to Spain, to Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey,
and asks them if they could increase
their diplomatic representation in Hungary.
- [Narrator] Working through diplomatic posts
and other intermediaries, like the International Red Cross,
the War Refugee Board assisted
a complex network of rescuers.
They employed an array of tactics
from false passports and citizenship papers,
to safe houses and clandestine escapes.
These measures enabled tens of thousands of Jews
in Budapest to survive.
Unfortunately, by July 1944,
over 300,000 Hungarian Jews had already lost their lives.
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- The time for a War Refugee Board
would've been before the war,
when you really had refugees who were still looking
for visas and able in some fashion to get out.
If you wait until, in the case of the Holocaust,
Hitler begins to expand his Reich across Europe,
it's already too late.
- I think one of the lessons
is that the individual has power.
It's public pressure that leads to the Rescue Resolutions
in Congress in the fall of 1943.
It's a number of people writing,
it's people showing up to protests,
it's people saying, "I know what's going on in Europe.
I believe it and I want this government to try to stop it."
- People want to know, have we learned from history?
Have we learned specifically from the history
of the Holocaust?
And my answer is,
yes, but we learn very, very slowly.
- Terrible things continue to happen.
Governments continue to fail to respond sufficiently
or soon enough to help victims of genocide around the world.
And it's a tough call.
There's no easy answer.
There are challenges to intervening in a foreign country.
There are certainly challenges
when you implement a refugee policy
that lets a lot of people in at once.
And yet, we really do need to think about this.
When you have millions of people that are left homeless,
who are murdered, whose lives are destroyed,
those ruins have a ripple effect
for every nation on this planet.
It carries such a heavy cost
that we have a responsibility to figure this one out.
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