Vol. 79/No. 18      May 18, 2015

Repression and assaults against Jews had been mounting in Germany and beyond. Prison camps were established and by the end of 1933 estimates were some 80,000 were held in 65 German camps.

After the German invasion of Austria in 1938, Secretary of State Cordell Hull urged U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to “get out in front and attempt to guide the pressure, primarily with a view toward forestalling attempts to have the immigration laws liberalized.” Roosevelt announced an international conference to aid refugees, boasting that the U.S. was a haven for the oppressed. But, he said, Washington would not raise its immigration quota, nor did it ask any other government to do so.

Instead, the conference would focus on raising “assistance” funds. A year later, the fund’s bank account stood at just $9,672.

In contrast, leaders of the Socialist Workers Party in June 1938 helped organize the American Fund for Political Prisoners and Refugees. It not only raised relief funds for those fleeing Europe, but carried out meetings, educational work in the unions and public protests to demand the government open the doors to all refugees.

After the November 1938 anti-Jewish Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany, the Socialist Appeal carried a front-page statement by the National Committee of the SWP. “The American working class means it seriously when it says that it detests Anti-Semitism,” it said. “Show the victims of the Fascist terror that you mean it seriously, by stretching out to them the hands of fraternal solidarity, by demanding of the American government the free and unrestricted right of asylum for the Jewish scapegoats of Fascist barbarism!”

Today, the call to “open the borders” is once again part of the fight for international working-class solidarity.
 
 
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‘Open UK borders to immigrants from Africa, Mideast’
 
 
 
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