This produced a tremendous radical-ization of the powerful and well-organized working class. Ultimately, in order to maintain its profits, a section of the ruling class chose a collision course with the workers aimed at breaking the backs of their unions and political parties.

The mass movement of small shopkeepers, professionals, and other middle class and lumpen elements crazed by the effects of the economic crisis and welded together by Hitler behind his fascist National Socialist Party became a weapon of big capital against the workers movement.

Anti-Semitism, along with anti-Communism, was part of the ideological glue used to hold the Nazi movement together and to direct its fury against the Jews and the workers. In this way, and given the failure of the Communist and Socialist parties of Germany to provide effective leadership in the struggle against it, fascism served to turn the middle class victims of the capitalist crisis against the workers and the Jews, who were also victims, instead of against the real criminals--the capitalist ruling class.

When Hitler became chancellor of the German government in 1933, he transformed the anti-Semitic actions of the Nazi goon squads into official state policy against the 350,000 Jews of Germany.

By September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were passed, which deprived all German Jews of their citizenship. German Jews were excluded from the 1936 Olympic games in Munich.  
 
Nazi violence against Jews escalates
The Nazis unleashed a campaign of physical terror against Jews, making public announcements that their police chiefs could not be "responsible for the safety of enemies of the Reich." By 1933, the New York Times had carried descriptions of the prison camp at Dachau. That year, there was one estimate that said there were 80,000 prisoners in sixty-five camps throughout Germany.

Following the assassination of a Nazi ambassador in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, the son of a Polish Jew expelled from Germany by the Nazis, the Nazis unleashed a pogrom against the German Jews on November 10, 1938--the infamous "Kristallnacht," the "Night of Broken Glass." This orgy of revenge for the death of the German diplomat included the burning of some 195 synagogues, the destruction of more than 800 Jewish-owned shops, and the looting of some 7,500 others.

Twenty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. And on November 12, 1938, the German government imposed a collective fine of approximately $400,000,000 (one billion marks) upon German Jews as "money atonement" for the death of Vom Rath, Grynszpan’s victim.

During this time, anti-Semitic regimes were also bearing down on the 725,000 Jews in Hungary, the 900,000 Jews in Rumania, and the 3.3 million Jews in Poland. With the conquest by German imperialism of Austria (with 200,000 Jews) and Czechoslovakia (with 350,000 Jews), the anti-Jewish terror threatened to engulf all of Europe.

In the wake of this mounting Nazi repression, refuge in other countries became a matter of life and death for hundreds of thousands of Jews and other fighters against fascism as well. By May 1939, for example, there were enough applications for U.S. entry visas on file in the U.S. consular offices in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia to fill the existing U.S. immigration quotas for the next five years!  
 
Washington bars entry for refugees
The Roosevelt administration, the upholder of the "liberal democratic values" so beloved by the B’nai B’rith, followed a consistent policy of barring entry to this country for these refugees, thereby condemning many of them to death. This policy of the U.S. government showed that any serious effort to save the victims of European anti-Semitism would require a fight against Roosevelt’s administration, and not reliance on it.

The Socialist Appeal, a predecessor of The Militant, in an editorial that appeared on July 9, 1938, explained the reason why: "Capitalism in its death agony can no more solve the refugee problem than any of the other social problems clamoring for solution. The existence of these refugee hordes is in itself a symptom of its social decay and political reaction....

"Revolutionary socialists must everywhere fight for unrestricted immigration into their countries, and especially for the right of asylum for all victims of reaction."

Following Hitler’s march into Austria in March 1938, President Roosevelt announced plans for an international conference to aid refugees from Germany and Austria to be held at Evian, France. Roosevelt launched this conference with a statement about how the U.S. has always been a haven for the oppressed and a land of the free.

But in motivating the conference, he explained that no country that attended would be expected to raise its immigration quotas to solve the refugee crisis, that the U. S. would not raise its quota, and that all funds for projects of the conference would be raised from private agencies....  
 
Zionist opposition to lifting quotas
In 1942, Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leading Zionist spokesman in the U. S., complained to his friend Felix Frankfurter, "I don’t know whether I’m getting to be the J of Jude, but I find that a good part of my work is to explain to my fellow Jews why our government cannot do all the things asked or expected of it."

As was pointed out above, the Roosevelt administration, far from aiding the masses of European refugees from Nazi terror, had in fact stood quietly by while hundreds of thousands of Jews and others were being murdered. Estimates as to the total number of refugees that were permitted to enter the U. S. between 1933 and 1945 vary from about 150,000 to a high of about 250,000. A very small number indeed compared to the millions of victims of fascism.

Why at this time did Rabbi Wise consider it his job "to explain to my fellow Jews why our government cannot do all the things asked or expected of it?"

Zionist and many leading non-Zionist Jewish organizations had different but complementary reasons for uncritically supporting the New Deal despite Roosevelt’s murderous inaction during the refugee crisis. The Zionists had as a primary aim securing the backing of U. S. imperialism for a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionists in the U. S. followed the same strategy as their cothinkers in Europe, seeking to show how the founding of Israel would benefit imperialism’s plans in the Middle East.

They felt that any struggle against New Deal immigration policies might interfere with Zionist attempts to woo U. S. support for their plans. Further, Zionists believed that rescue operations in general tended to divert resources from their efforts to establish an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine....  
 
SWP campaigns to ‘Open the Door’
The SWP viewed the campaign to demand that the U.S. admit the European refugees from Nazi terror as part of an overall struggle against the growth of a fascist movement here in the U.S.

The SWP argued that in order for such a struggle to be successful, it would have to be carried out in a massive way, uniting in action not only those who were already convinced radicals but much broader forces as well.

As a step toward launching such a campaign, all the arguments put forward by the fascists and right-wingers, as well as by many liberal Jewish and Zionist leaders, to discourage the masses from actions demanding changes in the immigration law had to be answered and refuted.

The Socialist Appeal, which reflected the views of the SWP, explained why the demand for opening the door to refugees should be supported by working people. It linked this demand to their struggles against unemployment, for the building of trade unions, and other issues of concern to the workers.
 
 
Related article:
Palestinians stand up to Israeli army repression  
 
 
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