Analysis: Letter Regarding the Plight of German Jews

Date: 1940

Author: Margaret E. Jones

Genre: Letter

Summary Overview

In the summer of 1940, US State Department official Breckinridge Long issued a series of recommendations to US consulates and embassies in Europe, advising diplomats to limit the number of visas granted to German Jews seeking to immigrate to the United States. Quaker leader Margaret E. Jones shortly thereafter sent a letter to Quaker leader Clarence E. Pickett voicing her opposition to such a policy. Jones argued that European Jews already went through a tremendous bureaucratic process of high financial cost to obtain a visa. She suggested that US policy on Jewish immigration, especially in light of the war, should be clear in order to prevent Jews from enduring any further hardship.

Defining Moment

The 1933 ascension of Adolf Hitler to the chancellor of Germany had tremendous implications for the European continent as well as the world at large. Hitler spoke of reviving postwar Germany and establishing the country as a global power—a status that he promised would last for one thousand years. As Hitler set out creating an internal order compliant with his ideology—including establishing concentration camps and disseminating the preferred Nazi philosophy among the German people—he also looked outward from the boundaries imposed on his country after World War I, sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936. Hitler's rise and growing anti-Semitic rhetoric drove tens of thousands of Jews out of Germany and into neighboring countries, a trend that Hitler first welcomed, but later sought to halt.

In the interest of creating one unified German people, Hitler in 1938 began his most infamous campaign—the persecution of Jews that would later become known as the Holocaust. Taking advantage of the assassination of a German diplomat by Jewish teenager in Paris, Hitler and his minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels called for Germans to engage in a violent uprising against all German Jews and non-Aryans in response. On November 9, mob violence spread throughout Germany, as Nazi troops, SS, and Hitler Youth members beat Jews, destroyed property, and desecrated temples. The incident would become known as Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass. Although Jews had already started to experience persecution under Hitler, Kristallnacht helped formalize the government's policy of imprisoning all Jews and/or expelling them from Germany.

Coupled with the Nazis' expansion into Austria, Kristallnacht sparked another massive exodus from Germany. About thirty-six thousand Jews emigrated from Germany in 1938. In 1939, that figure more than doubled to seventy-seven thousand. Other European countries took in limited numbers of refugees, as did the United States and many states in Latin America, Russia, and even New Zealand. However, each country allowed only a certain number of these immigrants, setting quotas that were far too small to account for the tremendous outpouring of refugees. Those who were able to emigrate found themselves subject to continued hardship and discrimination.

In the United States, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long was tasked with assisting Americans living in increasingly unstable Europe in returning to North America. However, European refugees, given visas at US embassies across Europe, were taking up the majority of seats on American transatlantic ships. Somewhat disdainful of these refugees and concerned that Nazi agents and sympathizers might be among the refugees, Long issued to embassy and consulate personnel in Europe a series of recommendations designed to make the US-bound emigration process for “non-Aryan” German refugees considerably more difficult than the already complicated process in place.

Author Biography

Margaret E. Jones was born in 1895 in New Jersey. Raised in a Quaker family, she graduated from Wellesley College in 1917, and took a position with the American Friends Service Committee's (AFSC) Home Service Program. In 1933, she began her first of several overseas posts as part of the AFSC. Between 1964 and 1969, she served on the AFSC's board of directors as well as the Wider Quaker Fellowship. She died on November 26, 1984, in Medford, New Jersey.

Document Analysis

Margaret E. Jones had been traveling throughout Europe, coming into contact with countless German Jewish refugees during her tour. She had personally witnessed the hardships refugees experienced while attempting to reestablish their lives outside of Hitler's Germany. She was, therefore, quite surprised to learn that US policy regarding these refugees was changing significantly, adding considerable difficulty to the already challenging process of obtaining a visa. In this letter to AFSC leader Clarence E. Pickett, she expresses her surprise at a policy that, in her opinion, is misdirected and antithetical to the Quaker tradition.

Throughout the letter, Jones comments on her liaisons with consular personnel in Switzerland and Austria, men with whom she had worked considerably and amicably during her European tour. During her interactions in 1940, however, she became aware of a set of guidelines that would change her own job of providing relief to “non-Aryan” refugees during their exodus to one in which she would provide aid to refugees who would not be allowed to emigrate. The new guidelines essentially closed the doors through which refugees could travel to the United States. The orders came directly from the State Department, in an apparent attempt to upstage Congress, which was mulling legislation that would deny German Jews entry into the United States. Furthermore, she added, this “policy” was not publicly known—only the applicants and those close to the process (including Jones) were aware of the changes.

Jones's tone in the letter is direct. According to her conversations with these consular personnel, there was a growing anti-Semitic attitude among Americans that was fueling congressional and—in an effort to show Congress it “had the situation in hand”—State Department action on Jewish immigration. This trend was exacerbated by fears that, among the Jewish refugees, were Nazi sympathizers and spies. The new policy would include provisions that would help some refugees travel to England, China, and elsewhere. However, refugee traffic from Germany to the United States would essentially be halted.

Jones informs her superior that previous consular policy was, in her opinion, sufficient in terms of ensuring that these refugees, once in the United States, would be productive and positive members of American society. Furthermore, she argues, Jewish refugees already faced onerous and expensive bureaucratic protocols in order to obtain a visa and enter any new country. In fact, the number of visas available to them was rapidly dwindling. In addition to the bureaucratic challenges they faced, Jewish applicants were subjected to intense interviews. Many of which were conducted by Aryan German consular employees. Barriers were already in place, she concludes, that both made emigrating difficult for Jews and weeded out potential Nazi spies and sympathizers as effectively as possible.

Jones recognized that the doors for Jewish refugees throughout Europe and Asia were rapidly closing, and that the United States was following suit. However, she argues, the AFSC should take into consideration Jones's observations and experience in this arena. Furthermore, she writes, the American government should, at the very least, make the public aware of its altered immigration policies. This disclosure would at least provide potential Jewish immigrants with the truth about the risky process they were about to undergo, so that they could make the decision whether to take the risk, or to find less onerous avenues toward freedom.

Glossary

affidavits: a written declaration upon oath made before an authorized official

fifth (5th) column: a group of people who act traitorously or subversively out of a secret sympathy for an enemy of their country; originally from a 1936 statement about Franco sympathizers in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War

insuperable: incapable of being passed over, overcome, or surmounted

stenographer: a person who specialized in taking dictation in shorthand

thee: the archaic objective case of thou; you

thy: the archaic possessive case of thou; your

Bibliography and Additional Reading

“German Jewish Refugees, 1933–1939.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2014. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.

Jacobs, Janet. “Memorializing the Sacred: Kristallnacht in German National Memory.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47.3 (2008): 485–98. Print.

Laqueur, Walter. Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany. London: I. B. Tauris, 2003. Print.

Long, Breckinridge, and Fred L. Israel. The War Diary of Breckinridge Long: Selections from the Years 1939–1944. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. Print.

“Margaret E. Jones Papers, 1937–1969.” Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Swarthmore College, 1993. Web. 30 Oct. 2014.