Beyond Belief (21 page)

When the bill was first introduced, the press was confident that “general approval” was bound to come.
⁹

There is a rumor that the plan will be opposed. We don't believe it. This is a land which professes admiration and even reverence for the source of the saying: “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”
¹⁰

Despite overwhelming editorial support, the rumor proved correct. Opponents amassed a broad-based coalition which argued that American children were in need and therefore charity must “begin at home.”
¹¹
Ultimately they succeeded in having the bill amended so that, instead of providing 20,000 additional places for children, it reserved 20,000 existing places for them, resulting in a stiffening and not a relaxation of the quota system. Its sponsors prudently allowed it to die in committee.

The opponents prevailed because Americans still wanted to bar the gates of this country. A January 1939 Gallup poll found
66 percent opposed to the plan to allow “10,000 refugee children from Germany to be brought into this country and taken care of in American homes.”
¹²
The poll did not even suggest that the children were to be allowed to enter outside the quota restrictions. Had this been mentioned in the question, the opposition of those polled might have been even stronger. In late May 1939 the
Cincinnati Post
polled 1,000 women, mainly housewives, and found 77 percent were against the entry of children outside the quota limits while only 21.4 percent approved.
¹³
A
Fortune
magazine survey taken in April 1939 found that nearly 85 percent of the non-Jews polled were adamantly against any change in immigration quotas.
¹⁴

Even though the bill was supported by a substantial segment of the national press, its supporters were unable to counter the opponents' charge that it was a step toward liberalization of the immigration system. For the American public no argument, even the suffering of little children, could justify such a change. The press's fight for the passage of the bill marked one of the few times that it vigorously moved out “ahead” of the public. The bill failed because the most eloquently worded and compelling arguments could not surmount the strength of public opinion, which remained firmly fixed against the admission of refugees to this land.

In June 1939, as America prepared an elaborate welcome for the King and Queen of England, another group of transatlantic passengers found a very different greeting extended to them. During the first two weeks in June the saga of the passengers on the Hamburg-American Line's SS
St. Louis
was the subject of much press attention. It was prominently featured in many American papers. On six different occasions during the first eight days of June articles regarding the ship appeared on the front page of the
New York Times
. Other papers accorded it similar attention.
¹⁵

The ship's passengers, who all held official Cuban landing certificates which they had bought from the Hamburg-American Line, won the press's sympathy. Most were on waiting lists for entry into the United States and planned to remain in Cuba until they could be included in the quota allocation. Some of the passengers
would probably have been allowed to enter within a few months, while others would have had to wait a few years. Shortly before the ship sailed from Hamburg, Cuban President Federico Laredo Bru had signed a decree invalidating the type of landing certificates held by the passengers. The certificates for which the passengers had paid approximately 150 dollars were now useless. When the ship reached Havana, the passengers were not allowed off the ship. The Cuban government claimed that the certificates had been obtained illegally and that it was not obligated to honor them. The ship remained docked in the Havana harbor as the most trying part of its voyage commenced.

Predictably all the editorials which discussed the voyage decried the “sickening spectacle” Germany had created and blamed it for ridding itself “of thousands . . . whose only offense is racial.”
¹⁶
But Germany was not alone in being condemned by the press. Major publications including the
Philadelphia Record
, the
New York Herald Tribune
, the
Memphis Commercial Appeal
, and the
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
all held Cuba responsible.
¹⁷
These papers believed that since the passengers had obtained entry permits issued by Cuban officials, the “blame for their present plight . . . seems to rest squarely on the shoulders of the Cuban government” and it was “under a moral obligation to undo the blunder by letting these innocent victims land.”
¹⁸
The
Richmond Times Dispatch
considered this a case not of error, but of “graft.” It cited Walter Winchell, who argued that the plight of the passengers was not the result of a failure to touch Cuban hearts—it was “a failure of touching Cuban palms. And we don't mean trees.”
¹⁹

But there were papers which demurred and justified the Cuban decision. They argued that Cuba's fear of a deluge of refugees and its economic problems rendered its decision to turn away the vessel “understandable.”
²⁰
A few papers not only exonerated Cuba but blamed the passengers. Once again, Jews were held responsible for having brought these troubles on themselves. The
Seattle Times
was emphatic about this.

Cuba had not invited them; had not even been asked if they would be received as residents; and harsh as it may seem, Cuba's President Bru perhaps had no alternative but to deny them admission.
²¹

Equally critical of the passengers was the
Columbia
(South Carolina)
State
, which wondered how the refugees could

have been so careless about ascertaining whether and where they would be allowed to land? They had, it seems, only “provisional permits” from Cuba “to land as travelers en route to the United States, where they hoped to gain admission later.” What ground is there for such hope? And just what does the word “later” imply to Cuba?
²²

Few papers were as callous as the
Christian Science Monitor
, which castigated Jewish refugees in general for being so selective about their destinations.

Most Jews apparently have no taste for the pioneering necessary in remote and undeveloped areas and do not take readily to some plans made in their behalf. While this is understandable, they may remember that other races have carved homes out of wilderness to escape oppression.
²³

The
Christian Science Monitor
ignored both the pioneering accomplishments of the Jewish settlers in Palestine and the fact that there were few, if any, “wilderness” countries which had offered Jewish refugees a place to “escape oppression.” Britain had found no suitable place in its vast empire, and countries with large undeveloped areas, such as Australia, had made it clear that they were not desirous of “importing a Jewish problem.”

As the saga continued, most editorials turned from trying to fix the blame to disposition of the problem. The suggestions offered were no different from those made at the time of Evian and
Kristallnacht:
find some “uncivilized” and “unexplored” part of the world to dispose of this human cargo. Despite the fact that these suggestions had been made since the
Anschluss
and no suitable area had been found, most of the press continued to believe that “in a broad world 25,000 miles in diameter there is room somewhere for these people.” The places cited were the same as had been suggested during the past year: “British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, North Rhodesia, Dominican Republic, and the Philippines.” Some papers were not so specific and simply suggested “someplace in Africa.”
²⁴
Typically the
St. Louis Post Dispatch
, which condemned the ship's fate as a “high crime of civilization,” believed that a site surely could be found in the British Empire or in South America, but not in the United States, which had already “done better than most.”
²⁵
Papers noted that finding an “unoccupied” territory depended on “rapid, organized action by the humanitarian governments.” It had been a year since Evian and
eight months since
Kristallnacht
. Nothing had come of the attempt to find an alternative site, and in the interim, most nations had grown less, not more, inclined to accept those cast out of Germany.
²⁶
But the suggestions were made nonetheless.

A few papers felt an “uneasy sense of guilt” about the attempt to affix blame on someone else by assuming, in the words of the
Baltimore Sun
, a “holier than thou” attitude toward Cuba.
²⁷
As the ship steamed back to Germany (the European countries which eventually offered asylum had not yet announced that they would do so), the
New York Times
went so far as to decry the “sorry welcome” the ship had received in this hemisphere and to express discomfort with America's behavior.

Off our shores she was attended by a helpful Coast Guard vessel alert to pick up any passengers who plunged overboard and thrust them back on the St. Louis again. The refugees could even see the shimmering towers of Miami . . . the battlements of another forbidden city.

Though the
New York Times
was ill at ease with the United States' behavior, it made no suggestion that anything concrete be done. Instead it reasoned that it was “useless now to discuss what might have been done,” since the ship was on its way back.
²⁸
It ignored the fact that the passengers, who at this point were thought to be returning to Germany, could have landed in Europe and boarded another ship back to Cuba if the United States had assured Cuba that they would eventually be admitted. But American officials refused to make any accommodations in order to aid the passengers. The
only
action taken by the American government was the dispatch of a Coast Guard cutter when the ship was close to the shore of Miami. The cutter's assignment was to apprehend any passengers who might jump overboard in an attempt to swim ashore and return them to the ship.

The
Greensboro
(North Carolina)
Press
, which had previously supported the admission of refugees, also condemned the world's response. “Humanity,” the paper sadly noted, had doomed these passengers to “continued mistreatment by the gestapo and the storm troopers.”
²⁹
But this willingness to acknowledge implicitly some degree of American complicity in the problem was the exception and not the rule.

So too a few papers broke with the majority of dailies and argued that admitting the passengers would not set a “precedent,”
but would be an ad hoc gesture.
³⁰
If the United States rejected them, then it certainly could not blame Cuba for “acting in a similar fashion in accordance with its conception of its own interests.”
³¹
The fact that a number of papers were willing to countenance a limited change in immigration regulations appears to have been the result of the release at this time of a Quaker-sponsored report demonstrating that the imagined refugee “flood” which anti-immigrationists repeatedly claimed was inundating this country was but a trickle which had no adverse effect on the economy.
³²
The report was cited by the
Boston Globe
and some other papers as proof that “wild stories, unrelated to the facts, have been passed around regarding the supposed influx of immigrants to the United States. Cold figures do not support the theories of street corner gossips.”
³³

But the report could not effect a change in the prevailing attitude that “the United States has already provided a refuge for more of these European immigrants than any other major country” and was simply “incapable of supplying a solution. There is no hope for refuge here.”
³⁴
Editors repeatedly stressed that there was a limit “beyond which no nation may go.”
³⁵
Fears that here again was Pandora's box were expressed: One such “influx” is sure to be “followed by other ship loads.” Letting this one dock would set a most “dangerous precedent.”
³⁶
Another argument that had been heard before was that trying to aid Jews would be an incentive to the Germans to subject them to even worse treatment. In this case it might prompt Germany to “dump its Jewish population upon other nations without regard for any international law or regulation.”
³⁷

One cannot totally discount these fears. There seemed to be “hundreds of thousands of Central Europeans, both Jews and Christians, who [had] no place to go.”
³⁸
While the
St. Louis
was meandering aimlessly off American shores, other ships were plying the Atlantic with their cargo of “Jewish refugees.” It was easy to get the impression that these ships were the vanguard of a flotilla of refugee vessels.
³⁹
Word came from Mexico that 104 Jewish refugees had been refused entry, and from Paraguay and Argentina that 200 Jewish refugees aboard the
Cap Orte, Monte Oliva
, and
Mendoza
were turned away. The wire services reported that Costa Rica was preparing to deport twenty Jewish refugees.
⁴⁰
During the previous year Italy had instituted antisemitic legislation. Everywhere doors were either slamming shut or Jews were
being urged to leave.
⁴¹
Germany was then releasing Jews who had been arrested after
Kristallnacht
. They were told to depart at once or face arrest. A deluge of refugees appeared ready to flood the world.