The results of the poll illustrated above by the useful Twitter account @HistOpinion were published in the pages of Fortune magazine in July 1938. Fewer than 5 percent of Americans surveyed at the time believed that the United States should raise its immigration quotas or encourage political refugees fleeing fascist states in Europe — the vast majority of whom were Jewish — to voyage across the Atlantic. Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the proposition that “we should try to keep them out.”
To be sure, the United States was emerging from the Great Depression, hardly a climate in which ordinary folks would welcome immigrants and economic competition. The events of Kristallnacht — a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in areas controlled by the Nazis — had yet to take place. And the poll’s use of the term “political refugees” could have conjured in the minds of the American public images of communists, anarchists and other perceived ideological threats.
But look at the next chart, also tweeted by @HistOpinion. Two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup’s American Institute of Public Opinion in January 1939 — well after the events of Kristallnacht — said they would not take in 10,000 German Jewish refugee children.
[A couple of caveats: Polling in this period, including Gallup surveys, was not as scientifically rigorous as it later became. Also, respondents may not necessarily have had a particular bias against Jewish refugees. A separate portion of Gallup respondents were asked a nearly identical question which did not describe refugees as Jewish. Support for accepting refugees was slightly lower than when they were described as mostly Jewish.]
As WorldViews detailed earlier this year, most Western countries regarded the plight of Jewish refugees with skepticism or unveiled bigotry (and sympathy followed only wider knowledge of the monstrous slaughters of the Holocaust):
No matter the alarming rhetoric of [Adolf] Hitler’s fascist state — and the growing acts of violence against Jews and others — popular sentiment in Western Europe and the United States was largely indifferent to the plight of German Jews.
“Of all the groups in the 20th century,” write the authors of the 1999 book “Refugees in an Age of Genocide,” “refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as ‘genuine,’ but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy.”
It’s worth remembering this mood when thinking about the current moment, in which the United States is once more in the throes of a debate over letting in refugees. Ever since Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, the Republicans, led by their presidential candidates, have sounded the alarm over the threat of jihadist infiltration from Syria — even though it now appears that every single identified assailant in the Paris siege was a European national.
Hindsight is generally 20/20. As long as we see all Muslims as “other” these similar types of opinions will be held. Today, Jews seem unremarkable, routine, and non-“other.” What made us change over 70 years? TV, movies, assimilation? Probably all of the above. When I was a young adult there was a country club over in Loudoun County that wouldn’t allow blacks or Jews. When I was growing up in Albemarle County, Catholics were seen as semi-“other.”
How will the world judge us when the Syrian Civil War is over? I believe we will be judged by our degree of compassion and humanitarianism. When people say, “it isn’t worth the risk,” we have to remember that we aren’t the only ones taking a risk. those refugees have been homeless and fleeing, some for as long as 5 years, when the conflict began. there are close to 8 million displaced persons, at least half the Syrian population.
Yes, there is a risk that a terrorist or two might infiltrate and gain entrance to this country by posing as a refugee. There is also the possibility that a terrorist might over-stay a visa or slip across the Canadian border. One could also swim across from Mexico or get smuggled in by a coyote. One could wash ashore and disguise himself as a Cuban refugee.
We need to remain vigilant. We know the danger is out there. Becoming isolationist or quaking in fear over refugees doesn’t make us a stronger nation. We need to find a way to shelter the refugees and at the same time beef up our own security.
Only in America….