“The Dregs of Europe”: Congress and Jewish Immigration Policy, 1933–41

“Do you think they are going to liquidate the Jews?” Congressman Cliff Clevenger (R-OH) posed this question to a witness before the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee on July 19, 1939. The witness answered yes, and Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), the committee chair, concluded, “At the rate Hitler is going he can liquidate anything.” This exchange typified such committee hearings. The hearings reveal substantial congressional knowledge of the threat to Jews and others, and a Congressional role that belies conventional arguments about American politics in the period. Previously untapped congressional records show the considerable extent of knowledge in Washington, D.C. about the dangers facing Jews in Nazi Germany before the United States entered World War II. Despite this knowledge, the federal government did little to respond to what was perhaps the greatest challenge to humanity in the 20th century. While there were Zionist supporters in Congress, their voices were loudest on the lecture circuit not Capitol Hill. The only legislative results during the interwar years came from countless private bill hearings. These did not craft new policy but benefited only those individuals already in the United States on short-term visas who were able to use legislative contacts to get around the National Origins Laws. The few attempts to deal straightforwardly with refugees from Nazism—namely Robert Wagner’s bill to permit the immigration of 20,000 children in 1939—fell victim to concerns about depression era resources, to the persistence of anti-Semitism in the U.S. government, to indifference, and to a problematic relationship between the executive and legislative branches. Certain of these factors were particular to the era, but others can be seen in recent debates in Washington over immigration reform.