Myths of American Indifference: The St. Louis, Anne Frank, and the War Refugee Board

Most members of the general public—and many historians as well—assume that the United States shut its doors to the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. Identifiable memes—the return of the doomed St. Louis to Europe in 1939, and the failed immigration of the family of Anne Frank—are mustered for contemporary political argument, though (unsurprisingly) a lack of nuance and an incessant presentism render the comparisons erroneous. A closer examination of these stories reveals a complicated context of a strained bureaucracy in crisis amid popular nativism, fears of espionage, and approaching war. The St. Louis, far from the only ship to carry refugees, was turned back from Cuba, and passively denied entry to the United States before American intervention allowed the passengers to land in western Europe, a cause for celebration at the time. American diplomats never reviewed, and therefore never rejected, Otto Frank’s immigrant visa application prior to the closure of American consulates in Nazi territory. In 1944, after the Nazi plan of mass murder had been known in the United States for over a year, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, an organization tasked with facilitating the relief and rescue of the victims of Nazi persecution. Though some historians have accused Roosevelt of understaffing and underfunding a WRB which, nevertheless, managed to save 200,000 lives, the Board’s funding and employment structure and a more nuanced look at the “rescue” claims reveals a dynamic and generally well-supported agency, though one where tangible achievements remain unclear. This paper will examine these three cases—two during the refugee crisis, and one in the midst of ongoing genocide—to argue that the American government and public’s responses to the Holocaust evolved from restrictionism to rescue, but that each case demands proper contextualization.