David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Commitee, was on Capitol Hill Thursday to testify about the experience of Jewish refugees before and during World War II in front of a House Judiciary subcommittee, which is considering legislation sponsored by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) to create a commission that will study refugee policy with regard to Jews fleeing Europe. Here’s the AJC’s press release on the testimony:
American Jewish Committee (AJC) Executive Director David Harris, testifying on Capitol Hill, reminded House representatives of the failure of the United States government to respond adequately before and during World War II to the increasingly desperate situation of European Jews. The full text is available at www.ajc.org.
“This was not our country’s finest hour,” Harris told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refuges, Border Security and International Law. The Subcommittee held a hearing today on the experience of Jewish refugees during the pre-war and World War II period. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) has introduced legislation to create a commission that will study refugee policy with regard to Jews fleeing Europe.
Harris briefly reviewed in his testimony the extensive record of insufficient action by the U.S. to respond to Jews’ urgent need to escape the Nazis and resettle safely.
“However sensitive President Roosevelt might have been to the Jews’ plight, and there is reason to believe that he was, domestic politics at the time made it difficult for him to act,” said Harris, referring in particular to high levels of anti-Semitism across the country.
Harris recounted the experience of the infamous St. Louis, which, in May 1939, was turned back because “our country could find neither the compassion nor the legal basis to admit 900 Jews fleeing Hitler who were within sight of our shores.”
Due to efforts by key officials in the State Department to block entry, the U.S. “failed even to meet the strict immigration quotas operative at the time,” said Harris. “Shockingly, from 1933 onward, the annual country quota for immigrants from Germany was filled only once.”
Yet, despite this overall failure, an estimated 200,000 European Jews were rescued and resettled in the United States before the end of the war.
“I would not be here today were it not for that group of 200,000,” said Harris, whose mother and maternal grandparents arrived in New York in November 1941.
In conclusion, Harris emphasized that there would have been no need for today’s hearing “if only more leaders had had the capacity not only to grasp the genocide at hand, but also to identify with the anguish of the victims – the victims who till the very end wanted to believe that their plight as human beings would not, could not, go neglected.”
