Times Writer Urges U.S. to Absorb All Reich Refugees, if Necessary

The United States should, if necessary, absorb the entire half million Jewish and Christian refugees from Germany as a “spectacular gesture of sacrifice on the part of a democratic people,” Mrs. Anne O’hare McCormick, commentator on foreign affairs, declared today in her column on the editorial page of the New York Times.

Mrs. McCormick said: “We are unique because we are a society of emigres. For this reason alone this government had to take the lead in seeking world-wide action on the refugee problem. It is a problem for democracy, because democracy cannot survive and admit that minorities can be denied the right of existence. It is a problem, above all, for a democracy founded by refugees and fertilized by the steady flow of the kind of people now impounded in Europe as national minorities.

“It is time for some American to rise and say that if we really desire to defend democracy, the one positive and practical way open to us is not simply to take the lead in the immediate refugee problem, but, if necessary, to take it over. It is highly unpopular even to whisper that the United States – on its own terms, of course, and under conditions carefully fixed and rigorously carried out – could distribute over this continent all the citizens kicked out of Germany on racial grounds. There are about half a million of them, Jews and Christians, and we have at least 10,000,000 of our own citizens on relief. Suppose they did not come empty-handed, as they wouldn’t, because the German Government is desperately anxious to trade with us and could be forced to make a deal releasing funds for their resettlement. Suppose a great proportion brought special skills, training and talent that would enrich the communities in which they settled. Suppose, as has actually happened in Belgium, that the refugees started new businesses and gave more jobs than they took.”