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Essay: Uncovering America's Knowledge of Holocaust During WWII: What the US Knew & Didn't Do

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  • Published: 25 February 2023*
  • Last Modified: 22 July 2024
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  • Words: 1,064 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 5 (approx)
  • Tags: Holocaust essays World War II

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Over the course of human history, many crimes against humanity have been committed, some directly due to their gender, race, or religion. One of the most horrific crimes was the Holocaust caused by Nazi Germany where over six million Jewish people died.  Most were systematically murdered through gas chambers, others forced to work until their dying breath. All, but Holocaust deniers, agree that events like this should never happen again.  While the U.S. helped defeat the Nazi's, some people assert that America, a symbol of peace and freedom at the time, knew about the genocide occurring in Nazi controlled Europe and deliberately failed to take action to save Jewish lives.   The evidence shows that the American Government had knowledge of the genocide and the capacity to help sooner than it did, but refused to take military action, and prevented refugees from entering the United States.  

In August of 1942, a report written by the former government of poland called “The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland”, was published which stated that the Jews were being exterminated on a mass scale by the Nazis in brutal fashion. The report detailed that Jews were either killed immediately, or were forced to work until they died of starvation or exhaustion (Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs 11). However, the paper was not

able to specify the true inhumanity of these crimes due to the secrecy surrounding the operation. Due to this paper, on December 12th in 1942, the allies, including Great Britain, The United States, and China, issued a “Joint Declaration By Members of the United Nations,” which condemned the extermination of the Jews by the Germans (ushmm.org). However, it is widely believed that the allies did not know of the treatment and atrocities being inflicted upon the Jews at this time. This proves that it is true that America had knowledge of the Holocaust as early as 1942, but they should not be held responsible because not enough information was known at the time.

More detail began to surface when Jan Karski, a polish spy for the allies during World War II, was captured on a mission in late 1940 by the Germans. He managed to escape in 1942, and while being smuggled through the Warsaw ghetto, he saw a glimpse of the atrocities being inflicted on the Jews by under Nazi occupation, including the transportation to the Belzec killing center and mass starvation (Kozielewski). During this same year, he was able to seek asylum in Great Britain, and wrote a report, called the Karski Report, to top British officials about what he witnessed. In July of 1943, he traveled to the United States, where he met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and personally told him of the abuse being enacted by the Nazis (ushmm.org). This was as early as 1943, so America has knowledge of some of what was going on in Nazi Germany, but a more detailed report was published in June of 1944 called the Auschwitz report.

This report was written by two Slovak Jewish prisoners who escaped in early April of 1944 (Vrba and Wetzler 8). It detailed many of the inhumane actions of the Nazis in Auschwitz,

and at this point the entire world could not deny the fact that the Germans were committing these crimes anymore. America had to have known about the Holocaust by this point, but still continued to do nothing. These are only two of many reports that were published detailing the crimes in Nazi-occupied territories, and with such detailed accounts of the same place at the same time, America must have started to believe these papers. It is at this point where America should have started to act, and luckily they did. America at this point took responsibility and acted, and should not be criticized for their lack of action at this point in time, when they had an appropriate response to detailed accounts of the Holocaust, albeit a bit late.

America confirmed that it did know about the extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany when it signed the Joint Declaration By Members of the United Nations in 1942, but it was impossible to know about the true horror of the Holocaust before the reports, and even then not every detail was known. However, this does not excuse the fact that United States did know that the Germans were committing a genocide, and did not take action other than speaking out against it. The United States should have, at this point, at least provided some aid to help Jews escape Nazi Germany and to be allowed to live in the United States. This is what America can and should be held accountable for, because if they let more people into the country hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved.

When America acknowledged the genocide being inflicted upon the Jews in 1942, immediate action should have been taken to save Jewish people attempting to flee Europe. However, no such action was taken until January of 1944 when the War Refugee Board (WRB) was established (yadvashem.org). This action was only taken after Roosevelt's Administration pressured him into doing so, and if it was formed sooner, numerous lives would have been saved. It did however, save over tens of thousands of lives and aided hundreds of thousands more. These number of lives that the WRB could have saved, though would have been exponentially

greater. America could have aided in greater way than they did, and with the shortage of workers in American industries, they country could have definitely sustained the influx of refugees seeking asylum from Europe.

Before the War Refugee Board was established, tens of thousands of thousands of refugees attempted to enter the United States. Due to the sheer number of people attempting to immigrate into the U.S., many feared that the Germans would try to sneak spies into the U.S. with the refugees, or that some people might be coerced into helping the Germans for personal gain. This caused the State Department to carefully screen any potential immigrants, and turn away anyone that they might have deemed as “suspicious.” When the United States entered the war, it became nearly impossible for refugees to enter into the country (ushmm.org). However, had the State Department not turned away these potential immigrants, most would not have had to be sent back to their country of origin and into Nazi hands.

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