The Holocaust: Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany

The Holocaust was a mass murder of about six million Jews by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany that took place over a span of 12 years. The purpose was to wipe out what were considered “inferior” races and social groups, meaning they were not as common or normal to the Nazis. Beginning in 1933, the feeling of anti-semitism, or hatred of Jews, was very immense for Hitler and his Nazis, so the practice of persecution was put into effect. The title Holocaust was given to this event because it means “destruction by fire,” and the inferior groups were being sacrificed and killed through concentration camps and death sentences (Greenfeld 3). Actions needed to be taken in order to guide the targets of Nazi Germany to safety, but it was not a priority for
When the State Department received a report of the Nazis’ policy to annihilate all Jews in existence in Europe, the department officials declined to pass on the report to the President of the World Jewish Congress, Stephen Wise, who was its intended recipient. Later that month, Wise actually received the news via British channels and he did not get permission from the State Department to publicize the information until three months later (“The United States and the Holocaust”). This delay in publicizing the news of the destruction of the Jews may have contributed to the lack of sufficient, prompt assistance of the United States in saving the refugees. In addition to this delay, the United States press also minimized the gravity of the Holocaust because they did not publicize reports of Nazi atrocities with full or noticeable placement. The nation’s leading newspaper, the New York Times, ordinarily understated the murder of the Jews in its news coverage. The London Daily Telegraph published an article in the summer of 1942 on what was happening, and the World Jewish Congress even learned in that same year about the Nazi plan to eliminate all Jews. United States’ officials felt the pressure to respond, but an insignificant amount of action was taken (Glick 20). Despite the fact that the New York Times did
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the United States president at the time, was under both domestic popular pressure and pressure from officials in his own cabinet. He issued Executive Order 9417 on January 22, 1944, and this order established a War Refugee Board (“The United States and the Holocaust: Rescue Attempts”). This board was established to rescue Jews and provide relief for victims of the war and it also appointed people that deemed qualified for the rescue missions (Glick 40). The departments of State, Treasury, and War were to “execute the plans, programs and measures formulated by the board as well as to supply the board with information and assistance,” as commanded by Roosevelt. In the summer of 1944, the Fort Ontario Refugee Center at Oswego, New York, was instituted by the War Refugee Board to facilitate rescue of the endangered refugees. The most remarkable achievement of the board was the rescue mission in German-occupied Hungary where diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg, Charles Lutz, and others demonstrated monumental efforts to rescue tens of thousands of Budapest Jews from deportation (“The United States and the Holocaust: Rescue Attempts”). Even though there was a great amount of Jews that were