Author: Gordon Thomas Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1497658950 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 395
Book Description
The “extraordinary” true story of the St. Louis, a German ship that, in 1939, carried Jews away from Hamburg—and into an unimaginable ordeal (The New York Times). On May 13, 1939, the luxury liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, one of the last ships to leave Nazi Germany before World War II erupted. Aboard were 937 Jews—some had already been in concentration camps—who believed they had bought visas to enter Cuba. The voyage of the damned had begun. Before the St. Louis was halfway across the Atlantic, a power struggle ensued between the corrupt Cuban immigration minister who issued the visas and his superior, President Bru. The outcome: The refugees would not be allowed to land in Cuba. In America, the Brown Shirts were holding Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden; anti-Semitic Father Coughlin had an audience of fifteen million. Back in Germany, plans were being laid to implement the final solution. And aboard the St. Louis, 937 refugees awaited the decision that would determine their fate. Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts have re-created history in this meticulous reconstruction of the voyage of the St. Louis. Every word of their account is true: the German High Command’s ulterior motive in granting permission for the “mission of mercy;” the confrontations between the refugees and the German crewmen; the suicide attempts among the passengers; and the attitudes of those who might have averted the catastrophe, but didn’t. In reviewing the work, the New York Times was unequivocal: “An extraordinary human document and a suspense story that is hard to put down. But it is more than that. It is a modern allegory, in which the SS St. Louis becomes a symbol of the SS Planet Earth. In this larger sense the book serves a greater purpose than mere drama.”
Author: Irving Abella Publisher: New Jewish Press ISBN: 9781487554385 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
One of the most important books in Canadian history, None Is Too Many conclusively lays to rest the comfortable notion that Canada has always been an accepting and welcoming society.
Author: Richard Breitman Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674073673 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 410
Book Description
Nearly seventy-five years after World War II, a contentious debate lingers over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned his back on the Jews of Hitler's Europe. Defenders claim that FDR saved millions of potential victims by defeating Nazi Germany. Others revile him as morally indifferent and indict him for keeping America's gates closed to Jewish refugees and failing to bomb Auschwitz's gas chambers. In an extensive examination of this impassioned debate, Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman find that the president was neither savior nor bystander. In FDR and the Jews, they draw upon many new primary sources to offer an intriguing portrait of a consummate politician-compassionate but also pragmatic-struggling with opposing priorities under perilous conditions. For most of his presidency Roosevelt indeed did little to aid the imperiled Jews of Europe. He put domestic policy priorities ahead of helping Jews and deferred to others' fears of an anti-Semitic backlash. Yet he also acted decisively at times to rescue Jews, often withstanding contrary pressures from his advisers and the American public. Even Jewish citizens who petitioned the president could not agree on how best to aid their co-religionists abroad. Though his actions may seem inadequate in retrospect, the authors bring to light a concerned leader whose efforts on behalf of Jews were far greater than those of any other world figure. His moral position was tempered by the political realities of depression and war, a conflict all too familiar to American politicians in the twenty-first century.
Author: Susan F. Martin Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 110890145X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 433
Book Description
Immigration makes America what it is and is formative for what it will become. America was settled by three different models of immigration, all of which persist to the present. The Virginia Colony largely equated immigration with the arrival of laborers, who had few rights. Massachusetts welcomed those who shared the religious views of the founders but excluded those whose beliefs challenged prevailing orthodoxy. Pennsylvania valued pluralism, becoming the most diverse colony in religion, language, and culture. A fourth, anti-immigration model also emerged during the colonial period, and was often fueled by populist leaders who stoked fears about newcomers. Arguing that the Pennsylvania model has best served the country, this book makes key recommendations for future immigration reform. Given the highly controversial nature of immigration in the United States, this second edition – updated to analyze policy changes in the Obama and Trump administrations – provides valuable insights for academics and policymakers.
Author: Uta Gerhardt Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 150955260X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 211
Book Description
November 9th 1938 is widely seen as a violent turning point in Nazi Germany’s assault on the Jews. An estimated 400 Jews lost their lives in the anti-Semitic pogrom and more than 30,000 were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps, where many were brutally mistreated. Thousands more fled their homelands in Germany and Austria, shocked by what they had seen, heard and experienced. What they took with them was not only the pain of saying farewell but also the memory of terrible scenes: attacks by mobs of drunken Nazis, public humiliations, burning synagogues, inhuman conditions in overcrowded prison cells and concentration camp barracks. The reactions of neighbours and passersby to these barbarities ranged from sympathy and aid to scorn, mockery, and abuse. In 1939 the Harvard sociologist Edward Hartshorne gathered eyewitness accounts of the Kristallnacht from hundreds of Jews who had fled, but Hartshorne joined the Secret Service shortly afterwards and the accounts he gathered were forgotten – until now. These eyewitness testimonies – published here for the first time with a Foreword by Saul Friedländer, the Pulitzer Prize historian and Holocaust survivor – paint a harrowing picture of everyday violence in one of Europe’s darkest moments. This unique and disturbing document will be of great interest to anyone interested in modern history, Nazi Germany and the historical experience of the Jews.
Author: Michael Dobbs Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 1524733199 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
"The powerfully told story of a group of German Jews desperately seeking American visas to escape the Nazis, and an illuminating account of America's struggle with the refugee crisis caused by the rise of Hitler. Official tie-in to the U.S. Holocaust Museum multi-year exhibit"--
Author: Henry Gallant Publisher: ISBN: 9780692812693 Category : Jewish refugees Languages : en Pages : 118
Book Description
May 13, 1939. The MS St. Louis ocean liner pulls out of Hamburg harbor and begins a long journey across the Atlantic Ocean toward Cuba. On board are more than 900 German Jews fleeing Hitler, including Hermann and Rita Goldstein and their 10-year-old son, Heinz. The passengers hope to stay in Cuba while they wait for visas to enter the United States. However, once the ship arrives in Havana's harbor, the Cuban government refuses to let the passengers enter. An urgent request goes out to America, seeking permission to dock. But a plea sent all the way up to the White House is ignored. Passengers are told that, without visas, they cannot come into the United States. The ship's captain has no choice but to turn back to Europe, where many passengers will be delivered into the lethal hands of the Nazis. "NO REPLY: A Jewish Child Aboard the MS St. Louis and the Ordeal That Followed" tells the story of Heinz and his harrowing flight for safety.
Author: Howard Norman Publisher: Vintage Canada ISBN: 0307400964 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
A two-time National Book Award finalist delivers a stirring tale of the passions - tender, obsessive, even murderous - that are unleashed by a wartime love triangle. Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges - the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda. Setting in motion the novel's chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents - including a German U-boat's sinking of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry Caribou - lend intense narrative power to Norman's uncannily layered story. Wyatt's account of the astonishing events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. What Is Left the Daughter is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.
Author: Rona Arato Publisher: James Lorimer & Company ISBN: 1459415663 Category : Young Adult Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 90
Book Description
Prior to the Second World War, Canada's Jewish community was well established in many cities, including Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. As war grew closer, anti-Semitism across Europe was increasing. Hitler's Nazis were spreading hatred and violence towards Jews across Germany. At first, Jews were allowed to leave Germany and thousands escaped to save themselves and their families. Then countries around the world closed their doors to Jewish refugees. In 1939, the MS St. Louis sailed for Cuba with nearly a thousand Jewish men, women, and children looking for safety. They were turned away by Cuba, then the US. The ship sailed on to Canada. Despite pleas from the Canadian Jewish community, the government refused to allow the passengers to land in Canada. After war broke out, Canada continued to refuse Jewish refugees entry. When Britain forced Canada to take some refugees in, Canada imprisoned them in internment camps — alongside Nazis. Some of these Jewish refugees were only teenagers. Three years after the war ended and after the horrors of the Holocaust were universally known, Canada finally changed immigration policies and begin to accept Jews equally with other immigrants. Canada's long history of anti-Semitic immigration policies was deemed shameful. In November 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an official apology to the Jewish community for Canada's refusal to accept the passengers of the MS St. Louis, as well as for its historical anti-Semitic policies.
Author: Barry Trachtenberg Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 147256720X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
The United States and the Nazi Holocaust is an invaluable synthesis of United States policies and attitudes towards the Nazi persecution of European Jewry from 1933 to the modern day. The book weaves together a vast body of scholarship to bring students of the Holocaust a balanced overview of this complex and often controversial topic. It demonstrates that the United States' response to Nazism, the refugee crisis it provoked, the Holocaust, and its aftermath were-and remain to this day-intricately linked to the shifting racial, economic, and social status of American Jewry. Using a broad chronological framework, Barry Trachtenberg guides us through the major themes and events of this period. He discusses the complicated history of the Roosevelt administration's response to the worsening situation of European Jewry in the context of the ambiguous racial status of Jews in Depression and World War II-era America. He examines the post-war decades in America, and discusses how the Holocaust, like American Jewry itself, moved from the margins to the center of American awareness. This book considers the reception of Holocaust survivors, post-war trials, film, memoirs, memorials, and the growing field of Holocaust Studies. The reactions of the United States government, the general public, and the Jewish communities of America are all accounted for in this detailed survey.
Author: Gordon Thomas
Author: Irving Abella
Author: Richard Breitman
Author: Susan F. Martin
Author: Uta Gerhardt
Author: Michael Dobbs
Author: Henry Gallant
Author: Howard Norman
Author: Rona Arato
Author: Barry Trachtenberg