We turned away endangered children
by
John J. Dunphy
Separating small children from their parents at our southern border and then tossing them into unsanitary wire enclosures, where they are often deprived of even the barest necessities, is a level of barbarism that many of us thought we would never see perpetrated by our government. However, it isn’t the first time Washington has turned its back on endangered children who needed a place of refuge.
Hitler’s persecution of Jews began as soon as the Nazi party assumed power in Germany and steadily worsened. The Nuremberg laws, passed in 1935, deprived Jews of German citizenship and outlawed marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Anti-semites across Germany as well as throughout German-occupied Austria and Sudetenland murdered at least 100 Jews and injured hundreds more on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), November 9–10, 1938. Over 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized or burned. Synagogues were destroyed and Jewish cemeteries vandalized.
Perceptive Americans saw that much worse would soon follow. Perhaps the United States could take action to protect some of the most vulnerable German Jews. However, these humanitarians found themselves swimming against that era’s political current.
Many Americans were isolationists who wanted our nation to remain aloof from foreign conflicts. Restrictive quotas based on ethnic, religious and racial prejudice drastically limited who could immigrate to the United States. Anti-semitism poisoned our nation. Two weeks after Kristallnacht, Charles Coughlin told his radio audience that “Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted.” When a New York City radio station canceled Coughlin’s program, protesters descended on the station shouting anti-semitic rants such as “Wait until Hitler comes over here!”
Nonetheless, Sen. Robert Wagner (D-NY) and Rep. Edith Rogers (R-MA) in February of 1939 introduced a bill that would have allowed 20,000 German Jewish children under the age of fourteen to enter the United States, despite our nation’s quota system. The bill enjoyed bipartisan support. Former President Herbert Hoover backed the measure as did Alf Landon, the 1936 GOP presidential candidate.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt praised the bill as a “wise way to do a humanitarian act.” She noted that “England, France and the Scandinavian countries are taking their share of these children and I think we should.” Mindful of how strong isolationist sentiment was in the nation he governed, however, FDR made no public statements in support of the legislation. Just a month before the Wagner-Rogers bill was introduced in Congress, a public opinion poll asked respondents whether they would favor a bill to “permit 10,000 refugee children from Germany to be brought to this country and taken care of in American homes.” Twenty- six percent said yes, while 67 percent said no.
While labor and religious organizations backed the Wagner-Rogers bill, it was strongly opposed by conservative nationalist groups such as the American Legion and Daughters of the American Revolution. Laura Delano Houghteling, who was a cousin of President Franklin Roosevelt and married to the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration, inadvertently revealed why many Americans opposed admitting these children. At a Washington dinner party, she remarked to State Department official Jay Pierrepont Moffat that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.
The Wagner-Rogers bill died in committee and was never voted on by either the House or Senate. Our nation further disgraced itself in 1939 by refusing to grant asylum to Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis, a transatlantic liner.
Many — perhaps even most — of those 20,000 Jewish children died during the Holocaust. We bear partial responsibility for their deaths. According to the May 24, 2019 edition of the Los Angeles Times, six migrant children have died in federal custody since last September. We must open our hearts to endangered children who seek refuge in the United States.
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John J. Dunphy is the author of “Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois” and “Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials: The Investigative Work of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, 1945–1947” and “Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois.”