The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

kinds [left] no doubt” that the American people favored the granting of “asylum…to as
many as can possibly be provided with such means of escape…” 20 Roosevelt’s move was
a “precedent-shattering move tantamount to a public rebuke” of the Reich’s racial
policies. 21
The editorial board of The Crisis expressed dismay at the “crushing brutality”
inflicted on the Jews in the Reich that was similar to the persecution faced by African-
Americans within the United States. The journal criticized those who had
“expressed…sympathy” for foreign Jews while turning a blind eye to the plight of blacks
living within the United States. However, “unlike the Jews in modern Germany, they
know lynching” and view “with a twisted smile” white protests against Nazi anti-
Semitism that ignored the plight of the “Negroes”: “raiding mobs in Dixie,” limited
admissions to institutions of higher education, the observance of “rigid color lines” by
white Christians and attempts to provide employment for European refugees while the
black “knocks at the doors of a thousand businesses seeking employment in vain.”
Nevertheless, The Crisis called upon all African-Americans to oppose “Hitler and
all that he represents.” The primary institutional difference in the treatment of blacks
within the United States and Jews living in Germany was the application of “every
instrument of the state” against the Jewish minority. Jews faced governmental censure
while African-Americans faced institutional “indifference.” All blacks should contest
“Hitlerism” but American priorities should be directed towards a democratic institution
that operated as a “reality for all minorities of whatever race, religion and or color.”
20 A.A. Freedlander, “The American Refugee Move,” The Sentinel, March 31, 1938, 4.
21 “U.S. Offers Plan for Refugees: Invites Twenty-Nine Countries to Form International Committee on
Emigration,” The Sentinel, March 31, 1938, 33.
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