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with gentle words, to obscure the Jew from public gaze.” 30 Mrs. C. M. White of Ft.
Dodge, Iowa, opposed the admission of agitators from Germany, Austria and Russia and
wanted aid to be given to the American poor before admitting “Europe’s penniless…” 31
An opinion poll for March 1938, at the time of the Anschluss, revealed that forty
one percent of Americans believed that “Jews have too much power” in the United
States; i.e., control of finance, commerce and entertainment. Twenty five percent of
respondents supported the exclusion of Jews from “government and politics” and twenty
percent favored the expulsion of Jews from the country. Nineteen percent were in
support of an anti-Semitic campaign within the U.S. itself. 32 Sixty eight percent of
respondents to a May poll opposed the admission of Austrian and German refugees. 33 A
June Fortune magazine poll demonstrated that 67.4% of Americans believed that "with
[economic] conditions as they are we should try to keep [refugees] out." 18.2% replied
that "we should allow them to come but not ruin our immigration quotas" and only 4.9%
favored increasing the annual allowance. The remainder was undecided. 34 A June Gallup
poll demonstrated that seventy two percent of Americans believed “we should not allow a
30 “How to Combat Anti-Semitism in America” (New York: 1937), 33, sponsored by the American
Jewish Congress and Boycott: Nazi Goods and Services (March-April 1938), 3 cited in Jeffrey S. Gurlock,
ed., America, American Jews (NY: Routledge, 1998), 237, 242. The Sha-Sha philosophy, opposed by the
more pro-active American Jewish Congress, was the belief that if Jews pretended “that the Jew does not
exist…he will not be missed; the anti-Semite, unable to find his victim, will simply forget about him.”
Henry Popkin, “The Vanishing Jew of Our Popular Culture,” Commentary 14, no. 1 (July 1952), 46 cited in
Edna Nahshon, ed., Jewish Theatre: A Global View (Leiden, The Netherlands, Koninklijke Brill, 2009),
207.
31 Boycott: Nazi Goods and Services (March-April 1938), 3 cited in Spear, “The United States and the
Persecution of German Jews,” 242.
32 Charles H. Stembler, Jews in the Mind of America (NY: Basic Books, 1966), 121-131.
33 Edwin Harwood, “American Public Opinion and US Immigration Policy,” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science (1986): 202.
34 Sanders, Shores of Refuge, 438.
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