APRIL 15, 2020 VOLUME 7 Remembered

What did Americans knowabout the Holocaustin real time?In November 1938, when the nation’seyes were focused on two major events— the Democratic majority’s loss of79 seats in the midterm Congressionalelections, and the 20th anniversary of thearmistice that ended World War I — TheGreenville News’s front page alerted itsreaders to a newcrisis overseas.Under a headlinetrumpeting that thenew Republicans inCongress intendedto “Block LeftwardCourse,” the secondheadline — in fontnearly as large asfirst — blared “JewREBECCAish Stores Looted,ERBELDINGSynagogues Burnedin Reich Riots.Multiple subheadings and adjacent articlesinformed readers of the November 9-10,1938, Kristallnacht attacks. Throughout NaziGermany, which included recently annexedAustria and parts of Czechoslovakia, Jewishshops had been destroyed, synagoguesscorched, homes looted. Thirty thousandJewish men and boys were rounded up andsent to concentration camps, told they’donly be released when they promised to immigrate elsewhere. Few countries, however,welcomed Jewish refugees.The noose was tightening. And althoughSouth Carolina residents could not haveimagined that the Nazi regime and itscollaborators would turn to mass murderwithin three years, it was clear then thatEurope’s Jews were in serious danger.Seventy-five years after the Allied defeatof Nazi Germany and the end of the Holocaust, many Americans have strong feelingsabout the role the country played in WorldWar II. While the victory of democracy overfascism and the liberation of Jewish andnon-Jewish prisoners is rightfully celebrated, one question is still debated: What didAmericans know about the Holocaust, andwhat more could have been done to rescuethe victims?In April 2018, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, openeda new exhibition, Americans and theHolocaust, which examines the UnitedStates during the 1930s and 1940s, and thebreadth of American responses to Nazism,APRIL 15, 2020World War II, and the Nazi-sponsored genocide of European Jews.A major part of the new exhibitionconcerns news itself: As the Kristallnachtcoverage in The Greenville News indicates,Americans and the Holocaust corrects thecommon misconception that Americans didnot know or were indifferent to the threatsNazism posed to German Jews, and toworld peace.Museum historians did not find evidenceof nationwide coverage on our own. Threeyears ago, in preparation for the exhibition,the Museum launched a crowd-sourcingproject, “History Unfolded.” Museum staffasked students, teachers, librarians andhistory buffs across the country to researchtheir local newspapers and determine whatkind of information their community couldhave read or heard about Nazi Germanyand the Holocaust. The Museum built anextensive online archive of American newspaper coverage of key Holocaust events,including 23,000 submitted articles — andmore than 75 from every US state.Some of the information reaching thepeople of South Carolina about events unfolding in Europe was prophetic. On April 2,1933, only two months after Adolf Hitler became Germany’s chancellor, Columbia’s TheState newspaper bore the headline “BoycottParalyzes Commerce of Jews.” The article,placed next to features about the New Dealand the beginning of beer sales after theend of Prohibition, described the boycott ofJewish stores throughout Germany as “thePassengers aboard the MS St. Louis, May 13-June 17, 1939United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Dr. Liane Reif-LehrerOn May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana,Cuba, carrying 937 passengers, the majority of whom were Jewish. When the St. Louis arrived in Havana,the passengers learned that the landing certificates they had purchased were invalid. After Cuba refusedto allow the passengers to land and the United States (and other Western Hemisphere nations) didnot offer to take the passengers, the ship returned to Europe. The American Jewish Joint DistributionCommittee worked with the State Department, ultimately persuading four countries—Great Britain,France, the Netherlands, and Belgium—to admit the passengers.greatest organized anti-Semitic movementof modern times.” “Jews want to continuethe fight until the destruction of the German people,” a representative of the NaziWomen’s Federation is quoted as saying.“We will continue it until Jewry has beendestroyed.”The small Jewish community in SouthCarolina — only about 6,000 members —did what they could. They raised moneyto aid Jewish refugees attempting to fleeEurope, with an ongoing tally of donationsreported in the Greenwood, SC, IndexJournal.And yet the majority of Americans didnot support allowing more immigrationto the United States. College studentssurveyed in late 1938 — after the Kristallnacht attacks — were sympathetic to the“oppressed German minorities,” but 69%of them did not think that the United Statesshould offer haven to Jewish refugees. TheUniversity of South Carolina’s The Gamecock speculated that the percentage wouldhave been lower, except that “AmericanJewish students” raised the ‘yes’ answer.”Left: Portrait of Jan Karski during his mission tothe United States to inform government leadersabout Nazi policy in Poland, July 1943.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,courtesy of Jan KarskiJan Karski, a lieutenant in the Polish undergroundfighting the German occupation, was smuggledinto both the Warsaw ghetto and prisoner transitcamp to witness the horrors suffered by Jews.Nine months later, Karski arrived in Washington,D.C., to tell American government officials what hehad seen. Karski met President Roosevelt at theWhite House on July 28, 1943.Supplement created and paid for by the COLUMBIA HOLOCAUST EDUCATION COMMISSIONVisit Americans and theHolocaust online atushmm.org/AmericansThe Americans and the Holocaust exhibition reveals that the 1938 poll of collegestudents was not an exception in Americaat the time. Although many Americans knewabout the threats of Nazism and there wassympathy for the plight of the victims, therewas not a groundswell of national action.Concerns about the Great Depression,immigration, national security, and war—aswell as a culture of antisemitism, racism,xenophobia, and isolationism — limitedAmericans’ willingness to make the rescueof Jews a priority.There are still many more stories touncover. The Museum’s “History Unfolded”project will continue to collect newspaper articles until at least 2022. Interestedstudents and citizen historians shouldvisit newspapers.ushmm.org to learn howto participate. The Americans and theHolocaust online exhibition can be visited atushmm.org/Americans and a traveling version of the exhibition will tour public libraries nationwide beginning in March 2020,with a stop at the Richland County library inthe summer of 2021. Rebecca Erbelding is a historian, curator,and archivist at the US Holocaust MemorialMuseum and served as the lead historian onthe Museum’s special exhibition, Americansand the Holocaust, on display 2018-2021.HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED5

Never Be SilentWhen Columbia was chartered asAmerica’s first planned capitalcity more than 200 years ago,Senator John Gervais advocated for “theoppressed of all lands to find refuge underthe wings of Columbia.” I am sure that atthose critical early days of our republicSenator Gervaiscould not have fullyunderstood how prescient this quote was.Gervais couldnot have imaginedthat in the year 2020our citizens andresidents would hailfrom each of the 194sovereign nations of STEVEBENJAMINthe world, speak 90different languageand practice dozens of religions. He couldnot imagine that this city would becomean inclusive and dynamic city of the NewSouth built by his peers AND an amazinglydiverse group of Columbians includingfreed Africans, Irish indentured servantsand incredibly resilient and faithful Jewishimmigrants.I have had the honor of serving Columbia — the city that I love, as Mayor for nearly a decade and have come to truly valueour rich Jewish history. Since our foundingin the late 18th century Jewish citizenshave led in the areas of the arts, science,religion, education, business, governmentand law. Dr. Mordecai Hendricks De Leonand Henry Lyons even served as Mayors ofColumbia before the Civil War.As a public servant and student of history, I’ve made it a priority to understandand learn from our collective past. I soonrealized that it is impossible to truly understand human history without a full andcomprehensive knowledge of the Shoah.Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Germany’sattempt to eradicate an entire race andsuccessfully murder over 6 million Jewsin the 20th century should serve as areminder to the dangers that we face whenwe allow antisemitism, racism, xenophobiaand all forms of hate to march forwardunchecked.My 2019 visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau putthe horrors faced by over 1 million Jewishfamilies, thousands of Poles, Roma andprisoners of war on full display. As adultmen, we wept when I, as President of theU.S. Conference of Mayors, led a delegation of our leaders through the Gate ofDeath and witnessed empty canisters ofZyklon-B used to poison innocents. Weviewed thousands of shoes and suitcasesstolen from men, women and childrenfleeing their homes desperate for sanctuary. Hair was shorn from proud women andmen were attempting to degrade them,violating their faith and dignity and thenused the hair for industrial purposes.Entrance of Auschwitz concentration campStill today, we arestruggling as anation to handlemany issues that wethought we had putto bed decades ago.Twins used in medical experimentation6HOLOCAUST REMEMBEREDI had the incredibly difficult experienceof feeling that I was standing in both helland on hallowed ground.I’d had the opportunity to visit YadVashem twice over the past decade but Iwas completely unprepared emotionally tostand in a gas chamber and a crematoriumthat stole millions of futures. I was simplynot as emotionally mature as I thought amiddle-aged man should be. As a group,we wept and we became angrier by themoment. We reflected on the world that welive in, that the lost would never see, andSupplement created and paid for by the COLUMBIA HOLOCAUST EDUCATION COMMISSIONdetermined that we couldand should be doing somuch more.Still today, we arestruggling as a nation tohandle many issues thatwe thought we had put tobed decades ago. Angryprotesters wave flags& swastikas that braveyoung men had stormedthe battlefield at Gettysburg and beaches ofNormandy to defeat.There are actually ongoing debates about themorality of human chattel slavery. Divisiveethnic, racial and religious rhetoric can beheard. Not only hate speech but deadlyviolence often co-signed from the highestlevels of the republic.This endless barrage of bitterness wewatch on the news every night, the hateand vitriol flowing from what should be theworld’s first and greatest temple of democracy that is not the America we knowand love and I refuse to believe that this isa dark reflection of who we actually are.Those cold days in Poland, I learnedfirst- hand not only the evils of the Holocaust but a renewed motivation to, in thewords of the

2 HOLOCAUST REMEMBERED Supplement created and paid for by the COLUMBIA HOLOCAUST EDUCATION COMMISSION APRIL 15, 2020 South Carolina Civic Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz University of South Carolina Alumni Hall, Columbia The SC Civic Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz, sponsored