Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac - American Failure to Provide Refuge Summary: The failure of the Wagner-Rogers bill (Children's Rescue Bill) and lobbying efforts to defeat it... Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.almanac.bc.ca Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Wagner,Rogers,Kinnicutt Archive/File: places/usa/conspiracy.001 Last-modified: 1996/04/24 William Perl, author of the 1989 book "The Holocaust Conspiracy," holds that it was concerted and deliberate action, taken by many of the nations of the world, that made it impossible for the Jews of Europe to escape Hitler's Nazi government; this, he says, directly led to the Holocaust. The book mentions the Swiss government's insistence, for instance, that Jewish passports (issued in Germany) be clearly marked, and German compliance with that demand, as one example of an event supporting his thesis. He then presents the failure of the Wagner-Rogers bill in the U.S. Congress as another example: "Stimulated by the events of Crystal Night, on February 9, 1939, Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of Massachusetts introduced identical bills in their respective houses of Congress to admit by special action 10,000 refugee children under 14 years of age, in 1939 and another 10,000 in 1940. To avoid labor opposition, the bill provided that the children would not be permitted to work and would join their parents as soon as safety elsewhere was assured. The American Friends Service Committee, which volunteered their services, would organize the children's movements to the United States as well as their placement. Within 24 hours after the plan had become known, 4,000 American families had offered their homes to these children. Radio stations and newspapers were swamped with even more offers. But a powerful group of isolationists and anti-Semites banded together and planned their strategy to prevent these bills from becoming law. By April, when the Congressional hearing started, the conspirators against the Children's Rescue Bill were well organized. Francis H. Kinnicutt represented thirty 'patriotic organizations united in the Allied Patriotic Societies' of which he was president! These included the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Society of Mayflower Descendants, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Lord's Day Alliance of the United States, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and other isolationist organizations. Mr. Kinnicutt spoke up quite openly, '...this is just part of a drive to go back to the condition when we were flooded with foreigners who tried to run the country on different lines from those laid down by the old stock...Strictly speaking, it is not a refugee bill at all, for by the nature of the case most of those admitted would be of the Jewish race.' There was of course more activity on the part of those united to prevent the bill from becoming law. There was heavy lobbying in Congress. Colonel John Taylor lobbied for the American Legion against the bill and in support of a bill by North Carolina Senator Robert Reynolds which would abolish all immigration to the United States for the next ten years. Mrs. Agnes Waters, representing, as she claimed, the Widows of World War I veterans, testified, that if the Children's Rescue Bill should pass, the United States 'would be made helpless to guarantee our children their rights under the Constitution to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...if this country is going to become the dumping ground for the persecuted minorities of Europe. The refugees...can never become loyal Americans.' Because the lobbying in Congress was going well, those who supported the bill hoped that the President might make his influence felt. Congresswoman O'Day of New York wrote to Mr. Roosevelt hoping to obtain a statement in favor of the bill. But the President refused to become involved in a subject opposed not only by many Republicans but bitterly resented by the conservative Democrats of the solid South. O'Day's letter forwarded to Mr. Roosevelt by his secretary carries on the margin in his own handwriting the notation" 'File - No action.' In Washington, more issues are often revealed and decided at diplomatic cocktail parties than at formal meetings. Mr. Pierrepoint Moffat, chief of the State Department's Division of European Affairs, reports in his diary, now in the National Archives, about such a cocktail party which points out clearer than the official debates the true nature of the attitude of the insiders toward this rescue attempt. Mrs. James Hougheling, wife of the all powerful Commissioner of Immigration said: 'The trouble with the Wagner-Rogers bill was that 20,000 children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.'<10> Well, the bills never left the committee. The conspiracy of anti-Semites and isolationists succeeded in torpedoing the rescue bills and the children did not grow up into any kind of adults." (Perl, 19-21) Work Cited Perl, William R. The Holocaust Conspiracy: An International Policy of Genocide. New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1989
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