The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University |
KristallnachtOn the night of November 9, 1938, Hitler's Nazis burned synagogues all over Germany and Austria, smashed shop windows, looted stores, ransacked Jewish homes, and killed dozens of Jews. Twenty thousand Jews were arrested. The event was called Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) because of the piles of broken glass strewn on the sidewalks and streets. Two days later, the German government imposed an "atonement fine" of a billion marks on the Jews to pay for the property damage and, several weeks after that, announced that Jewish assets would be confiscated. A few days later, the government forbade Jews to drive cars or use public transportation, visit public parks and museums, or attend plays or concerts. It was a prelude to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps to come and is often considered the beginning of the Holocaust. ER was appalled. "This German-Jewish business makes me
sick," she wrote to her friend Lorena
Hickok on November 14, 1938, "and when FDR
called tonight I was glad to know that [U.S. ambassador
to Germany Hugh] Wilson was being recalled and we were protesting."(1)
Without directly challenging American immigration policy,
she said at a press conference, that "special and speedy
relief methods" were needed to meet the refugee crisis in
Europe.(2) When she learned
that the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, country club that she
was to address would not allow Jewish members, she cancelled
her speech and criticized its discriminatory policy. She
also intensified her work with nongovernmental organizations
and individuals to find safe havens for refugees. On December
6, 1938, she spoke at a rally organized to raise funds for
the Leon Blum colony being established in Palestine for
1,000 Jewish refugee families. She pressed the State Department
to respond to individual appeals, advocated liberalization
of the immigration laws, and worked with officials to combat
American anti-Semitism. Notes:
Sources:Cook, Blanche Wiesen. Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume Two, 1933-38. New York: Viking, 1999, 556-562. |