Saving Children from the Nazi Haman

by Rafael Medoff

As Jews the world over entered their synagogues on Purim eve, 1939, to listen to the Megilla’s tale of Jews being saved from genocide in ancient times, there was reason to hope that their generation, too, would be saved from catastrophe.

For six long years, the Hitler regime had brutalized German Jewry, while the international community for the most part turned a deaf ear. But in early 1939, in response to the Kristallnacht pogrom, U.S. Senator Robert Wagner (D-New York) and Rep. Edith Rogers (R-Massachusetts) took action. Just a few weeks before Purim, they introduced legislation to save 20,000 Jewish children from the Nazi Haman, by admitting them to the United States, outside America’s strict immigration quotas.

The Wagner-Rogers bill was supported by a wide range of clergymen, labor leaders, university presidents, actors –including Henry Fonda and Helen Hayes– and political figures such as 1936 Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon and his running mate, Frank Knox. Former First Lady Grace Coolidge announced she and her friends in Northampton, Massachusetts would personally care for twenty-five of the children.

Arguably the most prominent, and unexpected, political figure to back Wagner-Rogers was former president Herbert Hoover. Back in 1930, before Hitler, Hoover’s administration had tightened the restrictions on immigration. Hoover’s endorsement of a bill allowing greater immigration surprised political observers, made the front page of the New York Times, and was read aloud at the hearings on the bill. Hoover also assisted the sponsors of the bill behind the scenes, by pressuring wavering members of the House Immigration Committee to support the measure.

Hoover’s stance was especially noteworthy because it ran counter to his political interests. After serving one term as president (1928-1932), Hoover harbored ambitions of returning to the White House. In 1936, he hoped to be offered the Republican nomination, and as the 1940 election drew closer, he again dreamed of a deadlocked convention turning to him. To champion the influx of more immigrants in mid-1939, at a time when most of the Republican Party, like most of the general public, was so strongly against immigration, could only harm his chances of a political comeback.

Numerous patriotic and anti-foreigner groups, including the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, mobilized against Wagner-Rogers. Laura Delano Houghteling, a cousin of President Franklin Roosevelt and wife of the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration, summarized the sentiment of the opposition when she complained that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.”

FDR himself took no position on Wagner-Rogers. An inquiry by a congresswoman as to the president’s stance was returned to Roosevelt’s secretary marked “File No action FDR.” Roosevelt was mindful of polls showing most Americans opposed to more immigration, and so he chose to—as Winston Churchill once described one of FDR’s traits—“follow public opinion rather than to form it and lead it.”

In April 1939, a joint Senate-House committee held four days of hearings on Wagner-Rogers. Sympathetic witnesses offered moving humanitarian pleas. They also stressed that children would not compete with American citizens for jobs. Nativist opponents presented standard anti-immigration claims as well as innovative assertions such as the claim that the wording of the bill could enable 20,000 Nazi children to come to the U.S., and therefore the effect of the bill would be to tear German families apart. The Senate and House subcommittees both voted unanimously in favor of Wagner-Rogers.

But unlike the Purim story, this tale did not have a happy ending.

The legislation moved on to the full House Immigration Committee for its consideration. Opponents mounted a feverish behind-the-scenes attack. This, together with the absence of White House support, resulted in a Committee vote that required the 20,000 child immigrants to be charged against the existing German quota. This maneuver nullified the entire original purpose of the legislation. Wagner-Rogers was dead. Those 20,000 Jewish children were left to face the Nazi Haman alone.

Ironically, a year later, Pets Magazine launched a campaign to have Americans take in purebred British puppies so they would not be harmed by German bombing raids. The proposal received a much warmer reception than the Wagner-Rogers bill. The magazine received several thousand offers of haven for the dogs.

March 2012