Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Jewish Business News

Articles & Blogs

The Shocking Story of Hitler’s Jewish Spy — And the Lesson It Holds for Us Today

161922-lkndfgth HITLER

 

The leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination share a commitment to halting the entry of Syrian refugees to the US. They are joined by about half the United States’ governors. Not long ago my colleague Peter Shulman tweeted the results of a 1938 Fortune poll showing that 67 percent of American respondents wanted refugees from central Europe kept out of the US. (A 1939—post Kristallnacht—poll showed that number roughly holding at 61 percent.) For many, Prof. Shulman’s was a chilling admonishment from the past: turning our backs on refugees can mean their death sentence. It was all the more stinging because, as now, it seemed Americans on the eve of the Holocaust rejected these refugees as ethnic-religious undesirables.

 

Holocaust,   Germany,   Europe,   The Shocking Story of Hitler’s Jewish Spy -- And the Lesson It Holds for Us Today - See more at httphistorynewsnetwork.orgarticle161922#sthash.K7t13gP5.dpuf

Please help us out :
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.

For others, these reminders offered no moral pang. It is a failed analogy, wrote Ian Tuttle, Buckley Fellow at the National Review Institute. “The first and most obvious difference: There was no international conspiracy of German Jews in the 1930s attempting to carry out daily attacks on civilians.…” There is no comparison, in other words, because the Jews, unlike Syrian Muslims, were not terrorists.

Mr. Tuttle’s choice of words is salient because it was precisely “an international conspiracy of Jews” that many Americans feared in the 1930s, most relevantly at the Justice and State Departments. They feared international Bolshevism—imagined to be particularly rooted among “the Jews”—and fifth columnists sowing revolution.

 

This story was first published at History News Network,  

John Broich is an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University where he teaches British Empire history. His next book on the Royal Navy and the East African slave trade will be published by Overlook Press and Duckworth.

 

Newsletter



Advertisement

You May Also Like

World News

In the 15th Nov 2015 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:   ·         A new Israeli treatment brings hope to relapsed leukemia...

Entertainment

The Movie The Professional is what made Natalie Portman a Lolita.

Travel

After two decades without a rating system in Israel, at the end of 2012 an international tender for hotel rating was published.  Invited to place bids...

VC, Investments

You may not become a millionaire, but there is a lot to learn from George Soros.