TXAG 05 said:

---

Plus, at that time in the war, how well was it known what was going on in the camps?

---

BQ_90 said:

---

And they would have rebuilt the lines as fast as they where bombed.

---

Quote:

---

STATE DEPARTMENT OBSTRUCTION EXPOSED

In 1943, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long blocked information about Nazi atrocities from reaching the United States and misled Congress about the number of refugees admitted into the country.

The Treasury Department presented a report to President Roosevelt in January 1944, arguing for a new government agency devoted to rescuing Jews and other Nazi victims.

In early 1943, US State Department officials blocked reports about the mass murder of Jews from reaching the United States. Some at the State Department wanted to avoid any increase in public pressure to aid Jews and thought that if the American people did not have information about the atrocities, they would not protest.

In April, US and British representatives met in Bermuda to discuss the possibility of assisting European Jews. Neither country, however, intended to loosen its restrictive immigration policies or to actually take any decisive rescue action.

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS
In November 1943, a group of congressmen, influenced by activist Peter Bergson, introduced bipartisan resolutions in the House of Representatives and Senate calling for President Roosevelt to create a government commission to rescue Europe's Jews. In secret testimony before Congress, Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long declared that the State Department already had admitted 580,000 refugees, a claim soon publicly proven false.

TREASURY DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATION

At the same time, US Treasury Department staff investigated the State Department's delays and obstruction in sending relief into Europe to aid Jewish refugees. They discovered that State Department officials had deliberately suppressed reports about the murder of Jews. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. agreed to present their findings to President Roosevelt.

As a result of Treasury's efforts, Roosevelt signed an executive order on January 22, 1944, establishing the War Refugee Board. It was charged with the rescue and relief of victims of Nazi oppression as long as it did not interfere with the war effort.

---

Quote:

---

The US Government learned about the systematic killing of Jews almost as soon as it began in the Soviet Union in 1941. Throughout the war, however, the Allied governments prioritized defeating Nazism, not saving Jews.

Beyond the military goal of defeating Nazism, the United States could have publicized information about Nazi atrocities, pressured the other Allies and neutral nations to help endangered Jews, and supported resistance groups against the Nazis. Prior to the war, the US government could have enlarged or filled its immigration quotas to allow more Jewish refugees to enter the country. These acts together might have reduced the death toll, but they would not have prevented the Holocaust.

---

Quote:

---

In the mid-1920s, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased primarily because of anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland and Washington's imposition of restrictive quotas.5

The record number of immigrants in 1935 (see table) was a response to the growing persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. The British administration considered this number too large, however, so the Jewish Agency was informed that less than one-third of the quota it asked for would be approved in 1936.6

The British gave in further to Arab demands by announcing in the 1939 White Paper that an independent Arab state would be created within 10 years, and that Jewish immigration was to be limited to 75,000 for the next five years, after which it was to cease altogether. It also forbade land sales to Jews in 95 percent of the territory of Palestine. The Arabs, nevertheless, rejected the proposal.

By contrast, throughout the Mandatory period, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants.7

The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: "This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery."8

The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the "shortfall of land is, we consider, due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population."9

The gates of Palestine remained closed for the duration of the war, stranding hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe, many of whom became victims of Hitler's Final Solution. After the war, the British refused to allow the survivors of the Nazi nightmare to find sanctuary in Palestine. On June 6, 1946, President Truman urged the British government to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by immediately accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants. Britain's Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, replied sarcastically that the United States wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine "because they did not want too many of them in New York."10

Some Jews were able to reach Palestine, many by way of dilapidated ships that members of the Jewish resistance organizations smuggled in. Between August 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, 65 "illegal " immigrant ships, carrying 69,878 people, arrived from European shores. In August 1946, however, the British began to intern those they caught in camps in Cyprus. Approximately 50,000 people were detained in the camps, 28,000 of whom were still imprisoned when Israel declared independence.11

---