The Refugee Crisis and 1930s America

About This Lesson

When learning about the refugee crisis preceding and during the early years of World War II, students frequently wonder why Americans did not take more concerted action to help Europe’s Jews. Rather than attempting to provide a simple answer to this complex question, this lesson introduces students to multiple factors that influenced Americans’ will and ability to respond to the Jewish refugee crisis. In particular, students will examine the significant impact of Kristallnacht, which intensified the terror faced by Jewish refugees and strained the limits of the existing American immigration quota system. Students will analyze a number of primary and secondary sources in order to construct a more nuanced understanding of the societal and institutional challenges that affected American perceptions and actions. In the next two lessons of this series, students will apply their understanding of the broader historical context of the 1930s to specific case studies that deal with the debate surrounding child refugees and the experiences of Jewish refugees and American rescuers.

Essential Questions

In times of crisis, what does it take to move from knowledge to action?

Guiding Questions

How did multiple political, social, and economic factors contribute to Americans’ responses to Nazi persecution of European Jews and the refugee crisis of 1938–1941?

Learning Objectives

• Through primary and multimedia sources, students will be introduced to the multiple factors that limited Americans’ will and ability to respond to the Jewish refugee crisis of 1938–1941, including the Great Depression, isolationism, xenophobia, and antisemitism.
• Students will understand that Americans’ sympathy for the plight of Jewish refugees was not matched by support for actions on their behalf, and they will begin to explore the reasons for this gap.

Lesson Plan

Activity 1: Reflect on the Obstacles to Taking Action 

To open the lesson, give students a few minutes to reflect privately in their journals on the following prompt:

Write about a time when you knew something was wrong but were unable or unwilling to respond. What factors got in the way of you taking action?

While students may not wish to share their responses in full, you might use the Wraparound strategy to provide each student with the opportunity to name the factor that got in the way of taking action. For instance, they might say “peer pressure” or “didn’t know what to do.

Activity 2: Establish Historical Context for the United States during the 1930s

Explain to students that in this lesson they will learn about the refugee crisis created by the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, and especially about the response to the crisis by Americans.

At the beginning of this lesson, students may or may not know much about America during the 1930s. To access and activate students’ prior knowledge about the period, use the identity chart format to collect ideas and information about what the United States was like in the 1930s. Create a single chart as a class that can be posted in the classroom for reference throughout the unit.

Students should add words or phrases that come to mind that they think describe the United States during the 1930s. These words and phrases might include historical events, laws, names, or other descriptors for the country.

After students have contributed their initial ideas to the chart, show them one or both of the following short videos to help them add additional items: In 1933 . . . (1:29) and American Newsreels (3:22).

Finally, extend students’ thinking further by providing some brief historical background information on American attitudes and policies toward immigration. Pass out copies of the reading The “Immigration Problem” and read it aloud with students. As students read, they should be underlining information that helps them add to their understanding of American national identity during this period. Once they’re finished reading and underlining information, they should add words or phrases that capture what they learned from the reading to the identity chart for the United States in the 1930s.

Activity 3: Explore American Responses to Kristallnacht and the Refugee Crisis 

Next, tell students that they will be investigating in more detail American responses to acts of Nazi aggression that created and intensified a refugee crisis in the United States in the late 1930s. Tell students that some of the sources they will be investigating concern American responses to an important turning point and escalation in the Nazis’ campaign of terror against German Jews, an event known as Kristallnacht—the “night of broken glass.” Share the following historical background information with students:

• Nazi Party officials instigated a violent nationwide attack against Jews in Germany and Austria on the night of November 9–10, 1938, an event known as Kristallnacht. Units of the Nazi Party’s SA militia and Hitler Youth destroyed hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish-owned shops. Nearly 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
• American newspapers throughout the country covered the Nazi attacks against Jews in banner headlines on their front pages, and articles about the events continued to appear for several weeks.

 Transition into a Stations strategy activity with three stations, one for each of the handouts below. (Depending on class size, you might create multiple copies of each station.)

• Station 1: Polling Data / Roosevelt’s Response 
• Station 2: Responses to Kristallnacht
• Station 3: The Quota System

Divide the class into groups so that students are evenly distributed among the stations at all times. Then begin the activity by assigning each group a station at which to begin. Provide groups with five minutes to read and answer the questions that accompany each reading on a separate sheet of paper before having them rotate to the next station.

Once the groups have finished visiting all of the stations, have students discuss in their groups the following questions:

• What was the most surprising thing you learned in this activity about American responses to the Jewish refugee crisis?
• How do these sources illustrate a gap between American sympathy for Jewish refugees and a willingness to take action on their behalf? Based on what you know about the pressures, fears, and motivations that Americans faced during this period, what are some factors that may have contributed to this gap?
• How are the pressures, fears, and motivations you noticed from the 1930s similar to or different from the obstacles to taking action that the class named at the beginning of the period?

Activity 4: Reflect on a Quote from Journalist Dorothy Thompson 

Close the lesson by asking students to write a journal response to this quote about the refugee crisis from journalist Dorothy Thompson:

It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times that for thousands and thousands of people a piece of paper with a stamp on it is the difference between life and death.

Potential prompts:

• What did Thompson mean when she used the word “fantastic”? We usually give this word a positive connotation.
• What about this dilemma did Thompson find most baffling