Trace the evolution of the response of the United Sates to the Essay

Trace the evolution of the response of the United Sates to the Holocaust starting with the Evian Conference of 1938 through the end of 1945 - Essay Example Consequently, this war created a refugee problem in the west and raised a lot of concerns in the world. There was need to solve this problem and relocate the displaced Jews who were termed as refugees (Rossel, p13). The first response by the United States of America to solve this crisis was made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt who was the then US president. He acknowledged that the Jews problem was becoming an international crisis and convened the Evian Conference on 6th July, 1938. The conference was attended by 33 countries including Britain and her colonies, and other European and Latin American countries. The purpose of the conference was to come up with solutions to the problems that the Jews were facing as a result of the rise and expansion of the Nazi Germany (Grobman, p124). However, the conference failed to produce any constructive results. Most of the western countries including the US were very reluctant in opening their borders to the Jews who were being persecuted in Germany. They argued that the great depression had greatly affected their economies and increased the rate of unemployment in their countries thus accepting the Jews would increase competition for the jobs and cause further problems. The only country that agreed to open its borders to the Jewish immigrants was the Dominican Republic; it agreed to take in about 100, 000 refugees. The only achievements of the conference were the documentation of series of superficial and oral statements which implied that there was a refugee problem that required a solution and the creation of the intergovernmental committee on refugees (ICR) which was to continue working on the refugee crisis(Grobman, p299). In 1939, some Americans became concerned with the problems of the Jews in Germany and tried to rescue them but failed. For example, in response to the plight of the Jews, Senator Robert F. Wagner introduced a refugee aid bill in the United States senate on February 9, 1939 to help the