1939 | Human Rights, Social Justice
Human Rights, Social Justice
German foreign minister von Ribbentrop sends a circular to diplomatic and consular offices January 25 under the title "The Jewish Question, a Factor in Our Foreign Policy for 1938": "It is not by chance that 1938, the year of our destiny, saw the realization of our plan for Greater Germany as well as a major step towards the solution of the Jewish problem . . . The spread of Jewish influence and its corruption of our political, economic, and cultural life has perhaps done more to undermine the German people's will to prevail than all the hostility shown us by the Allied powers since the Great War. This disease in the body of our people had first to be eradicated before the Great German Reich could assemble its forces in 1938 to overcome the will of the world." Adolf Hitler gives a speech January 30 spelling out the fate that he sees in store for Europe's Jews.
The S.S. St. Louis of the Hamburg-Amerika Line leaves Hamburg May 13 with 937 Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression and is the last major shipload to leave before the war begins. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has approved the passenger list, all passengers hold seemingly valid Cuban visas, but only about 25 are allowed to debark at Havana. The United States accepts 25,957 German immigrants per year under the Immigration Act of 1924, State Department official Breckinridge Long believes he is carrying out administration policy when he refuses admittance to those whom he considers to be radicals and possible foreign agents (see 1940), and the St. Louis heads back for Germany; Britain, France, Belgium, and Holland agree at the last moment to admit the refugees, more than 600 of whom will die in the next 6 years.
Brazil agrees June 24 to permit entry of 3,000 German Jewish refugees.
The Stutthof forced-labor camp is established for Jews from Danzig and other parts of northern Poland (see 1944).
The Jewish population of Europe is 9.5 million but will decline sharply in the next 6 years (see Kristalnacht, 1938). Few will escape the Holocaust (as it later will be called) that begins now for Czechoslovakian and Polish Jews, who suffer at the hands of the Nazis as German and Austrian Jews have suffered for the past year and more. Rabbi Leo Baeck, now 66, brings a trainload of refugee children to England and returns voluntarily to Germany, where he will be arrested five times and then sent to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp (see 1945). The last Kindertransport train leaves August 28 before the war shuts down operations, and few of the rescued children will ever see their families again; 1.5 million children will perish in the Holocaust.
Nazi occupation authorities in Poland require Jews to wear the Star of David beginning December 1, having earlier "Aryanized" the country's factories and offices; Moravian-born Sudeten industrialist Oskar Schindler, 31, pays a visit December 3 on Kraków accountant Itzhak Stern and says he has heard there will be raids on all remaining Jewish property the following day. The gregarious Schindler has ingratiated himself with German military intelligence officials in the Abwehr, they approached him before the war about gathering information on Polish military activities, he has thereby gained exemption from military service (see 1940).
Marian Anderson tries without success to rent Constitution Hall at Washington, D.C., for a concert April 9 and it is reported that she was refused because of her race by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who own the hall. A District of Columbia ordinance bars blacks and whites from commingling in public halls and schools, but the authorities tend not to enforce the law in the case of Constitution Hall because it is privately owned. Now 42, the black contralto has been acclaimed by European critics as the world's greatest, other blacks have sung at Constitution Hall in the past, but it has been booked for a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra. Eleanor Roosevelt and other DAR members resign nevertheless to show support, and Anderson draws an audience of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial Easter Sunday.
Anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman suffers a stroke February 17 and dies at Toronto May 14 at age 70; black nationalist Marcus M. Garvey dies in obscure poverty at London June 10 at age 52; former suffragist Harriet Stanton Blatch at Greenwich, Conn., November 20 at age 84.
The National Woman's Party convenes at Washington December 16 and urges immediate congressional action on an Equal Rights Amendment.