The Reasons for Refusal
It was impossible for the Committee for Aid to make offers to everyone-because US immigration tied their hands. By the 1930’s America was in the grip of its worst-ever downturn. The 1924 Immigration Act set an annual quota of 150,000 immigrants to reduce the burden on the country. However, there was a loophole that the Committee could work with- for ministers and Professors were exempt from the quota. This loophole also limited them as it meant they could only help anyone of professorial rank- male or female. This explains why Hilda Geiringer was selected but not others.
So, the Committee was not discriminating against women. However, the prevailing attitudes of the 1930’s and 40’s were. It was still a significant achievement for women to achieve doctorates let alone be awarded professorships. It was this attitude that limited the number of female professors and so the numbers of women eligible for consideration by the Committee.
However, inherent prejudice did limit the number of Jewish academics of either sex -indeed Jews in general -who could enter America. For despite the crisis in Europe, the American government did not raise its immigration quota to account for the sheer number of people looking for a haven. This was because the American people were against such a move. In July 1938, a poll ascertained that less than 5% of the American people believed the immigration quota should be raised to take into account German and Austrian Jewish refugees.
This attitude did not change as the situation worsened. In January 1939, two-thirds of Americans polled said they would not take in any of the 10,000 German Jewish children looking for refuge. It was an attitude that achieved actuality that same year when America turned away the MS St Louis, which was carrying 900 German Jewish refugees. The ship was forced to return to Europe where 254 of the passengers later died in the holocaust.
Why such a hard attitude? Simply put, it was because the Jewish refugees represented competition in an America hard pressed to offer opportunities to its own people. In 1938, Bernard Flexner, an executive member on the Committee in Aid warned other members that “various fields of academic life, particularly the disciplines of mathematics are saturated and to continue to introduce foreign scholars will mean lack of opportunity for Young Americans.” If that was the attitude towards academics, what chance did the less well-qualified stand?
The findings of the Rediscovering, the Refugee Scholars Project, may have illustrated a disparity in attitudes towards the sexes in academia that cost many women their lives. However, it also demonstrates a disturbing prejudice towards the refugees-an attitude that is still prevalent today. This attitude is not just an American one but commonplace across the Western World as nations balk at the prospect of offering homes to those displaced by war- especially those whose culture is very different. Hopefully, society will heed the consequence of such past prejudices – and reconsider their own for the future.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
Smithsonian Mag.com: The Forgotten Women Scientists Who Fled the Holocaust for the United States
News@Northeastern: Professors Uncover Lost stories of WWII Refugee Scholars
Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Joy Dorothy Harvey: The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science
University Women’s International Networks Database: Dr. Leonore Brecher
Eugenia L. Bassani: Biofisica e Pulsologia
The Independent: What Americans Though About Jewish Refugees on the Eve of World War II