Sourced narrative
Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.
18 statements
01Evidence and context
In 1933, 525,000 Jews lived in Germany, and only 37,000 left that year.
Up to September 1939, departures from Germany reached about 282,000, and from Austria about 117,000.
Across 1933 to 1939 the main landings were the United States (about 95,000), Palestine (about 60,000), Britain (about 40,000), Central and South America (about 75,000), and Shanghai (just under 20,000).
The Evian Conference of 6 to 13 July 1938 gathered 32 nations and warned that none need receive more than existing law allowed.
Chaim Weizmann summed up the mood: the world split between those who wanted to be rid of Jews and those who refused to take them in.
The Haavara Agreement of 27 August 1933 allowed Jewish assets to move to Palestine in exchange for German exports.
About 100 million Reichsmarks were transferred, and some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine from 1933 to 1939.
Even so, by the outbreak of war about half the German Jewish population had managed to leave.
Frederick Charles Blair boasted of controlling Jewish entry to Canada and, asked how many would be accepted after the war, replied that none is too many.
The flight tax, about a quarter of property value, plus ruinous exchange rates, left little to prove an ability to live.
Freud spent his last year in London; his three sisters, denied exit visas, died in concentration camps.
Australian delegate Thomas Walter White said Australia had no real racial problem and did not wish to import one.
On 6 December 1938 William Cooper brought an Australian Aborigines' League protest to the German consulate in Melbourne, and the consul refused the delegation.
Relative to the whole population, the share of Jews past 60 was double, so leaving was harder.
During 1938 both Italy and Hungary copied Germany by passing race statutes against Jews.
On 17 August 1938 every Jew was forced to add the name Israel if a man, or Sara if a woman.
Heinrich Rothmund of the Swiss alien police recommended stamping Jewish passports with the letter J, and the Nazis made it law.
Appeasement led the Western powers, on 1 October 1938, to hand the Sudetenland over to Hitler.
Context
In 1933, 525,000 Jews lived in Germany, and only 37,000 left that year.
Up to September 1939, departures from Germany reached about 282,000, and from Austria about 117,000.
Across 1933 to 1939 the main landings were the United States (about 95,000), Palestine (about 60,000), Britain (about 40,000), Central and South America (about 75,000), and Shanghai (just under 20,000).
§ 01Geography
Where it happened
§ 02Museum
Objects and images
§ 03Historiography
What scholars debate
Scholarly debate · 01
Why did emigration not save more people?
2 positions · no single answer · take a seat →
- A
Closed doors
Chaim Weizmann
The world split between those who wanted to expel Jews and those who refused to receive them.
- B
Practical barriers
Chapter analysis
The flight tax, exchange rates, and a high share of elderly people made exit hard even when a visa existed.
§ 04Network
Connections
§ 05Bibliography
Further reading
Gulie Ne'eman Arad, America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000).
America and the rise of Nazism · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 458
§ 06Apparatus
Sources on this page
- 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 426inspect
- 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 427inspect
- 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 427inspect
- 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
- 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 09Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 10Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 11Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
- 12Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
- 13Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 430inspect
- 14Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 15Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 16Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 17Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- 18Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 431inspect
- Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
- Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
- Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
- Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
- Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.