German Jewish Immigration |
The
German Jews in America German
Jews arrived in the United States during three eras marked by violence. The
first large scale arrival of German Jews in the USA came about as the result of
the 1848 revolution in Germany. There is really no country called Germany in
Europe. The inhabitants call their country Deutschland. The English version
comes from the Latin Germania, which the Romans used to label the primitives
they found there. The 1848 revolution was not
related to any Jewish event. The German speaking people from Austria (Österreich)
to Prussia (Preussen) and beyond revolted against the nobility who had inherited
the land and the kingdoms and
principalities of which Deutschland consisted. Deutschland did not become one
country until 1870. Until then, Prussia was a kingdom, as was Bavaria, as was
Austria etc. Every one of the current states now constituting a united Germany
was a separate country, of which Prussia (Preussen) was the largest. Preussen
had an emperor, Frederick Wilhelm IV, who, like all despots, ruled absolutely. In 1848, numerous German speaking
peoples demanded that the nobility give them a constitution and a parliament .
Frederick Wilhelm promised both but never did so. The German population was
aware of the democratic developments in France and the United States and
demanded the same for themselves. On May 18, 1848, the French Assembly opened
its first meeting, leading Germans to seek similar concessions from the so
called nobility governing them. The people of Frankfurt a. M. (at the Main
river, not Frankfurt a. O., at the
Oder River) wrote a constitution which the nobles ignored. As the agitation for American
style freedom increased, the nobility used military force all over the German
states and suppressed the hope of the German people to be better treated.
Therefore the failure of the 1848 revolution led to the migration of millions of
Germans, including German Jews, to emigrate to America. There was then no immigration law
to prevent anyone to come to the USA. It was not until 1924 that Congress passed
an immigration law to the effect that new immigrants could not be more than 2%
of those nationalities already in America as of 1890. There were of
course few eastern Europeans in the USA at that time. The real reason for this
harsh form of exclusion was to keep Catholics from Poland and Italy out of
America. Since religion was not mentioned in the law because the First Amendment
to the Constitution prohibits the US government from making any law concerning
religion, Jews became the victims of these exclusions, because they were mainly
born in Poland. Of course it is well known that before 1924 2.5 million Polish
and Russian Jews came to the USA. Therefore, 400,000 Jews were
living here as of 1924. These Jews were well received by the almost entirely
Protestant population, so that numerous German Jews were elected mayors of towns
and cities and others were elected to various other offices.
The German Jews invented the department store and were most active on the
New York Stock Exchange. The second German Jewish
immigration to the United States came about between 1933 and 1941. Hitler became
German dictator on January 30, 1933. He
declared war on the United States one day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
in 1941. The entrance of the USA into the Second World War closed all chances of
migration, so that only 145,000 thousand German Jews ever arrived in America in
an effort to escape the Holocaust. The then President of the USA, Franklin
Roosevelt, did everything possible to keep the persecuted German and other Jews
out of this country. He went so far as to appoint a wealthy friend
undersecretary for immigration. This man deliberately reduced the quota that
Congress had voted in favor of the German Jews, so that millions were murdered
when no country would allow Jews to come. Roosevelt was without doubt a
co-conspirator in the slaughter of the European Jews during the Nazi era. The Third migration of German Jews
to the United States came about after 1945. Then, Germany was defeated, Hitler
had killed himself, and a few, very few German Jewish survivors were found in
the displaced persons camps, some of whom came here while most preferred to move
to Israel. The German Jews caused a huge
renaissance of American science, literature and scholarship of all kinds. There
are today many academic areas which German Jews introduced into American
universities. German Jews founded the first
rabbinical seminary in America in Cincinnati. Many moved to Milwaukee, St.
Louis, and even as far as California. Furthermore, German Jews helped the
American war effort immensely by volunteering as interpreters during the Second
World War. Today, the children and grandchildren of German Jews are assimilated and part of the seven million American Jewish community. Shalom u'vracha. |