Monday, June 11, 2018

Why is US Navy Keeping "Deplorables" Out of Barrancas National Cemetery?



UPDATE 6/13/2018: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) today introduced National Defense Authorization Act amendment #2489 (To require a plan from the Navy to allow increased public access to the National Naval Aviation Museum and Barrancas National Cemetery at Naval Air Station Pensacola). Thank you Sen. Nelson!
Read more about this in the Pensacola News Journal...

UPDATE: 6/16/2018: Sen Marco Rubio (D-FL) has joined Sen. Nelson in support of amendment #2489, read more about this in the Pensacola News Journal...

On June 12, 2018, I filed the following complaint in the online "Suggestion Box" for the Commanding officer of Pensacola Naval Air Station, as of this date of publication, I am still awaiting a response:

COMPLAINT RE: June 2, 2018, Visit to the grave of STRICKLAND, DAVID OGLE, SFC, US ARMY, KOREA, DATE OF BIRTH: 07/14/1930, DATE OF DEATH: 03/03/2006, BURIED AT: SECTION 51  SITE 617, BARRANCAS NATIONAL CEMETERY, NAVAL AIR STATION, 1 CEMETERY ROAD PENSACOLA, FL 32508 (850) 453-4108. BRONZE STAR MEDAL, PURPLE HEART RECIPIENT.

To Whom it May Concern:

We have visited this grave every couple of years without a problem, when visiting Pensacola, until now. However, our recent visit very much upset my wife, daughter of the deceased and also granddaughter of CDR John Ogle Strickland, Naval Aviator, graduate of Pensacola NAS flight school, and Flight Commander of the USS Saratoga during World War II (buried in Arlington). 

Here's what she wrote me, FYI:

"Something terribly wrong here.  We were sent to fill out 2 page long "security" forms (which gave no information that running a driver's license wouldn't) in an office -- race, height, weight, employment, etc.  Yet no description of make or license of car.  Clerk in office didn't bother to get off her phone to assist us.  We were given dashboard passes marked "Cemetery" and went through line at gate again.  Told guard were were visiting cemetery.  He told us we have to drive to the other gate to get through.  We expressed surprise, and he reiterated that this rule had been in effect for more than a year.  Drove 6 miles there, waited through another security line at gate, to be told that that information was wrong, we were at wrong gate.  The guard said he "knew the guy" who had steered us wrong, and would call to be sure we could get through -- which seemed odd -- why would someone be allowed to continue misdirecting people? Another 6 mile drive.  Another wait at gate.  Despite our passes marked "Cemetery" we were told we needed to go to office and fill out forms, until we pointed out that we already had passes -- so situational awareness zero there.  All told at least an hour and a half of wasted time.

"And funnily, both Google Maps and Trip Advisor had said that the cemetery was "Closed Today" although it wasn't. 

"I can only think that the official policy of this Navy Base/Cemetery is more to discourage and punish visitors than to tighten 'security.'"

It seems to me that this may be a needlessly offensive way for the Navy to treat families of veterans who want to pay homage to their loved ones. It is bad PR for the Navy in my opinion.

I would suggest that the CO review current visitation policy, in order make it easier to access graves at Barrancas National Cemetery. Modern technology should allow you to place trackers on cars of visitors if you worry about them going into "No-Go" zones. Cameras could read license plates. Or you could put MPs at intersections to channel traffic directly to gravesites only. However, hassling families of veterans with excessive paperwork raises serious concerns.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
Laurence Jarvik

Subsequently, I discovered that this problem had been covered in the Pensacola News Journal at least a couple of times--once, in an article by Melissa Nelson Gabriel published in 2017, and before that, in an April 2016 article that said gate changes were a "headache." And WEAR-TV ran a story about a Gold Star family turned away from visiting their loved ones grave on Christmas Day in 2016!

 Yet, despite numerous published complaints, as well as angry online posted comments, little had changed over the past two years. Indeed, no one had even bothered to post a sign at the base entrance advising visitors to take the West Gate for the Museum, or what the procedure would be to visit Barrancas National Cemetery. Not to mention the long line of traffic backed up at the base entrance as people had to make multiple passes via building 777 (we had to go through the Main Gate three times, and the West Gate once).

 One former Naval Flight Officer of my acquaintance, himself a decorated Vietnam Veteran, recently told me that one year ago he drove to the Main Gate on his way to the Naval Aviation Museum, only to be told that he needed to go instead to the West Gate, because there were no signs and the posted online information was wrong. Once he drove over to the West Gate, he had to fill out the same two-page form as we did one year later...although the museum has an additional checkpoint to prevent unauthorized base access. I remarked to him that somehow Disney manages to process millions of visitors to their attraction--a known terrorist target--yet protect their facility without making visitors fill out forms.

 A few clicks on the internet revealed that the Veterans Administration National Cemetery Administration, which actually runs the cemetery, also appeared to be unhappy with base management at Pensacola NAS, essentially saying, "We know there is a problem. We don't like it, but there is nothing we can do about it. So don't blame us for the SNAFU, blame the US Navy." To wit:
IMPORTANT: The cemetery is located exclusively within the boundaries of Naval Air Station Pensacola, which is an active duty military base. While we work hard to address visitation to the cemetery, access to Barrancas National Cemetery is entirely dependent on access to the Naval Air Station. Hence, both the hours of and the requirements for base access might be more restrictive as well as subject to change on short notice due to Department of Defense regulations and may not always be immediately posted to their website. Therefore, it is vital that you pre-plan your visits accordingly by visiting their visitor information website at http://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrse/installations/nas_pensacola/about/installation_guide/visitor_information.html as well as their homepage at http://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrse/installations/nas_pensacola.html for notifications/alerts which might change access. If their website is unavailable or you need further information, please call their Pass and Tag (building 777) telephone number at (850) 452-4153 or, in the event that line does not work, the Headquarters Quarterdeck at (850) 452-4785 or 4786.

Additional Helpful Visitor Information
While we cannot forecast or verify all base access requirements or changes to them, some helpful tips include:
- Having an accepted federally issued identification card if you are a current or retired service member or other eligible individual makes base access simpler. Every visitor over the age of 15 having a state issued identification, state issued driver's license or a passport.
- The vehicle driver should have a current state issued driver's license, paper/hardcopy proof of insurance and vehicle registration.
- As of the time of this webpage update (subject to change), all visitors not in possession of an accepted federally issued identification card must enter through the main gate off of Navy Blvd (see DIRECTIONS FROM NEAREST AIRPORT above for how to get to the main gate).
  o Upon arrival to NAS Pensacola all vehicle occupants will be directed to building 777 (Pass & ID, also known as Pass & Tag or Visitor Center) just inside the main gate for proper vetting.
  o Arrive well in advance of your desired time due to potential traffic, vehicle search, building 777 waits, etc. As noted above, access to Barrancas National Cemetery is entirely dependent on access to the Naval Air Station so in the absence of an accepted federally issued identification card you may not be able to enter the base if building 777 is closed or you arrive too late on a weekend. Hence, the importance of checking their website and/or calling the Pass & Tag telephone number.
Pensacola NAS CO CAPT Christopher T. Martin
Of course, we found the Navy's website impenetrable, which is why we drove to the main gate in the first place. In previous years, we had been treated politely, even warmly, by friendly MPs, who seemed genuinely glad that families and friends were visiting loved ones who had served our country. After all, don't our vets deserve to have their families and friends respected, especially when they are coming to honor their service? 

This June, however, the MPs were definitely not friendly, and the attitude of staff in Building 777 reminded me of the Washington, DC Department of Motor Vehicles--an indifferent and hostile bureaucracy. What had changed? 

Apparently the outgoing CO, Captain Keith Hoskins, changed security procedures on his way out the door in 2016--and his replacement, Captain Christopher Martin, did not fix the problems that resulted from tightening the screws on the American taxpaying public who pay their salaries.

Ironically, Captain Martin's command has posted a "Mission and Vision" statement on the Pensacola NAS website which seems to contradict the obviously inefficient, disorganized, unreliable, inhospitable, and unpleasant current gate situation. The statement declares:


Command Mission:
To efficiently deliver the very best Readiness From The Shore.

 Command Vision:
Naval Air Station Pensacola is recognized as:
  • The premier naval installation in the Department of the Navy.
  • A model total quality organization that clearly recognizes people as its most valued asset.
  • Exemplary customers, employers, suppliers, and neighbors.
  • Effective and efficient managers of air, land, and sea resources, clearly distinguishing us as the provider of choice for operational and training support.
  • Acknowledged leader in preserving its natural beauty, tradition, and rich history, enhancing our reputation as the most aesthetically pleasing installation in the Navy.
  • Highly ethical stewards of public trust, maintaining both a future focus and daily drive for continuous improvement.

 Guiding Principles:
We:
  • lead by example.
  • encourage open communication.
  • give our people the authority and incentive to produce a quality product or service.
  • foster continuous improvement.
  • treat people with dignity and respect.
  • maintain a highly educated and well trained workforce.
  • accomplish our mission through teamwork.
  • promote creativity, initiative, and innovation.
  • are wise stewards of our natural resources.
  • focus on needs of our customer.
  • are responsible and accountable resource managers.
  
We are committed to:
  • equal opportunity for all.
  • a safe, healthy, drug-free environment.
  • honesty, integrity, and the highest standards of moral and ethical conduct.
  • strong community relations by being a trusted neighbor.
  • professional, safe, responsive, action in support of mission.
  • fact-based decision making.
  • providing the tools and innovative technology to meet future needs.

As the youth of today might say on social media, "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ROTFL." 

Clearly, the bad gate experience must be merely a symptom of deeper problems of mismanagement at Pensacola NAS. For example, training flights at the base have been grounded after being found unsafe to fly...and Blue Angels pilot Jeff Kuss died in a plane crash in June 2016.

 As Wikipedia says, Barrancas National Cemetery has been in operation as a Navy cemetery since 1838, and a National Cemetery since the Civil War. Visitors have been able to access the site through World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, after 9/11, the Afghan War, and the second Gulf War, without security being compromised. My in-laws family have been visiting the base since 1918, and I personally had visited without problems until 2018.

 So what is going on now in the name of base security is literally unprecedented. As Melissa Nelson Gabriel reported in the Pensacola News Journal, veterans are being driven away from the cemetery, with some deciding not to be buried there because of the hassles involved. 
Navy veteran Richard McFadden wrote on Jan. 9 that he had changed his will to reflect that he no longer wished to be buried at Barrancas.
"I also understand the need for tighter security in light of the terror attacks around the world," he wrote. But, McFadden said, the security has made visiting loved ones buried in Barrancas too difficult for families.
"I did not know Area-51 had moved to NASP," he wrote. "It seems welcome signs have been replaced with locked gates that may or may not be open to the public."

 This is shameful.

I certainly hope someone in the Trump Administration, the Navy Department,  Congress, or Veteran's organizations might take a look at the mess at Pensacola NAS and come up with a plan to make visiting it great again, ASAP.  

Our veterans, families, friends, and the American public deserve no less.

BTW:  I've taken the liberty of copying some complaints from TripAdvisor and the Pensacola News Journal below, to give readers an idea of how obvious the problems are, and how long they have been going on. Congress could fill an oversight panel just with those who've posted these sorts of comments, IMHO: 


FROM TRIPADVISOR:

My wife and I tried to go to Barrancas National Cemetery on Memorial Day to visit the graves of her parents and two other relatives. We usually visit the cemetery at least once a year and often on Memorial Day. We tried to go Memorial Day 2017 and couldn't get to the cemetery due to new restrictions. We are life long residents Pensacola and have visited Barrancas National Cemetery dozens of times including for funerals. Memorial Day we were unable to visit due to all the new regulations. We were told at the gate that since we are not military or DOD we had to park our car at the front gate, go in the visitor center, fill out two pages of paperwork, provide your driver's license, car registration, and proof of insurance. We turned around and left and did not visit my wife's parents graves, due to lack of time that we had. We were in total disgust. Barrancas National Cemetery is a beautiful place and very historic, but I will not visit again under the current regulations. I do not recommend Barrancas National Cemetery.—Reviewed June 23, 2017 by Walter L., Milton, FL

I have lived in the Pensacola area all my life and visited Barrancas National Cemetery many times. My parents and other relatives are buried there and it is a beautiful place for remembering. Tried to go to their grave sites on Memorial Day, but found out you now have to fill out a lengthy form and have your driver license, vehicle registration and proof of insurance to get a pass to enter the base and go to the cemetery. We did not have time to do all that and wait for approval. It was very disappointing and hurtful to not be able to go to their graves. We always enjoy taking our grandchildren when they visit as well, but guess now that will not be possible. This is ridiculous and they need to figure out a way to allow people entry to that cemetery without having to go through all that. I have read and heard of several accounts of people coming from out of town and not being able to visit, because the office was closed or same as me didn't have the time to wait. Also, many are now deciding not to have their veteran family members buried out there and some I understand some are going to the expense of having their loved ones remains moved from there. It is all very troubling and should not be this way!—Reviewed June 1, 2017 by Judy L.

Unless you have an active DOD ID or have an escort, you can no longer get to the cemetery. Base security issues.

Ask ResqPAC about Barrancas National Cemetery—Reviewed May 8, 2016 by ResqPAC, NC


FROM THE PENSACOLA NEWS JOURNAL:

Works at Retired
This is an ongoing problem at NASP since they changed their access procedures a while back. Even those of us with DOD access credentials experienced difficulties during the Wreaths Across America effort in December. The cemetary has been there since 1868. This did not become a problem until the Navy changed their access policy a few years ago. Here's a news flash for the Navy...The VA is not going to relocate those grave sites off of the base and the visiting family members are going to keep on coming to visit their loved ones. A better solution is in order. This is a multi-agency problem. The Navy runs the base while the VA runs the cemetary withing the confines of the base. Might be a good starting project for our junior Congressman from the 1st Congressional District of Florida to become involved with don't ya think?
Like · Reply · 3 · 1y


Bill Snider ·
There is a simpler way. Just fill out the form and be on your way. Base security is more important than a little inconvience once in a while.
Like · Reply · 1y


Keith Giddeon
Bill Snider Wrong. Freedom is more important than overblown paranoia. Treating American citizens like criminals is simply intolerable.
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Bill Snider ·
Keith Giddeon It's called sorting out the criminals from the citizens. You can do your part by cooperating instead of complaining.
Like · Reply · 1 · 1y


Keith Giddeon
So, after living over 50 years crime-free, I am obligated to bow down to paranoia due to the actions of a few. No thanks. I'll not join the Sheeple Parade.
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Works at Retired
Bill Snider Since you are clearly trolling here I'll give you one response. You say “There is a simpler way.” That's the issue here, it's not simple. Particularly for the elderly visitors to the cemetery. I too agree that base security is an important issue. The cemetery has been there since 1868 and is operated by the VA not the Navy. The base was open to the public for so many years so the public could access the cemetery and the museum. But you have to understand; It's not just the Navy's base but it belongs to the public (taxpayers) as well. All I'm saying is that instead of bumping heads, people need to put their heads together and develop a better solution to this problem. At present I only see unilateral decisions being made only by the Navy.
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Yet, on the day of an air show, they just motion 50,000+ cars on through without a second thought! I worked at NASP for over 5 years and I could never understand this. What do you have to do if you are attending a funeral at the chapel?
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Karen Swift
The police department escorted our funeral procession inside the base so we didn't have to stop for this process. One month after the funeral when we decided to visit our loved one, we realized just how lucky we had it that day. We spent 3 hours on base for 5 minutes at the gravesite
Like · Reply · 2 · 1y


Bill Snider ·
The air show? LOL...My dear, those were controlled situations. Access from the back gate was limited. Access from the front gate was controlled. 
But keep it up. Perhaps if you yell and stomp your feet loud and long enough you can get the air shows cancelled on base and moved to Pensacola Beach instead.
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Marshall Brinson ·
Bill Snider - They didn't even check ID at the gates for the November Air Show. Don't know how you figure any of that was controlled. It is a lot more likely that someone would try something at the air show than a simple visit to the cemetery.
Like · Reply · 1y


Karen Swift
My husband and I waited 2 hours just to be called up to the desk after a very inconsiderate lady who had the number before mine, gave it to someone who came in after me and several others. My husband who has a disease that prevents him from walking long distances, was waiting in the car, running of course, as not to overheat. By the time I made it back out to the car just from filing the paperwork, our battery was dead. The base security could not jumpstart our car due to liability issues. We spent a total of 3 hours on the base for less than 5 minutes at the gravesite. I felt belittled, violated, and punished just for trying to visit his father who recently passed.
Like · Reply · 2 · 1y


Bill Snider ·
Just about everything you mentioned was your own fault.
Like · Reply · 1y


Karen Swift
Bill Snider have you been through this specific process? Do you have loved ones buried at barrancas? Do you even have friends with the hateful and bitter heart you have? Please explain your comment about being my fault. How is the fact they only had one person manning the desk that day my fault? How is it my fault that choosing to get a 6 month pass requires you to wait 30 min to an hour even longer than you already have. And unlike you, I don't just think about myself. I think of the several elderly couples there to visit as well. They also cannot stand for long periods of time, walk long distances, and shouldn't be subjected to this process just to visit a deceased relative, one who served our country, which you also probably have never done as you would have more respect for others.
Like · Reply · 2 · 1y


Joe Winstead Jr. ·
My parents are buried there as well as several of my friends and I think the new rules are BULLSHIT!
Like · Reply · 1 · 1y


Bill Snider ·
You can either fill out the forms, or not visit. Did you not see the part about getting a 6 month pass? Or do you only visit once a year.
Like · Reply · 1y


Steve Lind
This is absolutely UNSAT. This sits squarely in the lap of the base commander to resolve. PERIOD.
Like · Reply · 1y


Bill Snider ·
Sure thing Steve. As if the base commander decided to do this on his own. You ever heard of chain of command?
Like · Reply · 1y


Marshall Brinson ·
Guess old Bill Snider answered the ad looking for a jackass to monitor the PNJ comments.
Like · Reply · 2 · 1y


Bill Snider ·
Marshall Brinson and I'm doing a fine job. Speaking of asses...
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Keith Giddeon
And the 9/11 terrorists just keep on winning. I have quite a few relatives buried on Barrancas. However, I will no longer be able to pay my respects, as I do not wish to be treated like a criminal by paranoid government officials.
Like · Reply · 1y


Works at Retired
Just sent an email to Rep. Matt Gaetz asking his involvement in this issue. Link to send him an email: https://gaetz.house.gov/contact
Like · Reply · 2 · 1y


Sheryl Martin ·
This has been very frustrtating for me as well. I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to visit my dad's columnbarium and Barrancus either when I was on my way over to the Pensacola area for my job or to go visit my son and his family lliving just 10 minutes from the gate and who is in the Coast Guard stationed at PNS. It was so wonderful to just show my ID and be able to go visit with him whenever I wanted and had the time. After the new policy, I've only had one chance to go visit with him and it's been very disappointing for me. To sit and wait for a Pass or even wait for the 6 month pass has just not been a possibility on my time. It would be nice maybe if you could get a permament ID issued on line as a relative to a hero of your own buried at Barancus. We live in Niceville and coming back when it "might" be a good time isn't an option.
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The New Civility?

Billboard seen in front of Chevy Chase Community Center Polling Place, 5601 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20015. Do DC Democrats know that Oscar the Grouch is a very popular Sesame Street character?



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Tuesday, May 15, 2018

HIS TRUTH GOES MARCHING ON: Tom Wolfe on Communist Writers

From Tom Wolfe's 2006 interview with Bruce Cole in Humanities Magazine:

Cole: You have a PhD. What was your dissertation?
Wolfe: My dissertation was on the League of American Writers. The subtitle was "Communist Activity Among American Writers, 1927 to '42."
This was a very dangerous dissertation to do. We're talking about the late fifties now. I got my degree in 1957, which was still known as the McCarthy period. And many people advised me not to even undertake this. As a result, if anyone ever had the bad fortune of having to read it, it's written as if it's by a man from Mars who has arrived in a strange land and these things are happening.

For example, I would refer to Ernest Hemingway as "E. Hemingway, a novelist of the period," to make it absolutely remote in terms of objectivity. I was intrigued with sociology. The dissertation was a sociological study of the makeup of the literary world, complete with the usual statistical data.
Cole: What impelled you to choose that subject?
Wolfe: I did a paper in graduate school about the first American Writers' Congress. Why was I interested in that? I honestly don't remember, In the stacks at Yale, I remember coming across volumes of the New Masses, which was a Communist publication--quite well done, incidentally.
This first American Writers' Congress was held in 1935 . It was an attempt by the Communist Party to remove the red glare in the coloring of their cultural movement--in the arts, movies, literature--and to focus on the anti-Nazi, anti-fascist cause.
In fact, it was the Communist Party that invented the word fascist to apply to the Nazis. The fascists were only in Italy, members of a socialist party known as the Fascisti. The word was never used in Germany. The Communists wanted to obscure the fact that the Nazis and the Fascisti were, like themselves, national socialists. The acronym NAZI stands for the National Socialist Workers Party. So, was Soviet communism national socialism? Absolutely. Communists the world over never did a thing that wasn't for the defense or the advance of the Soviet Union.
Cole: This is when Hitler and Stalin were getting ready to sign the nonaggression pact.
Wolfe: Actually, it was before then. They started in 1935 and they were going great guns. If you look at the roster of the League of American Writers, which was a front, it includes most of the well-known writers of that period because it was presented to them strictly as an antifascist organization. Then in 1939, you get the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. And that destroyed the whole movement.
To this day, the fact that National Socialism in Germany and so-called International Communism in the Soviet Union led to exactly the same results really never has registered among intellectuals who still look at Communists as liberals in a hurry.
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Monday, May 14, 2018

Jordan Peterson v The Forward & Deborah Lipstadt & People for the American Way & the SPLC

Against my will, I may be beginning to have second thoughts about the verdict in Deborah Lipstadt's British libel case against historian David Irving, thanks to Ari Feldman's recent article in The Forward titled "Is Jordan Peterson Enabling Jew-Hatred?" 

 To my eye, although carefully couched as innuendo, her comments about Peterson appear a crude smear job seemingly trying to link the University of Toronto psychology professor and former Harvard faculty member to neo-Nazis, in my opinion. To wit:
Peterson’s willingness to answer questions about “Jewish success” and his interest in IQ literature is “suspicious” said Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of history at Emory University and author of “Denying the Holocaust,” who won a libel case in Britain against prominent Holocaust denier David Irving.Read more: https://forward.com/news/national/400597/is-jordan-peterson-enabling-jew-hatred/
The article's Holocaust claims regarding Peterson are preposterous on their face, as are Lipstadt's putative suspicions.  Peterson has posted his response to the article on his website. 

 However, I do have something to add to this discussion. 

 The introduction to Jordan Peterson's best-selling 12 Rules for Life was written by Dr. Norman Doidge, a Jewish psychoanalyst, son of Holocaust survivors (Auschwitz), personal friend and professional colleague of Prof. Peterson. Dr. Doidge specifically discusses the Holocaust in relation to Peterson's theories. 


 The Forward and quoted "expert" Deborah Lipstadt and an SPLC spokesperson seem to have committed a deliberate sin of omission by not mentioning this "inconvenient truth" about Dr. Doidge, himself a best-selling author on neuroscience. This suggests to me the article may be a conscious smear designed to defame Prof. Peterson with false, reckless, and malicious innuendos of anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial.

 I have read Professor Peterson's best-selling book and watched many of his videos. 

 From doing so, I have personally concluded that Prof. Peterson is a True Friend of the Jewish People--unlike The Forward, Prof. Lipstadt, People for the American Way or the SPLC.
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Tuesday, May 08, 2018

Rafael Medoff's Response to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's "Americans & the Holocaust"

(Republished by permission of the author)
U.S. HOLOCAUST MUSEUM TRIES TO RESCUE FDR

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C, recently opened a controversial new exhibit which claims that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did his best to help Jews during the Holocaust. The Washington Post described it as “a posthumous makeover for FDR at the museum.” 

Mainstream historians are challenging the museum’s revisionist approach. To explore these issues further, we present the essay “Walls of Paper,” by Dr. Rafael Medoff, which was published in the Spring 2018 issue of PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators, published by the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education, at Yeshiva University. It is reprinted here by permission of the journal. For a full list of the footnotes from the essay, write to: info@wymaninstitute.org)

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and author or editor of 19 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest book is Too Little, and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust.


* * *

PART 1:  KEEPING THE JEWS OUT

“It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times,” wrote journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1938, “that for thousands and thousands of people, a piece of paper with a stamp on it is the difference between life and death.” 
For over a century, the United States had an open-door immigration policy, welcoming newcomers from around the world in almost unlimited numbers. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, however, a number of prominent American anthropologists and eugenicists began promoting the idea that Anglo-Saxons were biologically superior to other peoples. This racialist view of society reshaped the public’s view of immigration in the years following World War I. 
The shift in attitudes took place at the same time that Americans were becoming increasingly anxious about Communism, as a result of the establishment of the Soviet Union. The combination of racism, fear of Communism, and general resentment of foreigners created strong public pressure to restrict immigration. 

CLOSING THE DOORS 

In 1921, Congress passed—and President Warren Harding signed into law—the Immigration Restriction Act. This legislation stipulated that the number of immigrants admitted annually from any single country could not exceed 3% of the number of immigrants from that country who had been living in the US at the time of the 1910 national census. If, for example, there were 100,000 individuals of Danish origin living in the United States in 1910, the maximum number of immigrants permitted from Denmark in any future year would be 3,000. 
The Johnson Immigration Act of 1924 tightened these regulations in two important ways. The percentage for calculating the quotas was reduced from 3% to 2%, and instead of the 1910 census, the quota numbers would be based on an earlier census, the one taken in 1890. The restrictions were intensified in order to reduce the number of Jewish and Italian immigrants, since the bulk of Jews and Italians in the US had arrived after 1890. 
The sponsors of the legislation made no secret of their motives. The Johnson Act was submitted to Congress with a report by the chief of the United States Consular Service, Wilbur Carr, that characterized would-be Jewish immigrants from Poland as “filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits…lacking any conception of patriotism or national spirit.”

A BAD SYSTEM MADE WORSE 

In the public debates over immigration that took place in the 1920s, Franklin D. Roosevelt came down squarely on the side of the restrictionists. As the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1920, Roosevelt gave an interview to the Brooklyn Eagle in which he expressed concern that immigrants tended to concentrate in urban areas and retain their ethnic heritage: “The foreign elements…do not easily conform to the manners and the customs and the requirements of their new home.” 
The solution he proposed was dispersal and rapid assimilation: “The remedy for this should be the distribution of aliens in various parts of the country.” Writing in the Macon Daily Telegraph in 1925, FDR said he favored the admission of some Europeans, so long as they had “blood of the right sort.” He urged restricting immigration for “a good many years to come” so the United States would have time to “digest” those already admitted. 
The immigration system that was adopted in the 1920s was made even more restrictive by President Herbert Hoover in 1930. Responding to the onset of the Great Depression, Hoover instructed consular officials to reject all applicants who were “likely to become a public charge,” that is, dependent on government assistance. It was left to the consuls to make that determination on a case-by-case basis. 
The Roosevelt administration inherited this harsh system and made it worse. When Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933, large numbers of German Jews urgently began looking for countries that would shelter them from the Nazis —and US consular officials in Germany urgently looked for ways to reject their applications. By crafting a maze of bureaucracy and unreasonably rigorous requirements, these officials ensured that most Jewish refugees would never reach America’s shores. Prof. David S. Wyman characterized those restrictions as “paper walls” in his 1968 book of that name. 
Those walls ensured that the quotas would almost never be filled. The German quota was 25,957. Just 5.3%, or 1,375, of the quota places were used in 1933, Hitler’s first year in power. Of the next 12 years, the German quota was filled in only one. Places that were unused at the end of the year did not spill over into the next year; they simply expired. In 1934, a total of 3,515 immigrants filled 13.7% of the quota; the next year, 20.2% of the quota was filled (4,891 immigrants); and in 1936, the total was 24.3% (or 6,073 immigrants). 
In most of those 12 years, less than 25% of the quota was filled. As the Nazi persecution of Jews intensified, the US quota system functioned precisely as its creators had intended: It kept out all but a relative handful of Jews. 

THE PAPER WALLS 

The visa application form, which had to be filled out in triplicate, was more than four feet long. Its length, however, was the least of the difficulties applicants faced. To begin with, the “likely to become a public charge” clause posed a kind of Catch-22. The applicant had to prove he would have a means of support in the US—but foreigners were not permitted to secure employment while they still lived abroad. 
Typically, the way to satisfy this requirement was to provide an affidavit from an American citizen guaranteeing financial support until the immigrant found work. Obviously, many German Jews did not have American relatives or friends. Even for those who did, however, not just any relative would do. When New York Governor Herbert Lehman asked FDR in 1935 about the seemingly extraneous visa requirements, the president replied that guarantees offered by anyone other than a parent or child would be treated skeptically, because “a distant relative” might not feel any “legal or moral obligation toward the applicant,” as closer relatives presumably would. 
In the case of 19-year-old Hermann Kilsheimer, for instance, three relatives did not suffice. He presented the American consulate in Stuttgart with affidavits from his brother-in-law and two cousins, all gainfully employed American citizens, pledging to support him. The cousins’ affidavits were rejected on the grounds that they were not close enough relatives, and the consul decided that Hermann’s brother-in-law earned too little to both support his own family and pay for Hermann’s tuition if he chose to attend college. 
The reasoning behind other rejections of visa applications ranged from absurd to maddening. Numerous German Jewish refugee students, for example, were admitted to American universities but were prevented from entering the United States. As Raymond Geist of the US consulate in Berlin explained in turning down a student who had been accepted by Dropsie College (Philadelphia), “He is a potential refugee from Germany and hence is unable to submit proof that he will be in a position to leave the United States upon the completion of his schooling.”
Faculty members at accredited European universities who were offered positions at American universities were eligible for non-quota visas. However, when the Hebrew Union College established a college-in-exile and began inviting European Jewish scholars to its faculty, the Roosevelt administration threw up an array of roadblocks. One distinguished German Jewish scholar was disqualified on the grounds that he was primarily a librarian rather than a full-time professor. 
The State Department also accepted the Nazi regime’s downgrading of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, from Hochshule (an institute of higher learning, or college) to Lehranstalt (a lower-level institution of learning; an academy), which made its faculty members ineligible for non-quota visas because their home institution no longer was considered to be at the level of a university.

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PART 2:  THE INCONVENIENCE OF RESCUING JEWS


When the world-famous German Jewish chemist Fritz Haber approached US Ambassador to Germany William Dodd in July 1933 to ask about “the possibilities in America for emigrants with distinguished records here in science,” Dodd told him (according to Dodd’s diary) “that the law allowed none now, the quota being filled.” In fact, the German quota was 95% unfilled that year. 
Ten year-old Herbert Friedman was denied permission to accompany his mother and brother to the United States in 1936 after an examining physician at the Stuttgart consulate claimed he had tuberculosis. Tests all proved negative, and an array of German and American specialists who reviewed his X-rays likewise concluded that he did not have the disease. Yet the consulate would not budge. The family eventually managed to enlist the help of Albert Einstein, who, in a letter to the surgeon general about the case, reported: 
“I have spoken to a reliable young man who recently emigrated from Germany; when I told him about the Stuttgart Consulate’s refusal to issue the visa for the child, without giving the young man the reason for the refusal [that is, Einstein did not tell him about the claim of tuberculosis—RM], he immediately said, ‘That is an old story. Tuberculosis!’ This shows clearly that this case is not an isolated case but that it is becoming a dangerous practice. “

THE KETUBAH DILEMMA

Some applicants in Germany ran into trouble when they presented a ketubah, the traditional Jewish religious wedding certificate, as evidence of their marital status. Some of these Jews had been married in a religious ceremony only, and not according to civil law, while others simply found it impossible to obtain evidence of their marital status from a Nazi government office, or else had been married in Russia before the Soviet takeover and could not enter the USSR to retrieve documentation. 
US consular officials refused to recognize a ketubah as proof of marriage and therefore deemed the applicants’ children “illegitimate” and rejected the family on the grounds of low moral character. In these cases and many others, consular officials used their discretionary abilities to achieve what one consul characterized as “the Department’s desire to keep immigration to a minimum.”  
In late 1936, there was a modest increase in the number of German Jews admitted to the United States. By the end of 1937, a total of 11,127 immigrants from Germany had arrived, representing 42.1% of the available spaces. Consuls in Germany had complained that they were short-staffed, so Foreign Service Inspector Jerome Klahr Huddle was sent to Germany to assess the situation. In his report, Huddle recommended that more-distant relatives could be relied upon to provide support, because they undoubtedly felt genuine sympathy for their persecuted family members. Eliot Coulter of the Visa Division agreed, in an internal memorandum, that “the Jewish people often have a high sense of responsibility toward their relatives, including distant relatives whom they may not have seen.” 
Yet the majority of the German quota remained unfilled. John Farr Simmons, chief of the State Department’s Visa Division in the 1930s, was proud to note, in 1937, “the drastic reduction in immigration” that “was merely an obvious and predictable result of administrative practices.” 

SPURNED OPPORTUNITIES 

Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 (the Anschluss) marked a significant intensification of the Jewish refugee crisis. Now a second major European Jewish community was in need of a haven. The well-publicized scenes of anti-Jewish brutality accompanying the German army’s entrance into Austria, including Jews being forced to scrub the streets with toothbrushes, showed that the problem was reaching crisis proportions. 
Although polls showed most Americans still opposed relaxing immigration restrictions, a handful of members of Congress and journalists began urging US intervention. Senior State Department officials decided to—in the words of the department’s internal year-end review—“get out in front and attempt to guide” the pressure before it got out of hand. They conceived the idea of an international conference on the refugee problem, to create an impression of US concern while coaxing other countries to assume responsibility for the bulk of the refugees. 
On March 24, 1938, President Roosevelt announced he was inviting 32 countries to send representatives to a conference in the French resort town of Évian-les-Bains. FDR emphasized in his announcement that “no nation would be expected or asked to receive a greater number of emigrants than is permitted by its existing legislation.” He did permit the German and Austrian quotas, now combined, to be filled that year, the only year that happened. 
With one exception, the delegates at Évian proclaimed their countries’ unwillingness to accept more Jews. Typical was the Australian delegate, who bluntly asserted that “as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.” The only exception was the tiny Dominican Republic, which declared it would accept as many as 100,000 Jewish refugees. 
Scholars have chronicled the sad fate of that offer. After the first several hundred refugees were settled in the Dominican region of Sosua, the “biggest problem” the project encountered—according to historian Marion A. Kaplan—was the “unrelenting US opposition” to bringing in more refugees and “the State Department’s hostility and obstructionism.” Prof. Allen Wells found that Roosevelt administration officials harbored paranoid fears that some German Jewish refugees entering Sosua would serve as spies for the Nazis and pressured the Dominican haven organizers to refrain from bringing in more Jews. 
Several additional opportunities to assist Jewish refugees in 1938 and 1939 likewise were spurned by the Roosevelt administration. The president refused to support the Wagner–Rogers bill of 1939, which would have admitted 20,000 German children outside the quota. The legislation went nowhere, thanks to the sentiments of nativists such as Laura Delano Houghteling, a cousin of FDR and wife of the US commissioner of immigration, who complained that “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.” 
In the spring of the same year, 930 German Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis were turned away from Cuba and the United States. The German–Austrian quota was already filled, and any proposal to Congress to admit them likely would have been defeated. However, they could have been admitted as tourists to the US Virgin Islands, as Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., proposed at the time. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, after conferring with the president, rejected Morgenthau’s proposal on the grounds that the passengers could not demonstrate they had permanent residences in Nazi Germany to which they would return after their visas expired. 

EMERGENCY VISAS 

In the aftermath of the German conquest of France in June 1940, thousands of refugees, including many exiled German Jews, fled to southern France to avoid capture by the Nazis. Many refugee families included members who were prominent artists, scientists, and intellectuals. On June 22, Marshal Petain’s Vichy regime, the ruling authority in the southern part of the country, signed an agreement with the Nazis agreeing to “surrender on demand” anyone sought by the Germans. 
In the days to follow, American friends and colleagues of the refugees established the Emergency Rescue Committee, hoping to bring renowned cultural figures to the United States. With help from the First Lady, the committee secured President Roosevelt’s authorization of emergency visas for several hundred artists and intellectuals and their families. The president was receptive to the proposal precisely because it was not a typical request to admit ordinary Jewish refugees. The world-famous exiles in France were the cream of European civilization; the fact that most of them were Jewish was incidental. 
American journalist Varian Fry volunteered to lead the mission. He arrived in Marseille in August 1940 with a list of 200 endangered individuals and $3,000 taped to his leg to hide it from the Gestapo. During the months to follow, Fry’s network—which included a dissident US consul, Hiram Bingham IV—rescued an estimated 2,000 refugees, in many cases by smuggling them over the Pyrenees into Spain disguised as field workers. 
Catching wind of the Fry operation, furious German and French officials complained to the State Department. Secretary of State Cordell Hull responded with a telegram, in September 1940, to the American ambassador in Paris, instructing him to inform Fry that “THIS GOVERNMENT DOES NOT REPEAT NOT COUNTENANCE ANY ACTIVITIES BY AMERICAN CITIZENS DESIRING TO EVADE THE LAWS OF THE GOVERNMENTS WITH WHICH THIS COUNTRY MAINTAINS FRIENDLY RELATIONS.” Hull also sent a telegram to Fry, pressing him to “return immediately” to the United States in view of “local developments,” meaning the opposition of the Germans and French. When Fry failed to heed that demand, the Roosevelt administration refused to renew his passport, thus forcing him to leave France. It also transferred Bingham to Portugal, then Argentina. 

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PART 3:  WHY FDR ABANDONED THE JEWS

Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, a personal friend of President Roosevelt, was in charge of 23 of the State Department’s 42 divisions, including the visa section. In a June 26, 1940 memo, Long advised his colleagues: 
“We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States…by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices, which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.” 
The German invasion of Poland the previous September, followed by the rapid conquest of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France in the spring of 1940, provoked a wave of fear—among the general public and within the administration—of Nazi spies reaching the United States. Newspapers frequently published wild stories about Hitler planning to send “slave spies” to the United States. Attorney General Robert Jackson complained to the cabinet that “hysteria is sweeping the country against aliens and fifth columnists.”  
The president’s rhetoric fanned the flames. FDR warned about “the treacherous use of the ‘fifth column’ by persons supposed to be peaceful visitors [but] actually a part of an enemy unit of occupation.” In fact, there was only one instance in which a Nazi disguised as a Jewish refugee reached the Western hemisphere; he was captured in Cuba and executed. 
Three days after Long’s June 1940 memo, the State Department ordered consuls abroad to reject applications from anyone about whom they had “any doubt whatsoever.” The new instruction specifically noted that this policy would result in “a drastic reduction in the number of quota and nonquota immigration visas issued.” It worked as intended: In the following year, immigration from Germany and Austria was kept to just 48% of the quota.

JEWISH SPIES FOR HITLER?

In the spring of 1941, with Roosevelt’s approval, Long devised what has come to be known as the Close Relatives Edict. On June 5, 1941, he instructed all US consuls abroad to reject visa applicants who had a “parent, brother, sister, spouse, or child” in any territory occupied by Germany, Italy, or the Soviet Union. The rationale was that the relatives might be taken hostage in order to force the immigrant to become a Nazi or Soviet spy. 
Refugee advocates were horrified. The political weekly The Nation (July 19, 1941) denounced the new regulation as “brutal and unjust.” The October 1941 issue of Workmen’s Circle Call, a Jewish immigrant laborers’ publication, described it as “cruel and unimaginative.” B’nai B’rith’s National Jewish Monthly (December 1941) asserted that the new policy could be called “Keep Your Tired, Your Poor”—a reversal of the famous poem inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. 
Protests were to no avail: The administration refused to budge. Actualization of the quota from Germany fell to less than 18% in 1942; only 14% of the quota for immigrants from German-occupied Poland was filled that year. In 1943, less than 5% of the German quota was used, as was only 16% of that for German-occupied France. A total of almost 190,000 quota places from Axis-controlled European countries were left unused during the Hitler years. 

MOTIVES 

What motivated senior State Department officials to take such positions regarding Jewish immigration? Antisemitism certainly played a role. Wilbur Carr, an assistant secretary of state in the Roosevelt administration, wrote in a 1934 diary entry that he preferred a particular summer resort because it was so “different from the Jewish atmosphere of the Claridge.” Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle confided to his diary in 1940, “The Jewish group, wherever you find it, is not only pro-English, but will sacrifice American interests to English interests…It is horrible to see one phase of the Nazi propaganda justifying itself a little.” Undersecretary of State William Phillips, in his diary (on May 18, 1923), once described a Soviet official as “a perfect little rat of a Jew.” It is no exaggeration to say that antisemitism was rife in Roosevelt’s State Department. 
Such sentiments also were common among the consular officials in Europe who directly decided the fate of visa applicants. Prof. Bat-Ami Zucker, in her book In Search of Refuge, the definitive study of US consular officials in Nazi Germany, found that the consuls “often commented on the danger of permitting a flood of Jewish immigration into the US,” warned of “its potentially dangerous impact on American society,” and suspected “a Jewish conspiracy in the United States to pressure the administration into facilitating immigration.” 
In a similar spirit, William Peck, at the US consulate in Marseilles, wrote to a colleague that he “deplore[d] as much as anyone the influx into the United States of certain refugee elements.” He was open to immigration by “aged people,” because they “will not reproduce and can do our country no harm.” On the other hand, “the young ones may be suffering, but the history of their race shows that suffering does not kill many of them.”  
However, antisemitism within the State Department alone does not suffice to explain US immigration policy, because it was President Roosevelt, not Breckinridge Long, who was the final authority. Ignorance was not the issue: President Roosevelt’s correspondence makes clear that he was aware the quotas were underfilled. Many references in the correspondence and diaries of Breckinridge Long allude to his regular briefings of the president on immigration policy, to which FDR responded positively. 
Some historians have explained Roosevelt’s strict policy as anticipating the likely electoral consequences (that is, the strong public opposition to immigration) and congressional opposition to liberalizing the immigration quotas, but those factors do not reflect that what is under discussion here is immigration within the existing quotas, not any effort to change the immigration system. An unpublicized instruction from the White House to the State Department to permit the existing German quota to be filled would have saved numerous lives while likely causing only the tiniest of political ripples. 

THE JAPANESE AND THE JEWS

A more plausible explanation is Roosevelt’s attitude toward minority groups that he regarded as unassimilable. FDR in general exhibited little sympathy for immigration, expressed concern about what he saw as immigrants’ resistance to assimilation, and harbored racist sentiments about the dangers of “mingling Asiatic blood with American blood.” His conviction that the Japanese were biologically different, undesirable, and untrustworthy made Roosevelt was receptive to the proposal by some of his military advisers, after Pearl Harbor, to incarcerate Japanese Americans lest their “undiluted racial strains” inspire them to secretly assist the Japanese war effort. By order of the president, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up throughout California and shipped to internment camps in Arizona, Wyoming, Arkansas, and elsewhere in 1942, even though there was not a single documented case of a Japanese American spying for Japan in World War II 
Roosevelt’s private remarks about Jews in many ways echoed what he wrote and said about Asians. Jews, he believed, tended to overcrowd specific geographical locations, dominate certain professions, and exercise undue influence. At a White House luncheon in May 1943, FDR told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that “the best way to settle the Jewish question” would be “to spread the Jews thin all over the world.” According to Vice President Henry Wallace’s account of the conversation, Roosevelt said he had “tried this out in Marietta [Meriwether] County, Georgia, and at Hyde Park…adding four or five Jewish families at each place. He claimed that the local population would have no objection if there were no more than that.” 
Roosevelt resented what he perceived as excessive Jewish representation in a variety of institutions. As a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers in 1923, he helped institute a quota to limit the number of Jews admitted to 15% of each class, and still boasted about doing so two decades later. In 1941, FDR remarked at a cabinet meeting that there were too many Jews among federal employees in Oregon. 
The president was concerned about Jewish influence abroad, too. In 1938, FDR privately suggested to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the era’s most prominent American Jewish leader, that Jews in Poland were dominating the economy and were to blame for provoking antisemitism there. 
In the same spirit, President Roosevelt remarked at the 1943 Casablanca Conference that in governing the 330,000 Jews in North Africa, “the number of Jews [allowed to enter various professions] should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population,” which “would not permit them to overcrowd the professions.” He said this “would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc., in Germany were Jews.”
Certain individual, assimilated Jews could be useful to FDR as political allies or advisers, but the presence of a substantial number of Jews, especially the less assimilated kind, was, in his view, undesirable. Roosevelt’s private views help explain the otherwise inexplicable policy of suppressing refugee immigration far below the legal limits. His vision of America was of a nation that would be overwhelmingly white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, with no room for any substantial number of others. 

WHAT OPTIONS EXISTED? 

Realistically, what options existed for President Roosevelt to assist Jewish refugees without endangering his political position or risking a difficult, and probably unsuccessful, clash with Congress? 
First, filling the existing quotas. The policy of almost never allowing the quotas to be filled “cost Jewish lives directly,” and “the restrictionist policy also played a crucial role in Nazi Germany’s decision to solve its ‘Jewish problem’ by more radical means,” Prof. Henry Feingold has argued; “The visa system became literally an adjunct to Berlin’s murderous plan for the Jews.”
Next, permitting more non-quota immigration. The existing law permitted professors, college students, and members of the clergy and their families to enter the United States outside the quotas. Yet from 1933 to 1941, the US admitted only 698 students identified as “Hebrews,” 944 professors (not all of them Jews), and 2,184 “ministers” (not all of them rabbis). With a more humane attitude, the administration could have taken advantage of this legal loophole and granted haven to many more endangered Jews. 
Finally, offering temporary admission to US territories. The determination as to whether an applicant for a tourist visa had a valid return address was strictly arbitrary; a more generous approach would have looked past that technicality and granted Jewish refugees temporary haven in an American territory, such as the Virgin Islands, whose governor offered to take them in, a move that would likely not have provoked any substantial domestic opposition. 
Tragically, the Roosevelt administration opted to turn its back on traditional American attitudes toward the downtrodden and chose instead, as Albert Einstein wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, “to make immigration impossible by erecting a wall of bureaucratic measures.”
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