The College Board

Advanced Placement Examination

UNITED STATES HISOTRY

SECTION II
(suggested writing time—45 minutes)
1. The United States' response to the Holocaust during World War II is criticized as
inadequate and weak. Discuss the validity of this argument.

Use the documents and your knowledge of United States history to construct your
answer.

Document A

Source: Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long. Memo to State Department

Officials. June 12, 1940

We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number
of immigrants into the United States. We could do this 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. However, this could only be temporary. In order to make it more definite It
would have to be done by suspension of the rules under the law by the issuance of a
proclamation of emergency--which I take it we are not yet ready to proclaim…We can
temporarily prevent the number of immigrants from certain localities such as Cuba,
Mexico and other places of origin of German intending immigrants by simply raising
administrative obstacles.
 Document B

Source: Gerhart Reigner. Gerhart Reigner Telegram. August 11, 1942.

Informer reported to have close connections with highest German authorities who has
previously generally reliable reports says that in Fuehrer's [sic] headquarters plan under
consideration to exterminate at one blow this fall three and half to four millions Jews
following deportation from countries occupied, controlled by Germany and concentration
in east. Method execution undecided but prussic acid has been considered. Information
transmitted with reservation as exactitude cannot be ascertained.
 Document C

Source: Mr. Harry L. Hopkins. Eden Visit—Conference with the President, Anthony
Eden, Cordell Hull, Sumner Welles. March 27, 1943.

Hull raised the question of the 60 or 70 thousand Jews that are in Bulgaria and are
threatened with extermination unless we could get them out and, very urgently, pressed
Eden for an answer to the problem. Eden replied that the whole problem of the Jews in
Europe is very difficult and that we should move very cautiously about offering to take
all Jews out of a country like Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be
wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany. Hitler might well take us up
on any such offer and there, simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in
the world to handle them…

The President made it clear that he did not want a commitment made in advance that all
those colonies in the Far East should go back to the countries which owned or controlled
them prior to the war. He specifically mentioned Timor, Portugal, Indo-China and
France. He suggested that all the specific problems which Mr. Eden had raised in his visit
here be referred to the State Department and they asked to start exploratory discussions
with the British or with any other country in regard to all of them.
 Document D

Source: “Jewish Refugees and the United States.” 1943. Courtesy of Wyman Institute for
Holocaust Studies.
 Document E

Source: Freda Kirchway. The Nation Literary Magazine. March 1943.

In this country, you and I, the President and the Congress and the State Department are
accessories to the crime and share Hitler's guilt. If we had behaved like humane and
generous people instead of complacent cowardly ones, the two million lying today in the
earth of Poland . . . would be alive and safe. We had it in our power to rescue this
doomed people and yet we did not lift a hand to do it -- or perhaps it would be better to
say that we lifted just one cautious hand, incased a tight-fitting glove of quotas and visa
and affidavits and a thick layer of prejudice.
 Document F

Source: Historical Newspaper Database. Program of the Bermuda Refugee Conference.

April 14, 1943.
 Document G

Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt. Executive Order No. 9417. January 22, 1944.

NOW, THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the
statutes of the United States, as President of the United States and as Commander in
Chief of the Army and Navy, and in order to effectuate with all possible speed the rescue
and relief of such victims of enemy oppression, it is hereby ordered as follows:

There is established in the Executive Office of the President a War Refugee Board
(hereinafter referred to as the Board)…The Board shall be charged with the responsibility
for seeing that the policy of the Government, as stated in the Preamble, is carried out. The
functions of the Board shall include without limitation the development of plans and
programs and the inauguration of effective measures for (a) the rescue, transportation,
maintenance and relief of the victims of enemy oppression, and (b) the establishment of
havens of temporary refuge for such victims. To this end the Board, through appropriate
channels, shall take the necessary steps to enlist the cooperation of foreign governments
and obtain their participation in the execution of such plans and programs.