Why didn't more Jews flee to England and American during the Holocaust?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Abby R
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Abby R

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I have heard of Jews that could have fled to America in the early 30s but they decided not to. Did they not have the knowledge that Jews could be sent to concentration camps? Was there a point where it would be impossible for them to flee to the US/England/Switzerland?
 
Also, imagine that you were in a group that's being majorly persecuted. You have no way of knowing that the Holocaust is coming of course, just that things are really bad right now.

Think of what immigrating/refugeeing means: you are leaving behind everything/every place you have ever known to go live in a place where you don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't have any money (because if you own a house you're not going to be able to sell it for anything and even if you do the Nazis will seize the money [they did this constantly, usually claiming "tax debt"- it cost Freud almost $500,000 to leave Austria, which was paid by foreign supporters]). Would you rather risk absolutely certain poverty as a penniless refugee, or hold on and think that things in your country, which has had problems but has ALWAYS BEEN CIVILIZED (the most civilized nation on earth by some counts: German universities were considered the best in the world), will ultimately return to normal? It's not a simple issue.

Obviously if they'd had crystal balls and seen the concentration camps more would have come, but they didn't.
 
Because England, Switzerland, and the Britian all had limits on the number of visas they'd issue to prospective immigrants. More would have fled if the visas had been there, or if they'd been able to raise the necessary liquid assets to flee. You might as well ask why more people don't flee to the US from Iraq, Burma, Cuba, etc. , etc...
 
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