The front-page headline of the Brattleboro Daily Reformer on March 29, 1933, read, “Jewish Boycott Taking Effect: Jewish Shops in Berlin Picketed by Storm Troopers.” The Rutland Herald proclaimed on November 11, 1938, “Terror Reigns as Angry Nazis Wreak Vengeance on Jews.” Below it, an ominous prediction: “More Trouble Ahead.”
By November 25, 1942, the Burlington Free Press and Times was reporting that approximately half of the estimated 4 million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe had been killed in a German-led “extermination campaign.” And yet, when a public opinion poll conducted in January 1943 asked Americans whether such reports were true or just rumors, only 48 percent believed they were real.
America’s seeming indifference to the genocide of Jews in the 1930s and ’40s has often been summed up in four words: Americans did not know. But a traveling exhibit, on display at the Stowe Free Library until December 16, challenges that long-held assumption.
“Americans and the Holocaust” is a compelling new exhibition created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in partnership with the American Library Association. The show poses two fundamental questions about Nazi Germany’s persecution of European Jews and other groups: What did Americans know about the Holocaust, and when did they know it? And what more could have been done to prevent the genocide? While the exhibition does a good job of answering the first question, it leaves the second for viewers to ponder themselves.
A U.S. poll in 1938 found that 94 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Germany’s treatment of Jews — but only 21 percent thought America should welcome more Jewish refugees.
For a small show, “Americans and the Holocaust” packs a punch, focusing solely on public sentiments and behaviors on this side of the Atlantic. As visitors enter the exhibition, a touch screen displays a map of the U.S. that allows viewers to click on any state and read the dispatches from Europe that were published in local newspapers like those in Brattleboro, Rutland and Burlington.
Evident from the journalism and public opinion polls is that many Americans at the time subscribed to an isolationist worldview, especially as it related to the war in Europe. This attitude held true even when the consequences of U.S. nonintervention were glaringly obvious.
Consider one poll from November 1938 that asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany?” While 94 percent of Americans expressed disapproval, a follow-up question asked: “Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?” To that question, only 21 percent answered yes.
“It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times,” journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote 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.”
Even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, “Americans and the Holocaust” never becomes judgmental. The exhibition explores some of the efforts made to counter Nazism and the America First movement that was championed by public figures including Charles Lindbergh. The display includes political cartoons by Theodor Seuss Geisel, then the chief editorial cartoonist for PM, a daily newspaper in New York City. He went on to become the beloved children’s book author Dr. Seuss.
The exhibition also highlights some of the people who saved Jewish lives. Among them were Eleanor and Gilbert Kraus, a Philadelphia couple who rescued 50 Jewish children between the ages of 5 and 14. In 1939, the children’s parents made the heartbreaking decision to send them to the U.S. with the two strangers. While some were later reunited with relatives, others never saw their biological kin again.
The Stowe Free Library is among the smallest of the 50 libraries in the country hosting “Americans and the Holocaust,” said assistant library director Molly Nesselrodt, who applied for the exhibition about a year ago.
The library will also present related events, including a December 4 screening of the film The U.S. and the Holocaust, followed by a Q&A with Dr. Rebecca Erbelding, educator, curator and archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Then, on December 7, the library will host a talk by Mercedes de Guardiola, author of the 2023 book “Vermont for the Vermonters”: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State.
Before the exhibition’s arrival, Nesselrodt flew to Washington, D.C., for three days of training that included discussions about public safety. Although the exhibition makes no mention of Israel — the Jewish state wasn’t founded until 1948 — the exhibition’s creators expressed concern that, in the current political climate, some people might interpret it as pro-Israel. All the hosting libraries were advised to notify local law enforcement if the exhibition sparked protests.
Thus far, none has occurred, in part because the exhibition doesn’t wade into controversial topics such as the war in Gaza. “Americans and the Holocaust” is a history lesson about a specific period in U.S. history, although that era’s public sentiment about refugees, immigration and “America first” can feel disquietingly familiar.
As one volunteer docent, who asked not to be identified, described the exhibition, “This hits a little too close to home.”
“Americans and the Holocaust,” on display until December 16, at Stowe Free Library. The U.S. and the Holocaust, a film screening, Wednesday, December 4, 6 p.m. “Vermont for the Vermonters”: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State, an author talk by Mercedes de Guardiola, Saturday, December 7, 6 p.m. Free.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Close to Home | Stowe’s new Holocaust exhibition examines what and when Americans knew about the genocide”
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2024.
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