Anti–Semitism and American Immigration Policy during the Holocaust : A reassessment

Abstract

Since the publication of David Wyman's seminal monograph on the American immigration policy during the Second World War— Paper Walls: America and the refugee crisis—the historiography has been framed by a fundamental assumption: that, at its heart, decisions on refugee immigration policy were motivated by anti-Semitism. By examining many of the same primary sources used by Wyman and the historians who have followed him, my thesis argues that the claim that anti-Semitism was the primary, or even major, motivation is not supported by the evidence, and that the shaping of policy was much the product of general xenophobia and nativism.