Why didn't the US assist the Jews in Germany in the 1930s?

Answer 1

The US was in the middle of the Great Depression and had to look to help their own before they could help foreigners.

In the 1930s, word was just beginning to get out regarding treatment of the Jews. Early actions included armbands, removal to certain areas of the cities, closing of businesses and such were not immediately seen as leading to anything that could be interfered with, given the sovereignty of the countries involved, as well as German Propaganda. Boats with refugees were refused by many European countries as well as the US (look up Voyage of the St. Louis). Anti-semitism had a part in the refusal as well as the reluctance to admit immigrants who might take the few jobs that were available. Finally, the concentration camps that were opened to mass horror at the end of the war were beyond anyone's imagination. There were a few people who did assist in sending children to Britain, families who wisely moved out of Europe before the crisis, but the number helped was in the low 1000s.

Answer 2

There are two major reasons.

Probably the most important is that the United States was quite Anti-Semitic prior to the 1960s. The fundamental difference between the Anti-Semitism in the United States and Germany is that Americans did not find it "necessary" to begin actually threatening Jews. Please see this article from the Brandeis Center which shows the Anti-Semitism manifest by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was US President from 1932-1945.

In the 1930s, most Jews in Germany could not foresee the Holocaust coming. They though that it was one in many oscillations in Jewish treatment and was simply a period when Jewish treatment in Germany would worsen. They would lose their civil rights, but nothing serious would happen. Of course, this changed radically and quickly after Kristallnacht in November 1938, but over half of Germany's Jews still stayed in Germany up to that point.