Menu
Idea

Jewish refugees

63
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Frances Perkins

How the First ‘Madam Secretary’ Fought to Save Jewish Refugees Fleeing From Nazi Germany

Frances Perkins’ challenged the United States’ restrictive immigration policies as FDR’s Secretary of Labor.
by Sara Georgini, Rebecca Brenner Graham via Smithsonian on January 21, 2025
Joseph Berkowitz and Rae Kushner, Jared Kushner's grandparents, in Budapest in 1945.

Jared Kushner’s Grandparents Relied on Aid and Shelter as Refugees, Documents Show

Kushner was a top official in a Trump administration that sharply restricted immigration and refugee admissions. His grandparents were Holocaust refugees.
by Andrew Silverstein via Retropolis on July 22, 2024
Man holding Israel flag and Palestine flag

Who Created the Israel-Palestine Conflict?

It wasn’t really Jews or Palestinians. It was the U.S. Congress, which closed American borders 100 years ago this month.
by Harold Meyerson via The American Prospect on May 6, 2024
English representative Lord Winterton delivers a speech at the Evian Conference, 1938.

Inside America’s Failed, Forgotten Conference to Save Jews from Hitler

Franklin D. Roosevelt called the Evian Conference in France in 1938, as the Holocaust loomed. It remains “an indelible stain on American and world history.”
by Gordon F. Sander via Retropolis on July 15, 2023
Gelringer family, who were later deported to Auschwitz.

The Millions We Failed to Save

The recent documentary "The US and the Holocaust" is a scathing, even bombastic indictment of US immigration policy over the past 160 years.
by Ruth Franklin via New York Review of Books on June 1, 2023
Crowds of people filling Ellis Island Immigration Station

Ken Burns Turns His Lens on the American Response to the Holocaust

Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.
by James McAuley via The New Yorker on September 18, 2022
Old Bay Seasoning

The Jewish Roots of Old Bay Seasoning

Oy Bay! Become seasoned on the history of America's beloved spice blend.
by Leah Siesfeld via The Nosher on March 30, 2021

WWII’s Refugee Academics and the Myth of a Welcoming American Academy

A new book looks at the lives of Jewish professors who sought asylum in the U.S. and were denied entry.
by Hannah Stamler via The Nation on February 26, 2020

The History Before Us

How can we be sure the atrocities of the past will stay in the past?
by Jessica Jacobs via Guernica on January 21, 2019
Ernst Borinski

Many Jewish Refugee Professors Found Homes at Historically Black Colleges

And they were shocked by race relations in the South.
by Heather Gilligan via Timeline on March 9, 2017

A Twitter Tribute to Holocaust Victims

A conversation with the creator of a new social-media project that commemorates refugees the United States turned away in 1939.
by Russel Neiss, Candice Norwood via The Atlantic on January 27, 2017

Anti-Syrian Muslim Refugee Rhetoric Mirrors Calls to Reject Jews During Nazi Era

The fears that were conjured by nativists 80 years ago are chillingly similar to what we're hearing today.
by Lee Fang via The Intercept on November 18, 2015
A man pushes a bicycle as he walks amid rubble in the devastated area around Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, April 3, 2024. (AFP via Getty Images)

Gaza and the Undoing of Zionism

A historian reviews new books by Peter Beinart, Avi Shlaim and Pankaj Mishra on the project that animates Israel’s violence.
by Yakov M. Rabkin via New Lines on June 20, 2025
Rachel Cockerell’s “Melting Point" tells the story of an exiled people and their effort to find a place to call home.

When Jews Sought the Promised Land in Texas

While some Jewish exiles dreamed of a homeland in Palestine, the Jewish Territorial Organization fixed its hopes on Galveston.
by Kathryn Schulz via The New Yorker on April 28, 2025
Henrietta Szold welcoming Jewish refugees from Poland to Palestine, February 1943.

Henrietta Szold & the Return to Zion

Henrietta Szold devoted her life to building a Jewish society in Palestine. But how useful is her ’cultural’ Zionism for Jewish Americans today?
by Nicholas Lemann via New York Review of Books on February 20, 2025
Bust of Isaiah Bowman at Johns Hopkins University.

Why is Johns Hopkins Still Honoring an Antisemite?

Isaiah Bowman was one of the worst college presidents in American history.
by Sanford Jacoby, Laurel Leff via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 22, 2024
Harry Truman, left, holds a copy of the Torah presented to him by Israeli leader Chaim Weizmann in May 1948.

How A U.S. President Known to Disparage Jews Became Godfather of Israel

Harry Truman used antisemitic slurs in private. But his surprise decision 75 years ago to recognize Israel, launching a fierce alliance, was a long time coming.
by Gordon F. Sander via Retropolis on May 13, 2023
Ken Burns speaking into a microphone.

Shaming Americans

Ken Burns’s "The U.S. and the Holocaust" distorts the historical record in service of a political message.
by Amity Shlaes via City Journal on January 9, 2023
The first two panels of "Nazi Death Parade," a six-panel comic depicting the mass murder of Jews at a Nazi concentration camp August Maria Froehlich / Arco Publishing Company.

The Holocaust-Era Comic That Brought Americans Into the Nazi Gas Chambers

In early 1945, a six-panel comic in a U.S. pamphlet offered a visceral depiction of the Third Reich's killing machine.
by Esther Bergdahl via Smithsonian on May 24, 2022
Drawing depicting different groups of refugees. Above, a white woman carries an infant and holds the hand of a young child. They are wearing yellow and blue--the colors of Ukraine. They are standing on a red carpet, and it is being rolled out for them--an easy entrance amidst barbed wire. Meanwhile, at bottom right, other refugees are obscured in shadow, and covered by a thick red line (potentially another carpet). They are non-white refugees, and their faces are turned away from the viewer.

United States to Refugees: Don't Give us Your Tired, Your Poor!

Putting out the welcome mat for white Christians—while slamming the door in the faces of other migrants—is an American tradition.
by David Nasaw via The Nation on May 9, 2022
Illustration of a bookshelf at CYCO with a bust of I.L. Peretz.

The Joy of Yiddish Books

The language sustained a Jewish diasporan secular culture. Today, that heritage survives in a gritty corner of Queens to be claimed by a new generation.
by Molly Crabapple via New York Review of Books on February 26, 2022
Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson visiting Soviet Jewish émigrés in Israel.

Henry "Scoop" Jackson and the Jewish Cold Warriors

An alliance between Jewish activists and congressional neocons made Soviet Jewry a key issue in superpower relations—and reshaped American Jewish politics.
by Hadas Binyamini via Jewish Currents on February 24, 2022
Riesman giving fundraising speech

My Grandfather the Zionist

He helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?
by Abraham Josephine Riesman via Intelligencer on June 23, 2021
Paul Peter Porges with self-portrait, during his time in the US army, 1951-52.

‘They Were Survivors’: The Jewish Cartoonists Who Fled the Nazis

A new exhibition celebrates the work of three Austrian artists who escaped their country as Nazis took over and created daring work in the years after.
by Nadja Sayej via The Guardian on April 8, 2021

The 1619 Project is Wrong on the 1965 Immigration Act

Nikole Hannah-Jones gives the credit for ending quotas to civil rights reformers. The truth is a bit more complicated.
by Zaid Jilani via The American Conservative on September 21, 2020
Frances Perkins on a ship, wearing a winter coat and gloves.

Frances Perkins: Architect of the New Deal

She designed Social Security and public works programs that helped bring millions out of poverty. Her work has been largely forgotten.
by Bat-Ami Zucker, Hannah Steinkopf-Frank, DeLysa Burnier via JSTOR Daily on July 8, 2020
A portrait of Marlon Brando (1948).

On the Activism of Marlon Brando, Before the Fame

Agitprop, Israel, and the shape of the world after WWII.
by William J. Mann via Literary Hub on October 11, 2019

No Refuge

When Congress gave the Secretary of Labor discretion over any immigrant “likely to become a public charge,” they weren’t expecting someone like Frances Perkins.
by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Contingent on August 23, 2019
partner

Why Trying to Distinguish Between Useful and Dangerous Immigrants Always Backfires

Yesterday’s “good" immigrant can turn into tomorrow’s radical.
by Faith Hillis via Made By History on August 16, 2019

The Parents of Curious George

Margret and Hans A. Rey, the reluctant parents of a cartoon ape-child, always yearned to leave children’s literature behind.
by Yuliya Komska via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 29, 2019
View More
30 of
63

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History