Jewish+refugeesSarahS

Many Jews decided it was time to leave and fled to the United States. Between 1933, when Hitler took power, and the start of World War II in 1939, some 350,000 Jews escaped Nazi-controlled Germany. The emigrants included prominent scientists, such as Albert Einstein, and business owners like Otto Frank, who resettled his family in Amsterdam in 1933. Otto's daughter, Anne Frank, kept a diary of her family's life in hiding after Nazis averran the Netherlands. She called their hiding place the "secret annex." It is now a museum.

There were limits on Jewish Immigration, however. More than 100,000 visa applications were backlogged. Following Nazi //Anschluss,// some 3,000 Austrian Jews applied for visas each day. Most people didn't get visas and were forced to stay in Germany. ...Nazis prohibited Jews from taking more than 4 dollars out of Germany. American immigration law forbade granting visas to anyone "likely to become a public charge." ...High unemployment rates...

At an international conference on refugees in 1938, several European countries, the United Stated, and Latin America stated their regret that they could not take in any more of Germany's Jews without raising immigration quotas.

The SS St. Louis was one of the many ships filled with Jewish immigrants.