What did American Jews do to help the threatened Jewish communities of Europe as the Nazi grip tightened in the 1930s? Why didn't they do more to help Jews leave Europe and bring them to America? Probing these questions, Gulie Ne'eman Arad finds that, more than the events themselves, what was instrumental in dictating and shaping the American Jews' response to Nazism was the dilemma posed by their desire for acceptance by American society, on the one hand, and their commitment to community solidarity, on the other. When as a result of Hitler's accession to power, American Jews were faced with the desperate plight of European Jews, they were hesitant to press the case for immigration for fear of raising doubts about their patriotism.
In this thoroughly researched and grippingly written account, Arad contextualises the American Jewish encounter with Nazism within the overall history of the American Jewish experience from the mid nineteenth century and offers a persuasive explanation of the ambivalent political response of American Jewish leaders in dealing with the Roosevelt administration.