100s of thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi barbarism attempted to come to the United States by applying for visas but were denied entry as the F.D.R. administration stuck to its strict i migration caps and quotas. For reasons of ‘national security’ it even forced boats of refugees back to Europe and death under fascism. A crisis was reached in November, 1938 after Kristallnacht when the response of the administration was to call an international conference to discuss the problem. The Socialist Workers Party released this statement demanding the U.S. open its doors. It did not.

‘Let the Refugees into US! Open the Doors to Victims of Hitler’s Nazi Terror’ by the National Committee of the S.W.P. from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 50. November 19, 1938.

The entire world has been shocked to the depths by the outburst of a new campaign of brutal violence against the Jews in Germany.

The hideous terror of Hitlerism has never struck with such cruel and merciless force.

Throughout Germany, bands of Nazi gangsters organized and commanded by their leaders, have wrecked and looted stores owned by Jews. Jewish churches -synagogues- have been burned and destroyed by the instructed Fascist mobs. The workers of Germany, who hate and despise Hitlerism with all their strength, were unable to come to the aid of the brutalized Jews because they are themselves still in the straitjacket of the Nazi terror.

The Brown-shirted monsters do not even bother to conceal their aim: the physical extermination of every Jew in Great-Germany.

Already a “fine” has been levied against the Jews which means in effect the complete confiscation of all their property and its distribution among the Nazi sadists.

The regime of the Ghetto is to be restored in Germany by the complete segregation of all Jews into marked-off slums. With this measure, Hitlerism shows again that it means barbarism, the destruction of all civilized progress, the return to the shame and depravity of the Middle Ages.

Why are the Hitlerites increasing their murderous attacks upon the Jews?

For two reasons:

They hope to take the minds of the German workers and peasants off the misery from which they suffer, to make them think that the Jews-traditional scapegoats for reaction—are responsible for all their ills.

They hope to blackmail the international protest movement against Fascism into cowardly silence.

If they accomplish these dastardly aims, they can continue without the slightest opposition their rule of blood and iron.

If they accomplish their aims, they will encourage the Fascist reaction in every other country of the world to advance more boldly, more insolently, more successfully.

They must not be allowed to succeed!

The workers of the United States must take the initiative in a mighty and effective protest against the Hitlerite pogroms.

Our answer must be not the cowardly silence of beaten dogs, but the thunderous protest of courageous and militant fighters for freedom and international solidarity!

To let the Fascist massacres go unanswered, is only to prepare for our own defeat and enslavement at the hands of Fascist reaction in this country.

The first step of solidarity with the German Jews and the German workers must be a vast outpouring of the workers from every shop and factory and office into a mighty protest demonstration at which labor will give voice to its resounding indignation.

The Socialist Workers Party urges the workers, especially of the Needle Trade Unions of New York, to have their unions take the initiative in organizing a half-day stoppage of work so that they may parade in a huge demonstration to the largest halls in the city.

Let the persecuted, gagged and chained toilers of Germany, the cruelly hounded Jews of Naziland, know that they have not been forgotten or abandoned by the working class throughout the world.

But it is necessary to do more than demonstrate and meet in imposing gatherings.

It is imperative to take action-concrete action- immediate action!

The Hitlerites are making the Jews a people without a country!

They are driving them out of Germany. Poland is hounding and persecuting the Jews, too, and is also preparing to drive them out of the country.

No European country agrees to give refuge to the hounded and harassed Jewish people.

It is therefore up to us to act so that they may at least find a home to live in.

The United States calls itself a democratic country. The President of the United States frequently speaks about his respect for democratic liberties and his opposition to “dictatorships.” The Congress of the United States considers itself the guardian of those democratic liberties.

One of the most serious and important democratic liberties is the right of asylum for all those who are persecuted, for all refugees from terroristic reaction.

WE THEREFORE DEMAND:

Throw open the doors of the United States to the victims of the Hitlerite pogrom regime!

We urge all workers, and all labor organizations:

Demand that the American government use its emergency powers to open the doors to the horribly persecuted Jews of Germany!

The right of asylum is an old, a traditional, a respected right in this country.

Let us join in demanding that this right be extended now to those who are most urgently in need of it, to those for whom it makes the difference between life and death.

Workers!

Solidarity with those who suffer at the hands of fascism is one of the best ways of establishing, in this country, an unbreakable wall against the advance of American Fascism.

Unite! Join hands!

Show the Hitlerite assassins and pogromists the real position of American labor by your protest meetings! Show them that the American working class means it seriously when it says that it detests Anti-Semitism and the Anti-Semites like the plague!

Show the victims of the Fascist terror that you mean it seriously, by stretching out to them the hand of fraternal solidarity, by demanding of the American government the free and unrestricted right of asylum for the Jewish scapegoats of Fascist barbarism!

National Committee of the SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY, Section of the Fourth International.

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States. After the Workers Party (International Left Opposition) entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the Trotskyists published Socialist Appeal as the paper of the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party” replacing New Militant as the main voice of Fourth Internationalist in the US. Socialist Appeal became the weekly organ of the new Socialist Workers Party in early 1938 after the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the the Socialist Party. Edited by James Cannon and Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, Albert Goldman, in 1941 Socialist Appeal became The Militant again.

For a PDF of the full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1938/v2n50-nov-19-1938-SA.pdf