This year, Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, falls on April 28. In honor of this, I took a look at the Salt Lake City Jewish community's response to World War II and the atrocities of the Shoah (Holocaust).
The government's attempts to help
In the past year or two, historians of Utah have been digging into the topic of political responses to the Second World War. It's long been an assumption by many outside of academia that the general public did not know what was going on in Europe with regards to the Jewish population during the War. This unfortunately isn't true. While the extent of the atrocities may not have been well understood by the average citizen, the United States government was well aware of gas chambers, concentration and death camps, and the Nazi's plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem."
The image above is of a telegram sent in 1942 to Rabbi Stephen Wise, one of the most well-known Jewish leaders in America at the time. Wise shared the telegram with the State Department, who asked him not to publicize it until they could confirm the information within. When, in November, the State Department did confirm, they told Wise that they would not share the information with the public directly but that he could.(1)
On November 25, 1942, the Salt Lake Tribune, along with hundreds of others newspapers around the country, broke the story. Wise is quoted in the paper as having consulted with sources at the State Department, and reported that already, 2 million Jews had been killed. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), this information prompted the US government and "eleven other Allied countries issued a stern declaration vowing to punish the perpetrators of this “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination” after the war had been won."(2)
Senator Elbert Thomas, Democrat from Utah, stood out as one of the few voices pressuring the government to do more. Among other initiatives, Thomas was part of a group that pushed for the creation of a committee or board within the State Department that specifically addressed the issue of European Jews. The Congressional pressure met resistance at the State Department, however, who argued that refugee and war relief boards already existed and one meant to work especially with Jewish refugees would step on the toes of the others.(3)
In the end, the US government did establish the War Refugee Board, but the efficacy of the Board is hard to quantify. The Board was established in 1944, two years after the initial reports of the Nazis' extermination plans, and too late to do much for European Jewry. Senator Thomas and other Congressmen and activists had urged the US government to actively pursue rescue operations, including evacuation of Jewish refugees from Europe and military operations targeting gas chambers at Auschwitz. The Board, a non-military organization, instead focused on sending financial aid, often routed through existing organizations, and care packages, though sometimes it made concerted efforts to assist with immigration.(4)
The Board's single internal report, compiled after the war was over, credited itself with saving tens of thousands of Jews. But as historian and curator at the USHMM, Rebecca Erbelding, poetically put it:
Each victim [of the Holocaust] died an individual death, and each victim only died once...In contrast, any Holocaust survivor will list all the times he or she was saved, sometimes proactively, but many times by accident....To presume that “being saved” is a singular act is to ignore the complicated nature of the Holocaust.(5)
The Holocaust and the Allies' response to it are complicated. The "Final Solution" was not imagined or implemented in a vacuum. European Jews had long been subject to boycotts, discrimination, ghettoization, and pogroms. The average American was not ignorant of this history or the reality facing Jews with the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany. And yes, the United States could have done more to aid Jewish refugees -- raising immigration quotas, conducting military operations meant to disable the death camps, or more actively support resistance groups. But as the USHMM states, "These acts together might have reduced the death toll, but they would not have prevented the Holocaust."(6)
The Utah Jewish community's assistance
Utah's civic groups spent much of 1944-1946 hosting lectures meant to educate the public on the Jewish refugee crisis and raise funds in support of groups helping displaced persons throughout Europe.
Lt. Col. Judah Nadich, pictured center above, was a former advisor to Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the time, Eisenhower was a general and witnessed first-hand the liberation of many of the death camps in Europe. It was at his urging that press and government officials from across the West come to Europe to serve as witness to the atrocities.
"I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda,'" Eisenhower wrote to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April 1945. Within days of his visit, delegations from Congress, the British parliament, and dozens of journalists flooded into Europe to add to eyewitness reports.(7) Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, mentioned above, was part of one of these delegations, and was deeply affected by what he saw.(8)
In 1945, Nadich, a rabbi and military chaplain, was appointed special advisor to Eisenhower in an effort to help the "hundreds of thousands of displaced persons being kept in military custody in squalid conditions little better than the camps they had survived."(9) Nadich spent many of the immediate post-war years on the lecture circuit and visited Salt Lake in May 1946.
While in Salt Lake, he advocated for "assistance of every kind--food, clothing, and housing," and said there was no cap on the financial assistance that the United Jewish Appeal would accept. The funds, he reported, would be used jointly to rehabilitate the Jews who remained in Europe, help resettle and integrate those who wanted to immigrate to Palestine, and to support the small minority who wished to immigrate to the United States. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah aimed to raise about $150,000 to contribute to the cause.(10)
Benjamin Roe, Salt Lake City businessman, was chair of the local committee that worked with the United Service for New Americans to sponsor displaced persons. He wrote of the job in his autobiography. In an effort to not put too much of a burden on a single Jewish community, the United Service typically offered refugees spots in a variety of towns, working with them to understand their needs and settle them in communities that would be easiest to integrate into.(11) Fred Linden, who escaped Germany for Shanghai in 1939, was offered several locations before he ultimately chose Utah, influenced by the closeness of the mountains and the availability of skiing.(12)
Roe wrote that the "Salt Lake Jewish community accepted a quota of fifteen families." As chairman, he was tasked with "meeting the immigrant on his arrival; giving him food, clothing, hospitality--all that was within your power; finding housing; and enrolling him in a night school to learn the language."(13) Fred Linden worked with Roe to secure work at ZCMI, advertise his wife Ruth's services as a dressmaker, and eventually establish his own shop.(14)
"I had only one thought on my mind and that helped me over some of the discouraging tears of that episode," Roe recalled of his work. "How far away or close had I come that I could have been in their place?"(15)
Fred and the others who settled in Salt Lake after the war were lucky. When Hitler came to power in 1933, many of Fred's friends and family saw the writing on the wall. Others, including Fred, didn't. "I belonged to those people who thought different," he recalled in an oral history recorded in the 1980s. "I thought, 'oh, Hitler won't make it long.'"(16)
He stayed in Germany and continued to raise his family and operate his clothing store. Periodically, he would be warned by neighbors that Nazi patrols were rounding up Jewish men and he would hide, spending days or weeks riding the subways or wandering the streets, avoiding the Jewish neighborhoods, association with other Jews, and his business. Ultimately, he realized it was time to go on November 9, 1938, colloquially known as Kristallnacht.(17)
His business and hundreds of others, along with the homes and synagogues of the Jewish community, were looted, vandalized, and burned. On the morning of November 10, he walked into the office of a Berlin travel agent and asked, "Where in this world can I go to leave Germany?" The agent helped him secure passage to Shanghai, which at the time did not require passports, visas, or any other immigration paperwork to enter. He left with his family in April 1939.(18)
Linden was a shrewd businessman. While in Shanghai, he lived in cramped conditions with tens of thousands of other Jews who had fled there between 1933-1939. He opened a clothing store, which he operated for the duration of the war. But in 1944-1945, with the arrival of American troops from the Burma campaigns, he seized a new opportunity: souvenirs. The troops were housed in an empty warehouse across the street from Linden's shop and, when he saw this, he and his wife cleared out all of the clothing and household goods, restocking the shelves and windows with trinkets, knick-knacks, and touristy items meant to attract the boys who were looking to bring home souvenirs to their families when they were released from service. He established a rapport with the community, and in doing so kept abreast of the United States' efforts to aid Jewish refugees. In 1946-1947, he secured passage to San Francisco for himself and his family. It was there that he learned about Salt Lake City and Utah and, missing his upbringing in the German Alps, decided to settle here.(19)
The Lindens held onto and celebrated their Jewish identity, despite the traumas they experienced in Nazi Germany. While in Shanghai, Ruth stitched the above flag, as a demonstration of her hope for a Jewish future.(20) "I'm born Jewish," Fred said in his oral history. "And I went through all this trouble with Hitler as a Jew...I wouldn't change my religion anyhow." When asked whether he thought the world would see Nazism rise again, or whether the Jewish people would face complete decimation once more, in Europe, in Israel, or anywhere else in the world, he optimistically replied that he didn't think so. "Israel will live," he said.(21)
While his wife Ruth died suddenly of a heart attack in 1967, Fred lived to be 102 years old.(22) He died in 1997 and is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.(23)
The Lindens had the chance to survive. Six million others didn't. May all their memories be a blessing.
Sources:
(1) "Did Americans know about the Holocaust and what did they do?," Frequently Asked Questions about the Holocaust for Educators, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 2022.
(2) "Did Americans know about the Holocaust," USHMM.
(3) W. Raymond Palmer, "Senator Elbert D. Thomas and the Fate of European Jewry," Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 89, Number 4, Fall 2021.
(4) Rebecca L. Erbelding, "About Time: The History of the War Refugee Board," PhD dissertation, George Mason University, Spring 2015. This work was later adapted into the book, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe, Doubleday, 2018.
(5) Erbelding, "About Time."
(6) "Did Americans know about the Holocaust," USHMM.
(7) "Eisenhower asks Congress and Press to Witness Nazi Horrors," History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 2022.
(8) "Nazi Story Shocks Congress," Salt Lake Tribune, May 16, 1945.
(9) "Judah Nadich; Rabbi advised Eisenhower in Europe," Obituaries, Washington Post, September 4, 2007.
(10) "Million Jews Need Help, Colonel Says," Salt Lake Tribune, May 21, 1946.
(11) Ben M. Roe, A Blend of the Two, compiled and edited by James M. Rock, Friends of the University of Utah Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1978.
(12) Fred Linden, as interviewed by Rose Nord, Interviews with Jews in Utah Collection, 1982-1987, ACCN 0998, Box 3, Folder 1, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. Accessed April 2022.
(13) Roe, A Blend of the Two.
(14) Linden as interviewed by Rose Nord, 1982-1987.
(15) Roe, A Blend of the Two.
(16) Linden as interviewed by Rose Nord, 1982-1987.
(17) Linden as interviewed by Rose Nord, 1982-1987.
(18) Linden as interviewed by Rose Nord, 1982-1987.
(19) Linden as interviewed by Rose Nord, 1982-1987.
(20) "Handmade white flag with a blue Star of David made by a German refugee in Shanghai, c. 1945" Accession Number 1998.147.1, Linden family papers collection, gift of Kurt Joseph Linden, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
(21) Linden as interviewed by Rose Nord, 1982-1987.
(22) "Ruth S. Linden," Obituaries, Salt Lake Tribune, March 17, 1967.
(23) "Fred I. Linden," Obituaries, Salt Lake Tribune, June 9, 1997.
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