Washington

What did we know and when did we know it? And what could have been done?

These are the questions posed by a new long-term exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Americans and the Holocaust.” And behind them is a long-simmering indictment. The accusations: that there was a continuous refusal before World War II to accept larger numbers of Jewish refugees; that there was a seeming refusal during the war to accept the scale of the murders; and that there was an outright refusal late in the war to expend any military effort in disrupting the Nazi killing machine.

Americans and the Holocaust United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Through 2021

The scholarly literature is immense and still growing. But this exhibition, curated by historian Daniel Greene , is (for the most part) so careful yet so involving that we begin to see why little about this subject is simple. We see the newsmagazines of the 1930s that reacted to Hitler ’s rise; newsreels giving voice to native-grown American fascist wannabes; polls that revealed a resistance to getting involved in the growing conflicts; and excerpts of movies like “Casablanca” and “The Great Dictator” that began to confront the storm. The narrative carries considerable weight, partly because of the effort expended in understanding American action and inaction. It would have carried still more had other impulses not interfered.

In treating the history chronologically the exhibition draws our attention to the sentiments of the period. There is, for example, the strong pull of isolationism in the 1930s (a force that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to placate) as well as fear of economic collapse and wariness of foreign refugees. These attitudes, we also see, were not the result of ignorance. A crowdsourced sampling of American regional newspapers from the 1930s is offered on a touch-screen map, showing that Nazi mistreatment of Jews was widely reported. Touch-screen access to later reporting gives cogent evidence of how much was known about Nazi atrocities.

Cordell Hull, Henry Morgenthau, Henry L. Stimson and John Pehle at the third meeting of the Board of Directors of the War Refugee Board (March 21, 1944) Photo: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

The refugee issue gets particular attention in a gallery dominated by graphics that suggest an ever increasing need was met by ever increasing resistance. The Immigration Act of 1924 permitted a maximum of 25,957 visas from Germany annually. But in 1933, only 1,241 were issued and there was a three-year waiting list. In 1939, when Nazi territories included Austria (with a 27,370 quota) and others (2,874), the limits were met but left a 11-year waiting list. In 1939, bills that proposed admitting 20,000 German refugee children never made it through Congress. After late 1941, there was no escape: Germany banned Jewish emigration from its territories.

U.S. officials process Alien Registration documents (June-November, 1940) Photo: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services History Office & Library

More affecting still are stories accessed through a touch-screen table. In 1939, Flora Hochsinger, living in Nazi-occupied Vienna, wrote to a woman referred to her: Harriet Postman in Waltham, Mass. Hochsinger said she had a Ph.D., worked for 32 years as a mathematics teacher, studied psychology with Alfred Adler , ran a children’s home in Vienna, knew needle-work and belt-making, and sought work. Ms. Postman contacted the White House, the State Department, celebrities, the agency B’nai B’rith and friends, but never found a sponsor. Hochsinger was deported from Vienna in 1942 and executed by a Nazi killing squad.

Inside ‘Americans and the Holocaust’ Photo: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

To where do these accounts lead? In the final galleries, we see the duplicity of at least one official at the State Department— Breckinridge Long —intent on keeping out Jewish refugees. We learn about the too-little-known War Refugee Board established by Roosevelt early in 1944 to help address a problem belatedly acknowledged; among its modest achievements was a camp of 982 refugees from 18 countries established in Oswego, N.Y. And why wasn’t say, Auschwitz bombed? An animated map shows the slow Allied progress compared with the killing centers’ speedy work: By D-Day more than 5 million Jews had already been murdered. But even in late 1944, something might have still been done. Two letters in the exhibition capture the vexed nature of the issue: Dohn Pehle , director of the war Refugee Board, urges that bombing take place; Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy responds that the priority must be “the earliest possible victory over Germany.”

An installation in the exhibition Photo: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

We are not permitted a simple verdict. But there is also an impulse here that nearly upsets the exhibition’s balance. Its view of villainy is in an opening video about 1920s and ’30s America peppered with newsreel-style titles: “Fearful of Communism,” “Closed to Immigrants,” “Segregated by Race,” “Panicked by the Great Depression.” Images include lynchings, bread lines, a Ku Klux Klan march. The impression is of a nation about as xenophobic as the one it would soon be fighting. Add to this, paranoia among those who feared a German “fifth column” of spies among refugees.

An installation at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibition Photo: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

This caricature ignores too much. It is also incorrect to dismiss German espionage as a chimera or portray concern as American hysteria. England, for example, went further; for a time it interred Jewish refugees as enemy aliens.

Passengers aboard the MS St. Louis (May 13, 1939-June 17, 1939) Photo: Dr. Liane Reif-Lehrer/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Such sweeping assertions of American narrow-minded venality almost seem aimed at contemporary political debates; this would certainly be in keeping with the museum’s declared ambitions. “Think about what you saw,” posters outside the museum urge, “the next time you witness hatred” or “the next time you see injustice.” This stance—now familiar in Holocaust museums—suggests that history may be more important because of how it teaches us to behave than because of what it helps us understand.

President Roosevelt broadcasts his first fireside chat (March 12, 1933) Photo: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

This has a cost. But this exhibition, thankfully, does not overly indulge. It suggests that American reactions to the Holocaust were a mixture of willful blindness if not anti-Semitism, well-meaning practical fears, and disbelief at the nature of the crimes—all later complicated by the waging of an unprecedented war.

—Mr. Rothstein is the Journal’s Critic at Large.