Jews escaping from German-occupied Europe

From October 1943, Gerda II was used to ferry Jewish refugees from German occupied Denmark to neutral Sweden. It ferried some 300 Jews to safety.

In October 1943, 7,000 Jews and 700 of their relatives who were not Jewish escaped Denmark for Sweden, as was coordinated by the Danish resistance movement. They travelled to Malmö, Sweden across the Øresund Channel.[5]

Many of the French Luxembourgian, Belgian, and Dutch Jews were protected by their Country's resistances, hid in secret locations that were hard to find for the Nazis, and fled to the UK, Free France (Algeria), Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the USA.

Hitler came into power in Germany in 1933,[6] when there were about 523,000 German Jews (<1% of the population) in the country.[2] Subject to threats and persecution, Jews began to emigrate from that point until the start of World War II.[2][6] In Austria, more than 50% of the Jews had left the country by May 1939 following Adolf Eichmann's program to force Jews to emigrate that began in the spring of 1938. Franz Mayer, a Jewish leader, said of Eichmann's system: "You put in a Jew at one end, with property, a shop, a bank account, and legal rights. He passed through the building and came out at the other end without property, without privileges, without rights, with nothing except a passport and order to leave the country within a fortnight; otherwise, he would find himself inside a concentration camp."[4] By the end of 1939, there were more than 117,000 Jews who left Austria and more than 300,000 who left the Germany.[lower-alpha 1] Most of them were trained in a field or college educated. Generally they were young.[2][6]

Many of the people who went to neighboring European countries were captured by the Nazis, and many of the 100,000 who found refuge were killed, after May 1940, when they invaded western Europe.[2][1] As the Nazi regime extended into Czechoslovakia beginning in 1938 and Poland in 1939, there were more Jewish refugees.[7]

In 1940, many Norwegian Jews were able to find a safe haven in Sweden, which was neutral.[5]

Jews were prevented from leaving German-occupied Poland by the Schutzstaffel (SS).[3] About 10% of the Polish Jewish population including nearly 1 million Poles, were round up by the Russians and sent to Siberia in intolerable circumstances and slaved and died from harsh treatment at the hands of the Russians from 1939 and 1943 and onwards. The Jews were spared harsh treatment though and some were trained in Moscow, so as to be fit to command a new Polish government after the war was over. Some of them were sent to remote areas of the Soviet Union, Siberia, or Central Asia.[5]

Jews were systematically killed as part of the Final Solution plan, starting with their removal to extermination camps and beginning in June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and those who were unable to flee to the Asian parts of the country were methodically shot.[5] By the end of the war, 67% of the Jews from Europe had been killed.[7]

Despite pressure from Germany, Italy protected Jewish people in lands that it occupied in Greece, France, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia, as well as protecting Jews in Tunisia, between mid-1942 and September 1943.[5]

About 30,000 Jews entered Portugal through Spain, and many sought passage in Lisbon on ships bound for South America and the United States. The refugees were assisted by French and American Jewish organizations. Most travelled between 1939 and 1941, and after Germans pressured the country to limit Jews ability to travel through their country, from 1942 to 1944 there were about 7,500 people who were admitted entry to Spain for Portugal. Spanish consuls also provided identity papers so that up to 5,000 people could escape through other parts of Europe.[5]

Sweden took in Jews from Norway and Denmark.[5]

The Swiss took in nearly 30,000 Jews, but turned away 20,000 at their border.[5]

In July 1938, the Dominican Republic was the only country at the Évian Conference that said it would admit a large number of refugees. Between 1938 and 1941, Bolivia allowed for 30,000 refugees to immigrate to its country.[1]

A group of passengers from the SS St. Louis arrive in France after the ship returned to Europe.

Mandatory Palestine was a destination for 18,000 Jews escaping the Nazi regime through the Balkans between 1937 and 1944. This was organized by the Zionist movement. There were more than 16,000 Jews who later were bound for Palestine on boats from the Romanian and Bulgarian ports on the Black Sea and often through Turkey for refueling. One ship MV Struma was sunk, presumably accidentally, by a Soviet submarine, in what is called the Struma disaster.[5]

The United States had about 27,000 available visas in late 1938 for individuals for refugees. At that time, consulate offices outside the US were visited by 125,000 applicants, and by June 1939, there had been more than 300,000 applicants. This was far more than the US would allow into the country due to its immigration policy.[1] The MS St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany for Cuba, who had issued transit visas for more than 900 Jewish refugees, on a voyage that occurred from May to June 1939. Once the ship had arrived, the Cubans cancelled the refugees' visas. The ship was denied permission to land in the United States and it had to make a return voyage to Europe. Of 928 returning passengers, 288 were accepted by Britain, 366 survived the war on the continent, and 254 died during the Holocaust.[1] In 1944, the War Refugee Board (WRB) was established to assist tens of thousands of refugees, in coordination with the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and an emergency shelter was established at Fort Ontario in New York, which housed almost 1,000 refugees.[3]