How Did Young Americans Respond to the Nazi Threat?

Student members of the University of Chicago Youth Committee against the War are shown with signs in May 1939. —University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf3–03030, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

While growing up in a time of racial segregation and the Great Depression, some young Americans looked beyond the struggles of their own nation to respond to the Nazi threat in Europe. Their actions varied. Students at Yale and other universities led movements opposing US intervention abroad. Some young Americans helped Jewish European refugees, including students in rural Kansas who raised funds for 19-year-old Tom Doeppner to escape Nazi Germany and attend school in America. Others acted overseas, including William Scott, who photographed Nazi atrocities after he was drafted into a segregated US Army unit.

In this digital program, experts discussed the range of actions young Americans took during the Holocaust.