When Nazis Attacked Jews, Some American Students Tried to Help
German persecution of Jews intensified with Kristallnacht (the “Night of Broken Glass”) in November 1938, when Nazi Storm Troopers and Hitler youth attacked synagogues, Jewish businesses, and Jewish homes, while police arrested Jewish men. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard students who heard about Kristallnacht organized a protest meeting and issued a statement condemning “the exclusion of Jewish students from German universities,” according to the Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper. Two days later, student leaders decided they “will attempt [to] get Catholic and Jewish victims of Nazi persecution out of Germany and will pay for their room and board in Cambridge.”
As they approached their fundraising goal, the Harvard students reached out to other institutions in hopes the effort would spread. Students from numerous schools met over the 1938 winter break and formed the Intercollegiate Committee to Aid Student Refugees. By March 1939, the committee reported that more than 170 colleges in 39 states were actively involved, with 214 scholarships granted and room and board provided, according to a story in Harvard Magazine.
“These students felt passionate about an issue, and they decided to do something about it,” said Kristin Levere, asset manager for the Museum’s Americans and the Holocaust initiative. “It’s a powerful example for students today about standing up for an issue you care about and creatively using whatever resources you have available to organize, act, and educate those around you.” In January 2017, Levere shared the Intercollegiate Committee’s story with student leaders at the Museum’s 2017 National Campus Leaders Summit. Little has been written about the national student movement in the United States during the Holocaust.
The Harvard students eventually raised the necessary funds to sponsor 21 refugees, but US immigration restrictions made it difficult for the university to fill those slots. In the end, the effort brought 14 refugees to campus. They had escaped from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Several had been in the United States for some time without the means to continue their education. They went on to become professors, diplomats, economists, a pediatrician, and a chemist.
Learn more about how Americans responded to the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust.
