Jews To Alaska (1938)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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It’s November 29th. In 1938, weeks after Kristallnacht, a plan emerges to accept Jewish refugees from Europe and settle them in Alaska. This was an attempt to skirt strict U.S. immigration quotas. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the plan and the larger context of anti-semitism and anti-refugee sentiment among Americans and congressional leaders.

And don’t forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, out now from Radiotopia.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.0	This day, November 1938, Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickies, issues a proposal that Alaska
0:18.1	be used as a possible refuge for German Jews.
0:22.4	This was two weeks after Crystalnach, the night of broken glass.
0:25.9	This was the coordinated violence by Nazi forces throughout Germany.
0:29.6	Late 1938 is this moment of severe escalation in Hitler's Germany, both militarily and culturally
0:36.8	targeting and persecuting Jews.
0:39.0	And amidst this all, there is this royal in question in the United States and other countries about what if
0:44.3	anything to do with Jewish refugees. There was deep resistance among Congress not
0:49.8	to mention the public to relaxing immigration quotas in the United States.
0:53.4	We'll get into how complex of a situation that was, but this proposal by Ickies was sort of an attempt
0:58.4	to get around that in a way because Alaska was a territory, not a state,
1:03.0	and as such, the idea was, maybe it's not subject
1:06.2	to the same immigration quotas which no one really wants
1:09.4	to rescind in this moment.
1:11.6	So Ickes proposed that Alaska be used quote as a haven for Jewish
1:15.2	refugees from Germany and other areas in Europe where Jews are subjected to
1:19.2	oppressive restrictions. So here to discuss the Alaskan refugee proposal and this larger context of
1:26.0	Jewish refugees especially in this moment the first years of Naziism are as
1:30.2	always Nicole Hemmer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.
1:33.8	Hello there. Hi Jody. Hey there. Before we get into it I want to give a shout
	...

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