Just how realistic do you imagine that to be ?
Most families' major asset is their home .. in a shite housing market, how do they liquidate it ?
Maybe I've been poor too long to imagine it, but do you really think most families have the financial wherewithal to simply pack up, leave everything, and start over in an unfamiliar country ?
No, you bail out if that's what you think is right.
But I'm grateful our Founders didn't have that attitude .. and they were men who, for the most part, did have the financial resources to flee.
I'll be staying and trying to make as many of the bastards precede me in death as possible.
Personally, I refuse to leave. I will not be getting a passport. Any man who leaves is a coward (or ought to be too old or sickly to be of any use). Doesn't mean I won't move heaven and earth to get my family to safety if the need arises.
8. Many Jewish leaders felt they had to stay as shepherds of their flock. But some of the most highly placed leaders advised other Jews to remain as well. This feeling of duty to stay was not limited to, say, rabbis; I felt it strongly as a teacher in a Jewish grade school, and also as a son. For if an opportunity had offered itself to me as a young man, it was certain that I would have had to leave my mother in the midst of the danger I sought to escape. Many cases of able-bodied young persons who were given the chance and left, of rabbis who made use of their special standing outside the immigration quota, filled us with sadness and indignation. The situation was not yet one of “everyone for himself,” and for some it never came to that.What are the lessons here? That one shouldn't wait too long? That fighters should remain behind and not hesitate to organize and begin resistance operations (I'm just asking general questions here about what, if anything, people who find, or perceive, themselves to be in such a situation, should do)? That you should remove your innocent to safety even if it means great financial hardship and suffering for them? Starting over is better than being gassed and thrown into ovens, which certain heads of state ARE NOT above doing to their political/religious/racial/tribal enemies.Beginning perhaps with the Nuremberg Laws in the fall of 1935, and from then on increasingly through 1938, the terror grew and the belief of a Jewish future in Germany faded away. Then many of us who had not done so before began to contemplate emigration.
9. Before the open panic started, reaching the decision to emigrate was still an individual process; some arrived at it earlier, others later. People who were still employed or in business probably tarried longer than those without means. But aside from this factor, individuals have different thresholds, even with regard to acting and reacting in the face of grave danger. Once the decision had been made, the urgency grew quickly, and the feeling was: the sooner the better. But at that time there was, connected to the willingness to emigrate, still the consideration of where to go and how to build a new future there.
10. Now there was this true tragedy: in the measure that the need to emigrate became evident, in the same measure the opportunities for emigrating decreased rapidly and radically. The American immigration quota was overdrawn, and the consulates handed out waiting numbers that stretched ahead years into the future. The certificates for Palestine sharply decreased because the mandatory power did not want to alienate the Arabs. As far as England itself was concerned, the demand for housemaids -- one of the few ways of being admitted to England, except for a number of children transports -- was saturated. Those countries that sold entry visas asked ever-higher sums, and there were ever fewer Jews who could raise the money.
All in all, long before the German exit door was slammed shut, immigration countries barricaded themselves effectively against the Jews. The causes were economic and social, combined with the fear of displeasing Hitler or outright sympathy with his goals and methods, among them anti-Semitism. By that time, every Jew in Germany spoke his own “Get thee out,” but God did not show him a land.
11. I wonder whether those who ask such a question as “Why did you not leave Germany while there was still time?” realize that not everyone could have emigrated. There were definite qualifications and conditions, and those who did not meet them could not leave. Our conversations were governed by such things as affidavits, sponsors, certificates, quotas and visas, requirements of age, skills and health, relatives abroad, rumored loopholes in immigration laws from New Zealand to Chile. Thousands, tens of thousands of German Jews simply could not emigrate if their life depended on it -- which it did. And if I, a healthy young man with a certain sense of adventure, could not emigrate, what about young children and old people, the sick and the handicapped?
12. The greatest irony, something that to us could only appear as a cruel hoax, was the international conference on the refugee problem held at Evian, France, in July 1938. If President Roosevelt had deliberately convened it as a political measure to demonstrate to his constituency in the U.S. that the state of the economy, especially the unemployment situation, did not permit the immigration of any more Jews, he could not have chosen a more effective means. Strange that he should not have realized what the outcome would be; we Jews in Germany knew that the conference would lead to precisely nothing, for each of us had heard the regrets and refusals of the different countries privately, before at that conference delegate after delegate from country after country stated them publicly. There were gloating headlines in the German press day after day during the conference: how right Hitler had proven to be, how the world was beginning to see things his way, how nobody wanted the Jews.
There were tiny sparks of hope -- and I want to single out Australia and the Dominican Republic for a blessing -- but they only emphasized the total darkness on the face of the earth. We read the newspapers with a growing dread; we were glued to the radio in honor. Right there in Evian our fate was sealed. We did not have to wait another two months for Chamberlain’s journey to Munich to know that the world was buckling under to Hitler. As directly as Chamberlain’s Munich led to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland, as surely Roosevelt’s Evian made possible the Crystal Night. The message was loud and clear: do what you want with your Jews -- it’s an internal affair. And we, the rest of the world, won’t lift a finger.
13. It is commonplace to say that the Crystal Night was the dress rehearsal for what was to come. It is seldom realized that it was also a last chance. The world was being tested once more for its moral fiber, and once more the world failed. For a few days after the event, border police in neighboring countries -- Holland, Belgium, France -- were less strict about repelling Jews who dared the desperate nighttime dash over a frontier in the woods. Then this loophole was closed too, and the trap shut on us.
As for the Jews left in post-Crystal Night Germany there was nobody anymore who had any hesitation about leaving. Never mind tearing up old roots or striking new ones; it was a mad scramble. But emigration was available for only a few; the rest were caught. Quiet despair settled over us. We continued our different tasks under ever-worsening conditions; I went on teaching at my Jewish grade school. Many of us were very pessimistic, depressed and gloomy; many anticipated still worse to come, even though nobody imagined -- or could have imagined -- Einsatzkommandos and gas chambers.
One more thing I did not anticipate: that 40 years later a well-meaning student of a brand-new academic subject called “Holocaust Studies” would ask me: “Why didn’t you leave Germany while there was still time?”