ho received 15 years for sedition, were punished after the United States entered the war. This did not stop the publications, which were now distributed in secret. Also, many gangs of teenagers began vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and Synagogues with swastikas and other hate slogans.It was attitudes and conditions such as these which held the US government from acting in favor of the dying masses. It was not for lack of knowledge that US refused to act. The New York Times, The Seattle Times, and the Boston Globe were all running stories of the horror in Europe. Roosevelt gave an address to the effect that he felt sorrow for these peoples and planned to hold the criminals responsible but made no plans for action. At last, the War Refugee Board was formed to attempt to save some of the Jews. Most say that this was an action taken too late, that if it had been created a year earlier, it would have been much more effective. All in all, the Board was responsible for saving 200,000 lives.Being in the war did not further convince the US of their supposed obligation to help the Jews in the camps. They focused their efforts on the fighting and paid no attention to the genocide happening in the camps in Poland. When the decision was finally made to bomb Auschwitz in 1945, it was because the camp was used as a production center of synthetic oil and rubber. Anti-Alien, anti-Semitic, and restrictionist attitudes were all factors that contributed to the United States’ decision not to act in the face of such horrible murderous activity in Europe. All these factors combined with the American policy of neutrality and the weakened state of the economy made the US an unlikely source of salvation....
