Indifference to Nazi Germany and Jews around the World pre-World War II

Otto Richter, a German Jew, and his wife protest against his deportation to Germany by the US immigration authorities, Ellis. he was unable to produce valid immigration papers,

Photographer: Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

Date taken: 12 June 1936

Location: ELLIS ISLAND, USA

”Fleeing Nazi Germany, Otto Richter got to the United States in 1936, but faced deportation back to Germany where he likely would have been killed. A protest movement supporting Richter and a letter writing campaign to Pres. Roosevelt, failed. Richter went on a hunger strike, wound up in the hospital and was finally granted permission to emigrate to Mexico.“

In November, 1933, a young German seaman jumped ship In the harbor of Seattle. He was in the truest sense of the word a political refugee, seeking the right of asylum from a regime of tyranny and dictatorship. This young man’s name was Otto Richter; born in Bremen, Germany, he was a worker and an active anti-Nazi. On the night of the burning of the Reichstag, storm troopers apprehended him and, though he had not the slightest connection with that event, beat and tortured him. The next four and a half months he spent hiding from Hitler’s secret police. [He] managed to enlist as a seaman and sail on German boat which was to call at ports in the United States. During the voyage his identity became known and officers of the ship, after abusing him, threatened to turn him over to the police on their return to Nazi Germany. These were the circumstances underlying Richter’s attempted escape from Nazi tyranny to American freedom.

What has happened since? In July, 1934, during the San Francisco general strike, a vigilante raid was made on the Workers Center, and there Otto Richter was found engaged in what the Department of Labor evidently regarded as the heinous offense of helping to feed striking marine workers. He was seized and ordered deported to Nazi Germany on the technical charge that he had remained in the United States illegally. Since that time a long legal battle has been fought by the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born to save him from deportation. And only the tremendous counterpressure of mass sentiment has secured for Otto Richter the dubious privilege of being deported to a country of his choice -— Belgium -— instead of to Hitler’s sadistocracy.

Belgium was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany afterwards.