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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay. Hello, everybody. I am Rhonda world anchor. I am Professor of Sociology.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: at UCLA, Director of the Center for the Study of international migration and I am delighted to welcome you to today's event. This is the first of a series of 10 events that is being courted
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Is being co organized by the Center for the Study of international migration at UCLA and the Center for the comparative comparative immigration studies at UC San Diego.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: We will begin in a moment with today's event, but first I want to tell you that in contrast to last quarter, when we had a different book talk every week.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: This quarter we are shifting to a different format. So, we will have a book talk every other week but starting next week we will alternate with
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: A series of emerging immigration scholars workshops. These are interdisciplinary workshops designed to profile the work of younger migration scholars
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Treating a variety of different aspects.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Applying different disciplinary and methodological approaches. So you are all welcome to those talks, they'll last from 12 to two
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Papers are available. And if you are on our mailing list you'll receive the instructions as to how to access both the sessions and the pace.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: So without further ado, I'm delighted to introduce today's author Professor David NASA who has recently wrote written a terrific book. The last million years.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: This please persons from World War color verse announcer will talk for roughly 25 to 30 minutes. He'll then be followed by a comment coming from Professor David Fitzgerald at UCSD.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: And then there'll be some brief responses from Professor NASA and then we will open up for discussion. So without further ado, let me turn the floor over to Professor NASA. Thank you so much for joining us for today's event.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: My book is about the last million refugees who were left behind in Germany after the secession of hostilities in 1945 when the war was over there were eight to 10 million
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Foreigners in Germany non Germans in Germany, they were prisoners of war, there were political prisoners, there were four slavers and slave laborers concentration camp victims.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Almost immediately after the secession of hostilities in May all the Western Europeans went home to French. The Belgium's the British as well as the Italians and by agreement with the Americans priority was given to return all the
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Soviet citizens prisoners of war and soldiers back to the Soviet Union.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: There were left behind in Germany, a million refugees who refuse to go home again or had no homes to return to like the Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They came from three different places. I talked about the displaced persons and we all do, but they're very different
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: People
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They're very different
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They come at different times from different places under different circumstances they were during the war, several million Ukrainians and poles, who were deported to Germany.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To work as forced labor isn't slave labor is to take the jobs to replace the German soldiers on the Eastern Front the Nazis it believe they would quickly beat back the Soviets, the British would
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Surrender everything would be over when they realize that this Red Army was not so easily defeated.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They realized as well that for the remainder of the war, they would have to substitute laborers. If the homefront were to survive and produce materials that two soldiers needed on these to cry so they deported.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They kidnapped and deported several million Eastern Europeans mostly poles and Ukrainians when the war was over most of the Ukrainians are going home.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: A large number of poles, but they remained left behind about 400,000 polls in in Ukrainian
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In 19 late 1944 1945 is to work came to an end.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The polls were joined in Germany by
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Hundred and 50,000
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: For Amiens
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Latvians
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Estonians
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: who arrived at the end of the war.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In flight from the Red Army
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: One, because they did not want to participate, they did not want to live in a land ruled by the Soviets, they had had experience after the mouth of rebuttal.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Agreement of living under Soviet domination and many didn't want to do it again, especially the large land owners to professionals, those with property that had been confiscated by the by the Soviets, but there were a significant number of Baltic citizens who fled their homelands with
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Verma with the Germans because they had collaborated in one way or another. When the Nazis.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And they knew that if they remain in
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: their homelands. They would suffer severe retribution.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: When the Soviet occupation with renewed
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: So by June, July two last million
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Are in Germany.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Allies don't quite know what to do with them. They had expected. Everybody would go home again stupidly, but they unexpected death so they they bundled together.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: All of the displaced persons can't be separate them by nationality, they put the polls in a series of camps. The Lithuanians another series Ukrainians and other camps.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: When my book begins in May. One of the discoveries. I make, which I found rather clarifying and certainly unexpected, for me at least, was that there was very little attention paid to the Jewish survivors.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Very little attention paid to the Jewish survivors. The Jew were the last group of displaced persons to enter Germany and they did so.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In 1945 really the Nazis wanted no evidence whatsoever, their crimes against the Jews as the Red Army approached polling Auschwitz better now. All the other concentration in death camps.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Nazis removed the survivors and death march them or truck them or put them on the box cars to bring them back to Germany. The Nazis had no intention of preserving the lives of the Jewish survivors.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But they made the conscious decision that it was better to work them to death in the underground mines mills and arm and factories, then to Ghassan
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In their last months of life, they would serve the Third Reich.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: When
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The war was over.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In the concentration camps.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: in Dhaka Bergen Belsen Ohrdruf book involved as they were liberated by the American Army and the British Army as the press arrived to take newsreels write stories as politicians arrived to see what the Germans had done the emphasis was on German brutality.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Not on in any way on the suffering and the Jews. I was shocked to discover that in dozens of articles written for English newspapers and for American newspapers in the dozens.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Of newsreels that we're taking in the radio broadcasts, including the one from Edward R. Murrow from London. The most famous of all, there is no mention of the Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: There is, there are interviews with French prisoners of war who ended up in the concentration camps with Belgians
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: With Catholic priests.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But there's no talk of the Jews in large part because there are so few of them who it's advised 20 to 50,000
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Jews had survived the death marches from
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Poland.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And the month spent underground in the Ottomans factories.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Jews were not considered a separate entity in any way, shape, or form.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Polish Jews were lumped together in income in displaced persons camps with non Jewish Paul's
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Jewish Lothians the few who survived and Lithuanians the few who survived with their countrymen and often they found themselves in the same
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Can camps with those who would serve as guards in the concentration camps are those who had emptied the ghettos.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The only ones who recognize the only entity who recognized
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The unique suffering of the Jews in the further torture of the Jews, when the war was over with the Jewish chaplains in the American army that 50 or more
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They went into the concentration camps. They saw what was going on. They reported back to their congregations to their families to their friends to their congress people to the American Jewish organizations and they said something has to be done.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To protect the Jewish survivors.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And ultimately, the word got to Robert Walker, who is in the cabinet.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And he went to the State Department to Truman said something must be done.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The State Department and Truman sent a an individual Dean Earl Harrison, the University of Pennsylvania Quaker
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: to Germany to examine the condition of the Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And Harrison wrote a long report.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: He presented the report to Truman in the White House and then had a conversation with Truman in the White House.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And he said to him, and this is in this report and his oral presentation we the Americans, the British or treating the Jews as badly as the Germans did except for not exterminating
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And Truman got in touch with Eisenhower immediately and the Jews were put into their own camps, it will give an extra rations. They were allowed the
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Jewish relief organizations were welcome to the camps to provide extra year speakers and extra packages religious items for the 20 to 50,000 Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In the camps in the camps. Each of the national entities.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That refused to be repatriated in the Jews who could not be repatriated they established communities in exile little Latvia Ukraine.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Little poems
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And they prepare themselves for what they hope would be a triumphant return
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To a fried Poland and large via a Poland and lots of fried of Soviet influence the presumption was that eventually the Americans would start World War three, and they would liberate these
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: nations that have been taken over by the Soviets and meanwhile a large number of poles.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And 100% of the Ukrainians Lothians Estonians and with the winnings remained in the camps.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: camps were administered on a day to day basis by
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: unrra the United Nations Relief and rehabilitation administration.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And unrest, which was a international organization with 43 nations, including the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc its mandate was repatriation. Nothing more, nothing more. It was an emergency organization. It was going to send people home when the people refuse to go home.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: There was obviously a problem.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And what I believe to be the first salvo the first battle. The first conflict in the Cold War happens almost immediately.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Soviets say
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: We should send home all the displaced persons, except the Jews and the Lothians in the polls and the Yugoslavian Ukrainians who refuse to be repatriated
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Are doing so either because they're too lazy to go home and rebuild the nation's they'd rather be fed by the Americans and shelter by the Americans or
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Their war criminals, the collaborators and they don't want to go back to their home lands, because they know they'll be found guilty.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Of war crimes, the Americans and the British refuse to pressure anybody to go home again.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In the emerging Cold War climate, the last thing the American Army or the American government or the British Army or the British Government wants to do is to pressure
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: You know a lot for you to go back to Lafayette, it's now been in next to the Soviet Union, or polls to go back to a polling that is now.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: under Communist government
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Americans.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: However,
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Understand, and especially the military. They understand that the displaced persons camps have to be empty and sooner rather than later.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And in late 1945 the army goes to the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State and they say, we've got to close the camps to everyone.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Except the Jews. The Jews have no place to go home. If the Latinos don't want to go back to Lafayette, let them find a way to support themselves in Germany or somewhere else in Europe.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: We can't afford to do it anymore and Truman got the recommendation and Truman turned it down because the Catholic hierarchy, led by Cardinal Spellman
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Said Jews should get no special privileges. If you can let the Jews stay in the displaced persons camps and feed them, you got to do the same with the Catholics.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Eventually, the British, the Americans understand that the only way they're going to empty the camps is by organizing a new international organization, the international refugee organization I are. Oh.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And they're going to organize it, and its mandate is not going to be to repatriate anybody who doesn't want to go home, but to resettle them the Americans begin to push
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Toward takeaway.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Through Eleanor Roosevelt, who's the delegate to the UN achieved delegate and who was originally everybody thinks it's just going to be a you know she's just going to power, whatever she's told but she's a smart woman and she has her own
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Interpretation of what should be done and in cooperation with the State Department in the White House. She elaborates a
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: New notion of asylum.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That the world owes every individual
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Writer. The silence and the international organizations in Europe EIR
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Has the responsibility of providing opportunities to resettle for all those who can't go home again or won't go home again.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Soviet bloc.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Objects and object strenuously and refuses to join the IRL.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But it doesn't much matter yarrow redefines yarrow now without Soviet participation becomes a Cold War institution refugees or redefine
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And expanded the notion of refugees to include those who do not want to return quote because of race, religion, nationality or political opinion.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Which means that the IRA takes on itself, the responsibility of caring for protecting and resettling those who don't want to go home because they fear, they're going to be persecuted for their political opinions.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: economic refugees are excluded from any international aid this definition of refugees.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: As including those who fear persecution for political opinions and excluding all those who can't go home again for economic reasons or other reasons.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: It becomes the hallmark of American Immigration policy from this moment on,
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Soviets again the displaced persons as this vehicle or as this vehicle for cold war tensions.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Soviets claim that the Americans are keeping all these
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Nazi collaborators in camps and then reselling them all over the world. It's doing so because it wants to create a cadre of a million anticommunist
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Many of them, former Nazi collaborators who are going to be seated all over the world to prepare for a World War three, or at least to spread poison about Soviet perfectly
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And the Soviets are not entirely wrong George Kennan at the State Department rights sponsors and probably writes a big study called the utilization of refugees from the Soviet Union in the US national interest.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Frank Wizner former OSS man.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: is asked to head up the Office of Special Projects within the CIA and their task is to go into the camps to find displaced persons.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Who are fervently anticommunist anticommunist activists and either bring them to the United States to staff the Voice of America or this staff international organizations like
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The committee for for Europe with the Committee for free life easier to produce pamphlets to make the rounds and the United States preaching the dangers of anti the dangers of communist aggression.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The resettlement
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: By IRL proceeds of pace.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The displaced persons camps be come meet markets, the origin teams Canadians Australians British everybody arrives at the camps and they pick and choose those who they want to resettle because they need their labor.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Everyone
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Except the Jews is Sada and the Jews for a variety reasons remain in the camps.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Americans are the only nation on earth that refuses to participate and accept any displaced persons.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: No matter where they come from, Jews, Christians.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: It is not until June of 1948
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That United States passwords and displaced persons act.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: debate in Congress is at least as I read it again horrified.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Horrified
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: There are a large number who don't want any immigrants to come into this country, no matter who they are.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They're in the minority, the majority, however, led by Southern Democrats and Midwestern republicans rights and passes displaced persons bill in June of 1948 three years after the cessation of hostilities that allows get that privileges.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To reward a visas to those displaced persons who have come from countries that have been annexed by a foreign power Latvians Estonians Lithuanians Ukrainians and explicitly explicitly
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Denies access to 90%
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Of the Jewish survivors why
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Because 90% of the Jewish survivors had come.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: had survived the war in hiding or in Soviet Union.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And when the war was over, Stalin sent them back to Poland, they found circumstances in Poland.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: On imaginable. The anti Semitism has always been part of Polish culture and Polish society had increased by leaps and bounds.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And surviving Jews go into Germany because the only place they can feel safe on the continent is in the displaced persons camps guarded by
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: American soldiers and the American Congress says that all of these Jews survivors who would come into the camps after December 22 1945 we're in eligible for visas and that includes 90% of the Jewish
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Survivors
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Uh,
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Let me just conclude by saying that what I discovered
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Was that it was infinitely easier in the Cold War setting infinitely easier for a lot. Few more criminal or Ukrainian collaborator.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To get into the United States as a displaced person and it was for the Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Why, because we were in the midst Congress was waging a Cold War.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The American population was not
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But Congress had to convince it
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Defense spending or war spending. I do increase. And how do you do that you scare as Vandenberg send the Truman you scare the hell out of the American people.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Congress wanted to bring into this country.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Nothing Nazi collaborators who now posed as anticommunist
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Activists United States was not the only nation that did that in Britain, a group of Lotfi and former boffin S. S.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Members of the fafen s s Lothian Legion were brought into Britain to work in two minds when the English minor saw tattoos often SS tattoos on their arms. The British miners refuse to work without. What did the Foreign Office, do
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: What did the Home Secretary do today restrict the entrance of form of Waffen SS man. No.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: No.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They simply said that from now on the form of often assessment with tattoos had to be put to work in places where they wouldn't take off their shirts.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In by 1948 everyone except the Jews large number of displaced persons, except the Jews had been had left Germany, there was still about 200,000 Jews there.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Truman couldn't get them into the United States no place else wanted to and my contention and write about this in the book can't go into it here that one of the reasons why Truman
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: accepts the partition the UN partition of Palestine and then Israeli independence is that he's got an empty Germany of Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Before he can hand the range of government over to an independent West Germany.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And the only way to get rid of the Jews, the only place on earth that will accept them, the only nation on earth that will accept them is an independent Israel. And so, not simply for humanitarian reasons or because he has Jewish friends or because Clark Clifford says he reads the Bible.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Be cause there is no place else.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To send the Jews, he supports.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Israeli independence.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Immediately, and the Israelis declaring such independence, okay. I'm fine, thank you. And I'm happy or look forward to your comments and to date, its
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Response
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay. Terrific, thank you so much. So David, why don't you
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Sure. Well, thank you very much. You know, this is a deeply depressing but superb narrative history.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: This is my well thumbed copy and I highly recommended to to all of you. There are a lot of important works about displaced people in Europe after World War Two.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: But this one really stands out for the connections that draws between the experiences of displaced people in Europe.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: And struggles across the globe over the question of Palestine. The Cold War and the immigration policies of the major Western countries.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The book doesn't dwell on that history, geography of forced migration, nor is it intended to be a deeply theoretical contribution.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: But it's full of evidence, and it makes a lot of theoretical points without labeling them as such that are deeply relevant for a social scientific approach to history.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Most importantly, it shows how refugee policies are deeply enmeshed in global systems of power and mobility.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: refugee policy has been part of high politics for a very long time, regardless of whether academics were researching it that way.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Refugee studies as a fields and social science approaches to the study of international migration, more generally, I would say are notorious for their a historicism
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: I'd like to keep a box of copies of this book in my car to hand out to people who claim that everything under the sun is new.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: As the text makes very clear. We are not in the biggest refugee crisis in history today, far more many people were displaced in world war two and fact the last million simply brought up the rear
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: We routinely read claims to that today's refugees are fundamentally distinct from the classic world war two refugees.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: A claim that chimney has called The Myth of difference in fact mixed flows are nothing new, as you've just heard the DPS the displaced persons were a heterogeneous category.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Their camps house stranded temporary laborers slaves nationalists survivors of the Holocaust, as well as the Nazi collaborators who had slaughtered Jews.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: It's often remark that after the Cold War ended or after 911 refugee policy has become securitized but refugee policy has always been securitized
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: After World War Two. There was a serious effort to root out communists, but only a reasonable effort to screen out Fascist War criminals, such as the mini stories of camp guards that are told in the book.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: I would invite David to reflect on what, if anything, is unique about that late 1940s version of securitisation compared to today.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The issue of internally displaced persons did not emerge in the 1990s when the UNHCR started to try to count them and extend its protection mandate.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: That neat division between refugees who cross the international border an IDP within their countries border assumes the stability of borders.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: But those borders have often been highly label the post World War Two displaced persons category deliberately conflated people who had crossed borders and those whom borders and crossed
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Many other points can be made about historical precedents shown in the book, but which have been forgotten by those of us who are in a rush to find something shiny and new
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The biggest contribution of the book, but also its most incomplete feature in my view is the connection drawn between the question of displaced Jews and Europe and the question of Palestine.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: And most years since 1948 Palestinian stuff comprise the world's largest refugee population here Palestinians are usually compartmentalised and refugees studies and even ignored in some major works.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: And there are various reasons for the separation between Palestinians and the rest, beginning with the fact that the production of knowledge and refugees studies relies heavily on the UNHCR
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Whereas the 5.7 million Palestinian refugees today fall under the mandate of a different UN agency unrewarded
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: This book helps explain the nexus between the establishment of the post World War Two refugee regime and the establishment of the State of Israel, yet it pays short shrift to the Palestinian refugees created as a direct and immediate result of part of the settlement of the last million
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The chain of events, you've just heard, but to summarize is as follows. Jewish displaced persons did not want to repeat to their repatriate to their homes or were unable
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: But they had been driven out and their families killed, often with the collaboration of neighbors.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Not just in Germany, but in places like Poland, as we've just heard for the Baltic States.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: anti Semitism sharply limited the number of Jewish DPS recruited for a refugee worker schemes, the one we just heard about in the UK, for example, but also from resettlement and countries like Australia who were willing to take other DPS such as adults.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Truman wanted displaces us to go to Palestine, but when British Mandate authorities continued to limit their numbers eventually relented and push the US Congress to accept some Jewish refugees.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: When Congress put obstacles in the way of resettling Jews using the facially neutral temporal provision.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: That we just heard about the requirement to have been to Germany by December 22 1945 which everyone knew targeted Jews who had been displaced twice from Poland Truman, then through a support behind the establishment of Israel.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The book relates that in the spring of 1948 the Jewish Agency worked in the DP camps in Europe to prioritize the recruitment of able bodied young adults to travel to Palestine to fight Arabs in the War of Independence.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The agency attempted a compulsory draft and demanded funding and the book describes instances of the denial of food rations and dismissal from work of those who refuse conscription.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Fully one third of combat soldiers and the nascent Israeli army had been displaced persons.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The archival evidence in the book is abundant it clearly establishes this chain of events as well as how individuals caught up in these dynamics on the mini European and American sides made sense of them.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The large missing piece in the story is epitomized by the claim on page 120 quote, there was no place on Earth, other than Palestine, where the Jews were welcome.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: This is a remarkable assertion and then it overlooks the Arab population of Palestine.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The majority, by far, which did not welcome a mass influx that would lead to a Jewish state and this subjugation or expulsion of the Arab population.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The statement feeds into a myth that Palestine was, quote, this is not coming from the book, but it's a common myth that Palestine was a land without a people for people without a land.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: These are always controversial issues to put it very mildly any statement any treatment of these issues and a book will engender outrage sensation from some quarter.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: And the book twice takes an explicit pass on whether Zionist forces in 48 intended to expel the Arab population or whether displacement was simply a byproduct of war.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: But the authors cited in the footnotes naming Lee Ilana puppy and Benny Morris who have different accounts, but together they lay out a compelling case based on their work and is really archives
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: That direct ethnic cleansing accounted for at least half of Palestinian displacements in 1948
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: They both agree on that. But ethnic cleansing was premeditated that it began before the formal outbreak of the war and may 48 and that included the actions, not just have the URL goon and the stern gang, but of the main hogging up paramilitary as well.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The book ends by assessing the aftermath of the last million. One of the biggest aftermath is that the migration of many of the last million helped produce the next million
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Or summer or rent put it more precisely in the origins of totalitarianism quote the solution of the Jewish Question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: thereby increasing the number of the stateless and restless by another 700,000 800,000 people, the world's refugee population almost doubled.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: In 48 to 50 as a direct result of anti Semitism in Europe anti semitic immigration policies of the Western democracies which redirected displaced persons to the Middle East.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Palestinian Arabs paid the price a tendency by powerful countries to make refugee protection someone else's problem is not just a distant historical episode.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: One of the major policy challenges around refugees has always been how to create more equitable burden sharing. So the refugees. Do not place unduly heavy obligations on a few countries that language is in the 1951 Refugee Convention.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Now, in many ways, burden sharing is an objectionable term. It can be the him dehumanizing refugees can also be sources of economic and social dynamism.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: But at least in the short term hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees does imply various kinds of costs.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The global South still bears the brunt of the burden 85% of the world's displaced people are in developing countries.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Many of them are authoritarian countries where the public has a little voice about refugee policy.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The Global North continues to do everything it can to keep most refugees far away, countries that resettlement except only a handful every year, not even 1% of the world's total refugee population.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Well, leaving those who are weaker in the international system to pay any real costs. This is not just because of a few politicians and the global north, although certainly the Trump's or bonds and Murdoch's of the world have made this situation, much worse.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The big story of the entire era of public opinion polling, including around the world war two is the public said not wanted to host anywhere near the number of refugees who need sanctuary.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: The pragmatic solution for achieving greater protection of refugees and democratic societies is not obvious that is one more tragic continuity linking past and present. Thanks.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: A sure let me answer.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I agree with absolutely everything you said. I wish only that I had had
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The pages. This is not an this is a bad excuse two pages to focus more on the Palestinian refugee problem. You're absolutely right.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That is one of not simply an irony, but the tragedy of history that the only place to resettle the Jewish survivors or the place where the Jewish survivors were resettled
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Were in homes villages settlements apartments that were stolen from Palestinians and I agree entirely that this was a form of ethnic cleansing.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The ethnic cleansing began and was in motion before the displaced persons arrived.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: So it is a complicated subject that I didn't
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Include in in my book, the displaced persons. The Jews were not responsible
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: For the clearing of the Palestinian villages settlements.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: For the clearing of Haifa for the
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Abandonment
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Of us for the forced migration of the Palestinians.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And they were not many of them were not happy I did an interview with Peter binary
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: who's a colleague at the at the Graduate Center, and at the end of the interview, he, he talked just to try to put a moment of smile in a tragic story. He talked about the
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Jewish couple. He knows who arrived in Israel and were resettled in an apartment in Haifa
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And they were brought into the apartment and they looked around and they saw that it was fully furnished and mentioned it had been abandoned. There was still food in the refrigerator.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And they turned around and they walked out. They said, We will not be part of this. They were a distinct minority.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Jewish survivors.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Believe that they had no choice but to take
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But to be resettled where the Israelis wanted to put them
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Ben Gurion wanted to displace persons in to be resettled in Israel because he knew that the population imbalance between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Was so great that a viable state of Israel could not long survive. So it was not enough to simply displace the Palestinians, they had to be replaced with Jews. There had to be more Jews there.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And the displaced persons afforded him an opportunity to do that at some point, the debate is the Israeli cabinet.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Was whether we really want all these displaced European Jews, you know, you know, we want the ones who can fight in the army.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: We want the one to contribute to the war effort. But there are a lot of old sick destroyed people do we want them in a vibrant, young Israel. Do we want people who speak Spanish, your dishes, the old world do we want people who are victims.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And Ben Graham said we need them all. Every one of them, and why because the Jewish population next to the Arab population was so was so tiny. So, so, I agree with you. I agree with you. Absolutely. There's nothing. You've said that I can
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That I find fault with, you know, I wish only
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Next time we'll write the book together and you can take it. Yeah, you can do that. Other for let me make one other point
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Roosevelt in 1943 understands 1943 Roosevelt understands that the refugee crisis that is going to Iraq explode after world war two is going to be
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: unlike anything the world has ever seen in Europe in China in the Middle East everywhere. And he also understands that the only possible way.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To settle that is through an international organization.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: So he understands that there has to be a global solution with global problem, but he his vision was quickly eclipsed by Congress and by public opinion.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And if I can make one other point quickly.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Two weeks ago.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Two weeks ago, a bipartisan resolutions or bipartisan effort was made to bring into the United States or to provide visa special visas to the Hong Kong democracy dissidents were about to be arrested and imprisoned and Ted Cruz a post it.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And why did it take presuppose that you post it in the same way that opposition was raised to the European districts persons one. It was an opening attempt to open the borders to all immigrants.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And to that the Chinese dissidence the Hong Kong dissidents were probably spies sent by China and we had to keep them out.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Language is you really reminiscent of what went on the 1940s, I make one other point my displaced persons, the ones that I write about were white
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And they were, for the most part, Christian
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And it was not
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Nearly as difficult to resettle them.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In the United States and in Europe and South America.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: As it is refugees who are not white, and not Christian.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The problem has intensified. For that reason, as well as others.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, excellent. So thank you so much. So to the audience. If you would please send questions in the chat. That would be the easiest and I'm going to begin with a question that was sent earlier that that
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Picks up exactly the theme, on which David left off. So the question here from Professor arch Getty the speaker doesn't mention or perhaps
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: doesn't mention with enough attention anti Semitism as a motivation for Western immigration policy towards the Jews, perhaps, it wasn't just the Cold War, a guiding them.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Right now in the book, I am a little, you know, more nuanced and more subtle. Um, what becomes clear is that there is an undercurrent that that. Okay, put it there is no such thing as anti Semitism their anti Semitism Clara anti Semitism play changes its discourse images.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: It's idioms its language. It's codes over time and in the period that I'm talking about anti Semitism is coded as the Bolshevik today. Oh, conspiracy
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That we can't let us into this country because they subversives the revolutionaries. It is an old myth that is promulgated first and often by the pope after the Bolshevik
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Revolution and takes greater dominance in the period that I'm talking. So yes, you know, it's not simply the Cold War, there isn't a substratum of anti Semitism, which remains today. If you look at the capital.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Invasion yesterday, you'll see cam outfits sweatshirts and you also see sweatshirts that
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: 6am, and he 6 million, not enough.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Right. Yes. And on the back of the camp Alfred's sweatshirt was the word staff so
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: And so there's a group of students class an undergraduate class attending the talk and I want to offer. One of the questions sent me by one of the students
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: My question to the author would regard the relationship of enemies. After the war, and how such deeply held grudges and desires for retribution among refugees could be given up throughout the process of making peace as well as how relations gradually normalized
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I'll
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: repeat it again.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, my question regards to the relationship of enemies. After the war, and how such deeply held grudges and desires for retribution could be given up throughout the process of making peace as well as how relations gradually normalized
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Yeah, the relations didn't normalize what happened and I don't know if this was the intent of the question but but what happens is that Americans.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And the Brits, but the Americans more have very little historical memory historical memory disabuse quickly and by 1948
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The sense was that the Nazis had been defeated Hitler was dead. Forget about, you know, no problem. He's gone. Finish. We now have to focus on Stalin and grew Mikko on the KGB, not the Gestapo and that is the challenge facing us.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The much too quickly.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Neo Nazis Nazis sympathizers and war criminals or welcomed to join the American crusade against communism.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, a question from another member of the audience Roberto Sean meant had anyone after world war two seriously considered creating a Jewish state in Europe in some territory, taken from Germany.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Know the Buddhists in the camps hoped to established in Poland.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Maybe you should just tell everyone who the Buddhists.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Buddhists are a group of Jewish
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: socialists and they were strong in Lithuania, Latvia, to a lesser extent in in Poland. They believed it was their duty, the duty of the Jews to try to resurrect the community.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In their native lands that they weren't going to give up on Poland, yet there was some attempt. That was a minor movement.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: To keep one of the displaced persons camps open as an autonomous area within Germany.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But the Americans would never going to allow that to happen. The Germans would never going to allow that to happen. And the Zionists. Who were the strongest in the camps. We never going to allow that to happen.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, another question in a way more about the experience of writing a book, one second.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: And. And the question is, what, what does, what does the, what does the writing of a book like this elicit from you. I guess it's more about the kind of psychological or emotional state involved in in in engaging with a question like this.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Is the time to answer that the
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Time and time again, time and time again, I would see in the era of Trump in the era of Trump where the inhumanity the cruelty that brutality.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Is greater than anything we've, I've experienced or I know of in in US history. It is very hard to try to remind people in a book that the American disdain distrust dislike
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: refusal to accept immigrants didn't arise with Donald J. Trump is any better part of American history. The Chinese Exclusion Act was not a trump Ian act.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The quarters act and 1920s were not trumping max. So in a sense, I wanted to do that. But I wanted to do it in such a way that didn't excuse Trump
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And didn't minimize the current
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Evils and that was very difficult to do throughout as I examined as as I read about the camp guards, you know, demjanjuk's the politics, the
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Bishop Tarifa
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: You know car Linus who lead wonderful lives in the United States for 3040 years in Florida bunch of them on Long Island. You know, I was horrified and when I read about the problems that the Jews had getting into this country.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: You know, I was horrified and when I read the rhetoric from Congress about keeping the Jews out why they had to be kept out it was terrific and you know it.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: It was, it was more than trouble. So the writer.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, thank you. So here a question from Professor David Abraham, I think, to both of you both David's. The only influence that Professor Fitzgerald's comments on the Nakba and the 700,000 Palestinian refugees.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Is allowed the, the only inference that the comment allows is that the State of Israel is illegitimate and must go as Isaac Deutscher once phrased it
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: The Jews jumped out of a burning building and landed on the Palestinians how this is analogous to or continuous with knots extermination project strikes me
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: As true only at a level of generality that is analytically of no use a cruel irony of history. Yes, subsets of the same phenomenon know
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: David Fitzgerald, you want to answer first
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: Let me just unmute. Yeah. So to be clear, I'm make absolutely no analogy between the Nazi extremist extermination as project against the Jews. The Holocaust and subsequent events in 1948 in Palestine, so that I'm glad that you raised that question because that's not a claim that I'm making.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, David national. Do you want to comment.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Yeah. Um, yeah, I did want to comment I became in the writing of this book more of a Zionist than I'd ever been. I've been a fierce opponent of
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Israeli imperialism is rarely aggression and remain so. On the other hand, in doing the research for this book when it became clear to me that the Jewish survivors could not remain in Europe, the Americans didn't want him the Canadians didn't want him to Australians didn't want them.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: It refocus my thinking on the Zionist project.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Is again an irony of history, a tragedy of history that this is the way it turned out. It is the world, the Americans and the British perpetuated a crime against the Palestinians by making it impossible for the Jews to be resettled anywhere else on Earth.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay. A further question now from students in the class and asking how you think the anti Semitism of the post World War two, or even pre world war two period parallels Islamophobia today.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Wow.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Um,
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I can, I can answer that I can answer that. The, the difference was that 6 million Jews were killed 6 million Jews were murdered and the world's looked on
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Islamophobia has not led to a similar Holocaust.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay. And another related question from another student how with regards to US immigration policy, how do, how does Islamophobia combined with the perceived security threats.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Of extremists and Mitch, the so called war on terror. To what extent does that parallel or and differ from the anti Semitism and anti communist security concerns of the era with which you are concerned.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Yeah, it is a direct relationship, there's a direct connection here.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The anti Semitism. How can I put the the refusal to accept Jews.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The rejection of the Jewish attempts to get visas to United States written into the June 1948
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Displaced persons bill was based on a false flag that the Jews, the vast majority of Jews were coming to subversives
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Islamophobia is based on a series of false words.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I don't need to go into them, but it's also based on a series of false it policy cannot be written immigration policy cannot be written based on error based on mistake based on prevarication and it was to keep the Jews out in 1948 and it continues today with the Islamophobia that
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Is an important part of our refugee policy and our immigration policy.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay. I'd like to pose a question myself and and that has to do with your assessment of the degree to which American policy was motivated by
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: security issues and and security and foreign policy issues. So, principally the cold. Well, the Cold War as it developed in those years after World War Two.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: And the reconstruction of Germany as opposed to domestic policy issues. I mean certainly some of the literature, and I think this was the way the British perceived it
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Was that Truman was exceptionally responsive to concerns of Jewish voters Jewish voters in New York, which was then a swing state had significant influence law 2 million Jews roughly living in New York at the time.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: And so it's an end in the end, United States let him if I recall correctly, roughly 100,000 she was somewhat somewhat fewer so
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: To what extent was Truman responsive to his assessment of the importance of the Jewish vote, and if there, if there was any responsiveness on his part.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Why was a greater responsive responsiveness as compared to the period of the 1930s, of the 1940s when
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: The Jewish population. The early stage was the same size, located in the same place, but for all practical purposes, no response from the standpoint of the US government, with the exception of two years when the German quarter was fully filled
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Because in the 1930s, Stephen wise and the Jewish community did not push Roosevelt in any way to do anything to protect the Jewish divide the, the Jews in Europe.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Jewish community. It was not. I mean, look at it. Stephen wise Stephen wise was a fervent supporter of Roosevelt during the war in the post war period. What happened is the doing
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And the Republicans take up the cause and the displaced persons and they force Truman to respond, the displaced persons in the Jewish survivors, because the Republicans take up the issue becomes an issue in New York, as well as in
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Chicago and and Illinois
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That didn't happen in the 30s. Now, the British are wrong. The British are absolutely wrong. I mean, the British are it's infuriating to read the Foreign Office records where
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The British look for every possible reason to keep any juice out of Palestine and they are continually saying to Truman
371
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Or talking among themselves about how treatments, a lightweight of treatments and pull a politician or treatments, this, that. The other thing.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Yet the British knew that the Jews had to be gotten out of Germany before Germany could be granted independence as the bulwark in a European coalition against the Soviet Union.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: But that wasn't clear until 1947 and 1948 that wasn't clear in 1946 they didn't get see the Cold War. I mean, all right, Churchill gave his speech, but still, I think that the full awareness of where things were headed wasn't present immediately after the war, no.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I you know I
375
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I'm not sure.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I'm not sure. Kevin rights is utilization of the Soviet i mean
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Kennan and they're important parts in in the State Department.
379
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And in the White House who we're already seeing certainly because of the Soviet actions in Poland that compromises impossible that a Cold War is is on the way. And I think that
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Truman for two reasons. One, to establish an independent West Germany.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And two, because the Defense Department and the military, the military, there is no defense department, yet the military is spending millions of dollars in Germany to support the displaced persons eventually Congress is going to say no.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Eventually, Congress is going to say no money for, you know, we're going to cut back on the occupation forces.
383
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: We've got it. We've got to reduce the size of this client population by closing the camps and Secretary of State burn tries to do it in 46 and he can't do it because of the Catholic hierarchy.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, so here's a question from Professor Stephen bell. Thank you for the presentation, I will be reading your book. I have a research interest in post war settlement projects in Brazil.
385
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Some of this involves ethnic Germans who moved with Swiss help from Austrian deep P camps and archival materials gathered by the UCLA geographer Professor Henry Brahman.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: He was active at meetings of the ICM which was the agency charged with resettling migrants in addition to the IRL and
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: And had worked on the quote em migration project at the Library of Congress during 1944. I don't know what that is. I will be interested to learn if Isaiah Bowman.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Has any place within your narrative treatment, above all the studies, he orchestrated on Pioneer settlement projects from the 1920s onward.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: I don't know what Bowman's dates are don't know Bowman is is active in the post war period that I talked about, but the Brazilians the Argentineans
390
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Brazil is convinced Brazil and Argentina are convinced. I'm sorry, Brazil in Australia are convinced that they cannot survive as viable nations.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: With the populations, they not have they've got to increase those populations and the Australians change their entire immigration policy, the Canadians do as well. And the Brazilians
392
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Welcome the displaced persons as long as they fill certain job categories. The Brazilian send a doubt delegations into the camps to pick and choose displaced persons for resettlement
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, let me read a comment from Professor Laurie heart, just a comment on the musical chairs and post World War Two. Cold War Refugee experiences.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: The political exiles from northern Greece. I've done research with who crossed over to the Eastern Bloc in 1948 or 49 as they retreated from government forces and that and ended up in Poland.
395
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Where they used to refer to the fine quote German houses and quote in Poland, they were given to live in.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Their own village properties in Greece, where then handed over to internally relocated quote loyal populations from elsewhere in Greece.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: So it is interesting to trace the re fractions of how the places left behind by displaced persons during and after the war were exploited as cold war opportunities.
398
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Yeah, interesting it. They're also exploited as non Cold War up for tonight is because the transfer populations between Poland in the EU and Ukraine.
399
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Involves millions the
400
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: X tallies the German expelling the movement of the Germans out of Eastern Europe, the deportation involuntary deportation of 10s of millions
401
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Is, you know, extraordinary. I'm sure a lot of the homes in Poland in that area of Poland, that was taken from Germany. And Felicia and and in other areas that the polls moved into homes that had once been occupied by Germans.
402
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And as the Germans are thrown out of Eastern Europe, their properties are also taken over by you guys lost by checks by any number of, you know, non German populations.
403
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The displacement after I only talked about the displaced persons in the camps. I didn't talk about the Hungarian so the Romanians to be Ukrainians of the polls. There is of fruitful avenues for research hear
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: About the mechanisms and the consequences of post World War Two displacement in your
405
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, there's isn't another question, waiting. So I'm going to come back to my earlier question and ask you, I guess, for a kind of qualitative waiting, how
406
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: How important were domestic policy considerations relative to the foreign policy types of issues. What do you. Which do you think was a decisive and if you could say 40% versus 60% which would you feel. Where's that the central driving force.
407
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: In
408
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: In the US policy.
409
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And US policy.
410
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: How much of it was concerned for cold war in Germany. How much was responsive miss both to
411
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Both Jewish voters, but also to the broader set of forces that got who's that who got activated, as you pointed out by discussion of what to do about the non Jewish constituent members of the 1 million
412
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Yeah, I don't have a definitive answer that question. What I can say is that I think we have downplay the extent to which Truman is not simply a domestic
413
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: You know, Kansas City party hat politician.
414
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Truman in the State Department have there any army of occupation have their eyes are on what's going on in Europe in Germany.
415
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And I think that influences
416
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That very much influences
417
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Immigration policy in this country.
418
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Let me make one other point Truman from the very beginning believes that he's going to be able, you know, I just said true so smart now going to talk about how naive. He was Truman
419
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: really believe that he'd be able to use American influence American loans to pressure the British to open the gates of Palestine, he said to alley and before that to Churchill Potsdam, he said, Look, it's, you don't have to worry anymore about the Jews overwhelming the Middle East.
420
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: 6 million are gone. We've only we're only talking about 100,000 and he truly believed that the problems would be setup he you know he get the Jews out of the camps into Palestine only when that becomes clear that that's not gonna happen in 1947
421
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Late 46 1947 does he have to find another solution, and he knows that he's handicapped with Congress that he's not going to get any place.
422
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: According as far as numbers of the displaced persons hundred thousand Jews may have come to the United States during the war period, a lot of those were German Jews who came and did the German quota.
423
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But the displaced persons my figures show that tell me about 55,000
424
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Hundred to 150,000 got it.
425
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Israel 55,000 maybe come to the United States.
426
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay. And another question for the student, a student really a factual one and that is what was the nationality of the Jews who were in the displaced persons camp. Where did they come from.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: 90% of them came from Poland, the Lothians and Lithuanians and the Estonians had destroyed the mean they had exterminating the Jews. They're very little ball to very few Baltic juice left vast majority with with the polls.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Perhaps you could explain how they survived.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: How the polls.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: How the
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Polish, Polish to survive because they cross the border into the Soviet Union.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Stalin accepted them and then Stalin asked a simple question. When the war is over. Do you want to go back to Poland to stay in the Soviet Union.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: It was a trick question. And everybody who said they wanted to go back to Poland was considered a foreigner and they were sent because a potential subversive and they were sent to the far reaches
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: The Asiatic Soviet Union where they work at hard labor, not in prison camps.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: But they worked at hard labor through the ward and support themselves and to contribute to the Soviet effort when the war was over, Stalin sent off the Jews home again.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: They went back to Poland and finding
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Polling more anti semitic than ever before going back to their homes, their businesses, seeing the admin taken over by non Jewish Christians non Jewish calls, who said to them, what do you do any we thought you were dead. There's no place for you in Poland anymore.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Hundred and 50 to 200,000 of those Jews who will return from the Soviet Union now collected their belongings and FM these
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: And cross the borders, Czechoslovakia Austria into Germany and the displaced persons camps.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, so one one comment from a member of the audience, noting that many of the Jews who fled to the Soviet Union from Poland also fought with the Red Army
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: For me, I'm marched westward.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Yeah yeah yeah that's true. A lot fought with the with the policies in Poland as well.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay, so we seem to have exhausted our audience. So thank you David NASA for terrific presentation and so terrific exchange with the audience. Thanks, David Fitzgerald for a great comment.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Thanks to everyone who has joined us for today's event to my class, we will reconnect at 130 with the zoom link that I have sent you. So let me remind everyone also that we
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Next week we will shift to the emerging immigration scholars workshop that last from 12 to two papers were available upon request. So, hoping to see you again. And thanks so much to both David's for
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Represented his dad did
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: That if anyone has further questions or wants to continue the conversation. I'm a D national ID NSFW a GC Graduate Center cuny.edu and happy to continue the conversation.
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Roger Waldinger, UC Los Angeles: Okay. Terrific. Okay, everyone. Thank you so much. Okay. Have a good weekend, everyone. Bye.
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David FitzGerald, UC San Diego: You, David.
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David Nasaw, The Graduate Center, CUNY: Bye now. Thank you.