Between1933 and1945, a large number ofJews emigrated fromNazi Germany andGerman-occupied Europe. This exodus was triggered by the militaristicantisemitism perpetrated by theNazi Party and byGermany's collaborators, ultimately culminating inthe Holocaust. However, even before the genocide itself, which began duringWorld War II, the Nazis had widely sponsored or enforced discriminatory practices—by legislation, in many cases—against Jewish residents, such as through theNazi boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. AlthoughAdolf Hitler and the German government were initially accepting of voluntary Jewish emigration from the country, it became difficult to find new host countries, particularly as the 1930s were marked by theGreat Depression, as the number of Jewish migrants increased. Eventually, the Nazis forbade emigration; the Jews who remained in Germany or in German-occupied territory by this point were either murdered in theghettos or relocated to be systematically exploited and murdered at dedicatedconcentration camps andextermination camps throughout the European continent.

In 1933, Hitler and the Jewish League agreed to theHaavara Agreement in which, over time, German Jews and their finances could and would settle inMandatory Palestine. Furthermore, the Havaara Mark was used instead of theReichsmark, because of its lower interest rates, and it was seen as more favourable. By the end of the 30‘s, over60000 German Jews had emigrated to Palestine.^[1] Following this, they discouraged emigration by restricting the amount of money Jews could take from German banks and imposedhigh emigrations taxes. TheGerman government forbade emigration from theGreater Germanic Reich after October 1941. The German Jews who remained, about163000 in Germany and less than57000 fromannexed Austria, were mostly elderly who were murdered inghettos or taken toNazi concentration camps, where most were murdered.^[2] Jews were able to leaveVichy France until the fall of 1942.^[3]

Although Jews could initially leaveNazi Germany with ease, it was difficult to find countries that would take them, particularly after the initial wave of immigrants in Europe, Britain, and the United States had been accepted.^[2] One of the reasons that emigration was so difficult was that it began during theGreat Depression.^[1]

Following theAnschluss, the annexation of Austria to Germany in 1938, and forced emigration deepened the refugee crisis, theÉvian Conference was held in France to explore options for countries to emigrate to, but the key outcome of the conference was that it proved that forced emigration would not solve the problem.^[4] Another was a concern that there might be pro-Nazi spies among the refugees.^[3]

It was also difficult to get out of Europe. After the war started, there were few ships that left European ports.Lisbon was a neutral port, however, from which refugees could still travel.^[3]

At the time thatHitler came to power in Germany in 1933,^[5] there were about523000 German Jews (<1 percent of the population) in the country.^[2] Subject to threats and persecution, Jews began to emigrate from that point until the start of World War II.^[2][5] In Austria, more than 50% of the Jews had left the country by May 1939, followingAdolf Eichmann's program to force Jews to emigrate that began in the spring of 1938.Franz Mayer, a Jewish leader, said of Eichmann's system: "You put in a Jew at one end, with property, a shop, a bank account, and legal rights. He passed through the building and came out at the other end without property, without privileges, without rights, with nothing except a passport and order to leave the country within a fortnight; otherwise, he would find himself inside a concentration camp."^[4] By the end of 1939, there were more than117,000 Jews who left Austria and more than300,000 who left Germany. Most of them were trained in a particular field or college-educated. Generally, they were young in age.^[2][5]

Many of the100000 people who found refuge in neighbouring European countries, like the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, were captured and murdered by the Nazis, after May 1940, when they invaded western Europe.^[2][1] As theNazi regime occupied Czechoslovakia, beginning in 1938, andinvaded Poland in 1939, there were more Jewish refugees.^[6]

In October 1943, 7000Danish Jews, and 700 of their relatives who were not Jewish, escapedNazi-occupied Denmark forneutral Sweden, as was coordinated by theDanish resistance movement. They travelled toMalmö, Sweden across theØresund Channel.^[7]

Many of the French, Luxembourgish, Belgian, and Dutch Jews were protected by their Country's resistances, hid in secret locations that were hard to find for the Nazis, and fled to the United Kingdom, Free France (Algeria),Sweden,Switzerland,Spain,Portugal, Canada, and the United States.^[8][9][10]

After theGerman occupation of Norway in 1940, some Norwegian Jews were able to find a safe haven in Sweden, which was neutral.^[7] However, over half of the Norwegian Jews were rounded up byQuisling regime police and handed over to theReichskommissariat Norwegen.^[11]

Jews were prevented from leavingGerman-occupied Poland by theSchutzstaffel (SS).^[3] About 10% of the Polish Jewish population, together with 1 million Poles in total, were rounded up by the Russians and sent to Siberia in intolerable circumstances. Many died from harsh treatment at the hands of the Russians from 1939 and 1943 and onwards. Other Jews were spared harsh treatment, however, and some were trained in Moscow, so as to be fit to command anew Polish government after the war was over. Some of them were sent to remote areas of the Soviet Union, Siberia, or Central Asia.^[7]

In June 1941Germany invaded the Soviet Union and began the systematic extermination of Jews as part of Hitler'sFinal Solution plan, beginning with their removal toextermination camps. DuringThe Holocaust in the Soviet Union, Jews who were unable to flee to the Asian parts of the country were methodically shot.^[7] By the end of the war, 67 percent of the Jews from Europe had been murdered.^[6]

Despite pressure from Germany,Fascist Italy protected Jewish people in lands that it occupied inGreece,France,Dalmatia,Croatia, andYugoslavia, as well as protecting Jews inTunisia, between mid-1942 and September 1943.^[7]

About30000 Jews entered Portugal through Spain, and many sought passage in Lisbon on ships bound for theAmericas. The refugees were assisted by French and American Jewish organizations. Most travelled between 1939 and 1941, and after Germans pressured the country to limit Jews ability to travel through their country, from 1942 to 1944 there were about 7,500 people who were admitted entry to Spain for Portugal. Spanish consuls also provided identity papers so that up to 5000 people could escape through other parts of Europe.^[7]

Sweden took in Jews from Norway and Denmark.^[7]

The Swiss took in nearly30000 Jews, yet also turned away20000 at their border.^[7]

In July 1938, the Dominican Republic was the only country at theÉvian Conference that said it would admit a large number of refugees. PresidentRafael Trujillo did this partially to deflect international criticism of mass killings ofHaitian refugees in theParsley massacre.^[12]

Between 1938 and 1941,Bolivia allowed for30000 refugees to immigrate to its country.^[1]

TheZionist movement facilitated the rehabilitation of displaced Jews inMandatory Palestine, which was a destination for18000 Jews escaping the Nazi regime through the Balkans between 1937 and 1944. There were more than16000 Jews who later were bound for Palestine on boats from the Romanian and Bulgarian ports on theBlack Sea and often throughTurkey for refueling. One ship,MVStruma, was sunk, presumably accidentally, by aSoviet Navy submarine, in what is referred to as theStruma disaster.^[7] The SSDora, initially launched in 1898 asSS Vega, was used byZionist organizations to transport 480 German Jewish refugees, landing inPalestine on 12 August 1939.^[13]

Manuel Quezon, the president of thePhilippines, under the Open Doors policy planned to accept Jewish refugees from Europe. Then aCommonwealth, the United States limited the number of Jews to be admitted to its colony.^[14] 1200 Jews arrived in the Philippines from 1937 to 1941.^[15]

The United States had about27000 available visas in late 1938 for individuals for refugees. At that time, consulate offices outside the US were visited by125000 applicants, and by June 1939, there had been more than300000 applicants. This was far more than the US would allow into the country due to its immigration policy.^[1] TheMSSt. Louis sailed fromHamburg, Germany forCuba, who had issued transit visas for more than 900 Jewish refugees, on a voyage that occurred from May to June 1939. Once the ship had arrived, the Cubans cancelled the refugees' visas. The ship was denied permission to land in the United States and Canada and it had to make a return voyage to Europe. Of 928 returning passengers, 288 were accepted by Britain, 366 survived the war on the continent, and 254 were murdered during the Holocaust.^[1][16] In 1944, theWar Refugee Board (WRB) was established to assist tens of thousands of refugees, in coordination with theWorld Jewish Congress and theAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and an emergency shelter was established atFort Ontario inNew York, which housed almost 1000 refugees.^[3]

Shanghai was an important safe-haven for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, since it was one of the few places in the world that did not require a visa or travel documents.^[17]: 11 The chaos of Shanghai during theSecond Sino-Japanese war also meant that there were no customs officials, and therefore refugees (and others) were able to simply pass by the customs house when they arrived in the city.^[17]: 11 Shanghai experienced its greatest influx of Jewish refugees from 1939 to 1941.^[17]: 55 The Jewish communities already existing in China (Baghdadi Jews from the British colonies andAshkenazi Jews from Russia) welcomed refugees and already had institutions such as synagogues into which Jewish refugees could be incorporated.^[17]: 31

TheShanghai Jewish Refugees Museum commemorates the experience of Jewish refugees.^[18] Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu visited the museum and praised Shanghai's historic role as a sanctuary for Jewish refugees.^[18]

Organizations were established to assist refugees, like theWorld Jewish Congress, theJewish Agency for Palestine, and theAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. There were few non-Jews that helped the Jews escape, but there were some that risked their lives for the cause.^[7] Such people were later amongst what became known as theRighteous Among the Nations.

In May 1945, European Jews were released from concentration camps or came out of hiding, to find that they had lost family members and their former homes. The population of displaced persons also included more than150000 Jews who had leftCentral and Eastern Europe due to violence andanti-Semitism. Countries continued to resist taking in Jews, however.^[3] The most favourable destinations for the displaced Jews were Palestine and the United States; in the latter, PresidentHarry S. Truman issued the "Truman Directive," on 22 December 1945, and up to40000 Jews entered the United States by 1 July 1948. That year, a law was enacted byCongress that increased immigration quotas to allow in approximately80000 Jews, who were subject to what Truman called "flagrantly discriminatory" entry qualifications. About102000 forced labourers and other individuals from the Baltics and Eastern Europe, who were Christians, were also allowed to be admitted to the US.^[3] There were 137,450 Jewish refugees who settled in the United States between 1945 and 1952.^{[citation needed]}

On 14 May 1948, theState of Israel was founded during the1947–1949 Palestine war, and several million Jews emigrated from Europe and settled there.^[3][20][21]

• Expulsions and exoduses of Jews
• History of the Jews during World War II
• Jews escaping from Nazi Europe to Britain
• Timeline of the Holocaust

• Doris L. Bergen (2009).The Holocaust: A Concise History. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 74.ISBN 978-0-7425-5714-7.
• Doris L. Bergen (10 March 2016).War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 124.ISBN 978-1-4422-4229-6.
• Deborah Dwork; Robert Jan Pelt; Robert Jan Van Pelt (2003).Holocaust: A History. W.W. Norton. p. 93.ISBN 978-0-393-32524-9.
• Mike Lanchin (13 May 2014)."SS St Louis: The ship of Jewish refugees nobody wanted".BBC World Service.
• Daniel Snowman.The Hitler Emigrés. Chatto & Windus.
• Bernard Wasserstein (17 February 2011)."European Refugee Movements After World War Two".
• Leni Yahil (1991)."Closed Doors".The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945. Oxford University Press. p. 93.ISBN 978-0-19-504523-9.
• "1938: Key Dates".Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC.
• "German Jewish Refugees".Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC.
• "Postwar Refugee Crisis and the Establishment of the State of Israel".Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC.
• "Rescue".Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC.
• "United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration".Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC.

• Der Ausweg (B23), a 1934-1935 periodical for German-Jewish refugees with information about emigrating out of Nazi Germany, at theLeo Baeck Institute, New York(in German)

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