‘Exiles’: Lesson of Tolerance for Today

The exhibition “Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of European Artists From Hitler,” which recently opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is an impressive collection of material by and about 23 well-known artists, architects and photographers who were persecuted by the Nazis and forced into exile in other European countries and the United States (“Guilt and Triumph,” Calendar, Feb. 24).

While the exhibit includes many graphically stunning images, one of the most poignant segments is a short documentary film, “America and the Refugees,” by Chana Gazit, which details how some Americans thought it better to exclude rather than admit the largely Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s Holocaust.

Noting that millions perished because of Nazi persecution, the film recounts the story of the Wagner-Rogers Bill, which would have permitted 20,000 additional refugee children to enter the United States from Germany, but which was never endorsed by President Roosevelt. As a result, half of the U.S. quota slots went unfilled and many children who could have been rescued went to tragic deaths.

While the film, along with the broader exhibition of paintings and other artworks, seems to document events that occurred long ago and might have only a limited relevance for today, it could not have appeared at a more appropriate moment. For at the same time that “Exiles and Emigres” reveals the terrible consequences of excluding refugees during the ‘30s and ‘40s, contemporary anti-immigrant polemicists are articulating views that justify this terrible policy as having been a wise choice for the United States.

In a spate of books and articles criticizing America’s immigrant tradition, authors spurred on by the success of financial journalist Peter Brimelow’s best-selling “Alien Nation” argue that it was more important for the United States to digest the immigrants it had taken in before World War II than to take in Hitler’s victims.

This doomed many innocent victims--including women and children--to gas chambers, cattle cars and crematories.

Indeed, the same commentators who claim that restricting immigration during the ‘30s and ‘40s was sound policy now claim that America takes in too many refugees today. To such thinkers, sending would-be refugees from places like Iran, Zaire and Bosnia back to tortuous prison terms and possible death is better economically and socially for our country than offering them a safe haven where they will be free from persecution.

The rationale is that if these people are admitted, they wind up competing with Americans for jobs, land and educational opportunities. Hardly a thought is given to the many attributes such emigres bring with them, be it morally, musically or artistically--as the emigres highlighted in the current exhibit did. Yet our American artistic heritage is certainly greater because of the contributions of the men and women Hitler did not want “polluting” his Germany, and this heritage will have a lasting effect on American art and culture for generations to come.

More important, in the debate on whether to accept or reject the oppressed, no one seems to consider the long-term moral consequences we suffer from turning our backs on the oppressed, though the price we pay for such decisions may turn out to be far greater than the short-term financial gains that result from their rejection. For those who turn their backs on the oppressed today for simple financial gain may similarly find themselves without refuge as the oppressed of tomorrow.

Through exhibitions like “Exiles and Emigres,” we can learn about the tremendous artistic and cultural contribution past refugees have made--in spite of the tragedies that befell them--as well as the terrible price that has been and is currently paid for the myopia of a limited refugee policy. The creative work of the “Exiles and Emigres” calls out to us not to repeat the same mistakes that were made in the past.