In 1941 Dr. Seuss sent a message that, sadly, hasn’t lost its meaning.

[onager]

9. Bill to save Jewish children, 1939

The bipartisan Wagner-Rogers Bill, proposed by Senator Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Representative Edith Rogers (R-Mass), would have admitted 20,000 Jewish children from Germany above the existing quota. But not their parents. This was only a few months after the Nov. 1938 Kristallnacht atrocities in Germany.

The bill died in committee. With the comment that it was "God's will that children should stay with their parents." Apparently God was just peachy with the idea of the whole family being turned into ashes together.

One excuse for turning away those kids was the Depression and the US economy. But the even more financially strapped Britain took in about 10,000 Jewish kids before the war started in Sept. 1939. Many became the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust. That program was called "Kindertransport" and there are several great documentaries about it. Including one, "Into the Arms of Strangers," made by the daughter of a woman who was saved by the Kindertransport program.