Question

How did U.S. officials respond to initial reports of the Holocaust the mass murder of Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazis?

A. They immediately began to accept large numbers of Jewish refugees from Europe.
B. U.S. officials discounted the reports as exaggerations and refused to ease immigration restrictions.
C. Roosevelt ordered the bombing of the rail lines that led to the death camps where genocide was being carried out.
D. U.S. leaders shifted their aims to make ending the Holocaust the war's primary goal.

Answer 1

Initially, U.S. officials discounted reports of the Holocaust and maintained strict immigration quotas, only creating the War Refugee Board in 1944 after consistent inaction and adherence to restrictive policies.

Step-by-step explanation:

How did U.S. officials respond to initial reports of the Holocaust? U.S. officials were generally slow to react to reports of the mass murder of Jews and others by the Nazis. Responses ranged from discounting the reports to refusing to ease immigration restrictions, ensuring that the official policy did not prioritize the rescue of Jewish refugees:

• During the 1930s, the US State Department made it difficult for refugees to obtain visas, influenced by the economic pressures of the Great Depression along with prevalent anti-semitism, isolationism, and xenophobia.
• As the Nazi genocide began, U.S. officials, including President Roosevelt, had information about the scale of the atrocities but did not intervene significantly, neither by bombing rail lines to concentration camps nor by making the end of the Holocaust a primary war goal.
• The U.S. maintained strict immigration quotas, and efforts by individuals such as Congresswoman Rogers to alter these failed until the creation of the War Refugee Board in 1944.
• After the war, President Truman worked to remove restrictions that had limited Jewish immigration during the Nazi era, but this still met with considerable opposition.

Thus, the initial U.S. response to the Holocaust was characterized by inaction and adherence to restrictive immigration policies, despite some public and private efforts to aid Jewish refugees.