“The Other Essential Job of War”: Jewish American Merchants and the European Refugee Crisis, 1933-1945

Following the rise of Adolf Hitler, political and trade conditions in the United States prevented department stores from collaborating in an effective boycott against German imports. However, individuals did undertake personal campaigns to bring Jewish refugees out of Europe. Drawing on their networks abroad and influence in Washington, a handful of Jewish American merchants in the northeast took great personal risks to pursue what Ira Hirschman called the “other essential job of war”: saving people.