Jewish refugees from German-occupied Europe in the United Kingdom
After Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933 and enacted policies that would culminate in the Holocaust, Jews began to escape German-occupied Europe and the United Kingdom was one of the destinations.
[1][2][a] Key decision-making factors about whether Jews would emigrate were whether they owned businesses, which were subject to Nazi-sponsored boycotts; if they were among the civil servants who had lost their jobs; and the degree to which they were politically active.
[2] Initially, Germany encouraged Jews to leave, then they restricted the amount of money they could take from German banks and imposed high emigration taxes.
The German Jews who remained, about 163,000 in Germany and less than 57,000 from annexed Austria, were mostly elderly, and were murdered in ghettos or taken to Nazi concentration camps, where most of them also died.
There was a steady decrease in alien admissions, partly because Jews chose other countries, like the United States: in addition, the law had the effect of deterring would-be immigrants.
This meant that thousands of refugees fleeing Europe after Hitler assumed power were accepted under its tradition as a safe haven, but only temporarily.
[9] For instance, after Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany (Anschluss, 12 March 1938), the British government restricted the number of Austrian Jews who could enter Britain through strictly controlled visas.
Realising a plan was needed to manage the large number of emigrants from Nazi Europe, 32 countries met in France at the Évian Conference (July 1938), but almost all of them would not loosen their immigration restrictions to take in more refugees.
[11] Britain eased its policy for refugees after 9 November 1938, the German Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), although the numbers were limited.
[citation needed] Following Kristallnacht in November 1938, Jewish and Quaker community leaders met with the British government to explore ways in which children could be saved from the actions of the Nazi regime.
[5][9] Between December 1938 and the start of World War II on Sept 1, 1939 when the program was forced to end, nearly 10,000 Kindertransport children had been rescued.
Many trades unions, such as the shoe and bootmakers, "cited the unemployment of their own members as the reason they opposed a loosening of immigration controls".
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1947 jointly to American and British Quakers for their role in assisting Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
[14][d] With the beginning of the war, the British government preferred to avoid internment (but see section below), and needed to weigh the risk of the danger posed by foreigners that wished to harm the empire.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Sir John Anderson, developed plans for dealing with the threat, informed by the processes used during World War I.
[12] In accordance with the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939, the government initiated policies to control immigrants from hostile countries, including mandatory weekly check-ins with the police, requiring permits to travel more than five miles from their homes, and orders to give up maps, cameras, firearms, and bicycles.
[21] Italians, Germans and Austrians, including Jewish refugees, were called "enemy aliens" and interned after mid-1940, when Northern and Western European countries were captured by Germany.
Organizations like the Leo Baeck Institute, Freud Museum, and Wiener Library were founded and became part of British culture.
Notable scientists include Max Perutz, Rudolf Peierls, Francis Simon, Ernst Boris Chain, and Hans Adolf Krebs.
Noted individuals of the arts include singer Richard Tauber, actor Anton Walbrook, and painter Lucian Freud.
[9] Concerned about provoking anti-semitism, there was a decision by the cabinet not to allow Jewish Holocaust survivors to immigrate, but there was a large number of other refugees immediately following the end of the war.
[8] British Mandate authorities gave up control of the Palestine region after Jews rebelled against policies that continued to prevent immigration by refugees or Holocaust survivors.
[4] In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem.
