"The Allies stood by and watched Nazi Germany imprison and then murder six million Jews during World War II. How could the unthinkable have been allowed to happen? Theodore Hamerow reveals in the pages of this compelling book that each Western nation had its own version of the Jewish Question - its own type of anti-Semitism - which may not have been as virulent as in Eastern Europe but was disastrously crippling nonetheless. If just one country had opened its doors to Germany's already persecuted Jews in the 1930s, and if the Allies had attempted even one bombing of an extermination camp, the Holocaust would have been markedly different. Instead, by sitting on their hands, the West let Hitler solve their Jewish Question by eliminating European Jewry."--Jacket.

The Siren Song of Emancipation -- pt. 1: The Great Depression and anti-Semitism. Eastern Europe in crisis ; A French predicament ; Britain wrestles with the refugee problem ; Seeking asylum in the New World : the United States ; Seeking asylum in the New World : Canada or Latin America? -- pt. 2: The unending American debate. In search of a haven ; The war of words ; A Jewish hush-hush strategy ; Scylla, Charybdis, and Washington, D.C. -- pt. 3: The destruction of European Jewery. The start of a genocide ; Militant Jews, circumspect Jews, and doomed Jews ; A statecraft of carefully calibrated compassion ; Should more have been done to stop the Holocaust? -- pt. 4: From victimhood to martyrdom. The twilight of European Jewry ; The emergence of the Holocaust.