Conclusion

Abstract

Within the broad scope of Holocaust history, the refugee experience occupies a subordinate place. Life and death in Auschwitz, Babi Yar, and the Warsaw ghetto continue to demand historians’ skills and contemplation. The plight of those who escaped the wartime horrors of Nazi genocide has been overshadowed by the camps, and refugees often refrained from drawing attention to themselves in their efforts to assimilate to new environments. Much of the initial writing about them focused on the difficulties of becoming a refugee, the hurdles placed in the way of Jews who tried to flee. Public exposure of the grimly unsympathetic policies of the Western democracies, motivated by selfishness and antisemitism, has led to much more humane responses to crises of persecution since the creation of the United Nations.¹