Everything about Slattery Report totally explained
A report entitled "The Problem of Alaskan Development”, produced by the United States Department of the Interior under
Secretary Harold L. Ickes in 1939-40, is more usually called the
Slattery Report, after
Harry A. Slattery, who was undersecretary of the Interior. The report, which dealt with
Alaskan development through immigration, included a proposal to move European refugees, especially
Jews from Nazi Germany and
Austria, to four locations in
Alaska, including
Baranof Island, the
Matsu Valley and
Sitka.
Skagway,
Petersburg and
Seward were the only towns to endorse the proposal.
In November 1938, two weeks after
Kristallnacht, Ickes proposed the use of Alaska as a "haven for Jewish refugees from Germany and other areas in Europe where the Jews are subjected to oppressive restrictions". Resettlement in Alaska would allow the refugees to bypass normal
immigration quotas, because Alaska was a
territory and not a
state. That summer Ickes had toured Alaska and met with local officials to discuss improving the local economy and bolstering security in a territory viewed as vulnerable to
Japanese attack. Ickes thought European Jews might be the solution.
In his proposal, Ickes pointed out that 200 families from the
dustbowl had settled in Alaska's
Matanuska Valley. The plan was introduced as a bill by
Senator William King (
Utah) and 's Democratic
Representative Franck Havenner (
California), both
Democrats. The Alaska proposal won the support of theologian
Paul Tillich, the
Federal Council of Churches, and the
American Friends Service Committee.
But the plan but won little support from
American Jews, with the exception of the
Labor Zionists of America. Most Jews agreed with Rabbi
Stephen Wise, president of the
American Jewish Congress, that adoption of the Alaska proposal would deliver "a wrong and hurtful impression ... that Jews are taking over some part of the country for settlement". The plan was dealt a severe blow when Roosevelt told Ickes that he insisted on limiting the number of refugees to 10,000 a year for five years, and with a further restriction that Jews not make up more than 10% of the refugees. Roosevelt never mentioned the Alaska proposal in public, and without his support the plan died.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is an 2007 alternate-history novel by
Michael Chabon about a Jewish Yiddish-speaking territory in Sitka.
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