Daniel Okrent

Daniel Okrent's new book is The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America.

From the transcript of his Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: It's fascinating to read in your book how Hitler and the Nazis were drawing on the American eugenics movement to, like, strengthen their own movement. They were almost using some of the American eugenics, quote, "findings" as guidelines for themselves. You know, Hitler becomes chancellor in 1933, but he writes "Mein Kampf," or at least he publishes it, in 1925, which is one year after the Immigration Act of 1924 has passed. And you cite a passage from "Mein Kampf" in which Hitler directly refers to America.

OKRENT: He refers to it as - the United States as the one - this is a quote - "one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception of citizenship are noticeable - among them, simply excluding certain races from naturalization." And from there, he goes on to quote in later speeches and writings - Madison Grant becomes a hero of his. And most importantly, the American eugenicists, even the most respectable of them, had for - by the time Hitler takes power in 1932, '33, for nearly three decades, the German eugenicists and the American eugenicists had been working together to develop their presumed science. They were collaborators in a more respectable sense of the word, but then the collaboration becomes deadly and awful once Hitler takes over.

In 1933, addressing a convention of doctors who were engaged in eugenic research, he said, I cannot do without you for a single day, not a single hour. If not for you, if you fail me, then all is lost. And...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Daniel Okrent's website.

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