How desperate

Otto Frank must have been, trying to save his family by fleeing to the US amid convoluted immigration rules and increasingly improbable refuge in a country that shut Jews out in the name of security. Even with the money and connexions at his disposal, he failed. Instead they were forced to live in a secret annex for two years until they were betrayed and taken to various camps where his wife and daughters parished. Of his family, he was the only one to survive the Nazis' 'Final Solution'. Newly discovered documents show his efforts.

In Old Files, Fading Hopes of Anne Frank’s Family

US Immmigration law at the time did contribute to the deaths in the Holocaust. There was one famous case as an example where a desperate boatload of Jews tried to make it to the US but were turned away, many of whom later died in the camps.

It's important for us to remember that while the Germans bear the brunt of guilt for the Holocaust, we Americans are not absolved. There was plenty of Anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant sentiment right here in the US of A. The death camps were not an unknown quantity to the US government and others at all. But we were not in Europe to free the Jews, but to stop the continued annexation of states. The destruction of the death camps was a happy by-product.

I'm glad that documents like this still exist. People may have perished, but the Nazis never succeeded in erasing them entirely. And with each new generation, we teach our children the lessons of the Holocaust. The deniers truly disturb me, for they are fervent in their disbelief and there are always those who willfully ignore the weight of historical evidence and insist that an event did not occur. But to deny the deaths of millions of people is just mind-boggling, don't you think?