Also before WWII, anti-semitism was much more widespread in the US than after it.
In fact jew refuges from Germany were often denied entry into the US, as in this classic tragic story:
Exactly. And this is what Hollywood has been rewriting the whole time in WW2 movies, to make the US seem like the good guys against the Evil Himself, while the reality at the time was way more nuanced.
On top of that, the horror of the concentration camps was not well known to the public during the war, and was mostly a post-war phenomenon (with many folks not believing such stories at first, until the evidence became overwhelming).
But it was pretty well known for the british and american governments(since 1941 or at the latest 1942) , and even to this day, some details of said knowledge(the intelligence reports on decryptions on concentration camps communication) are not availble to historians.
One has to wonder why.
Actually when reading more about it, even if the American public would have known, it probably wouldn't have mattered much, judging by later genocides :
""no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence[genocide]. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060541644/metafilter...
Also another book shows how the holocaust was an open secret , known to millions since at least 1941:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805059849/metafilter...
Potentially they could have saved many.
One important thing to consider is that the holocaust has become a singular concept of incredible horror that has shaped large swathes of foreign policy for fifty years. But, if you really want to understand the American populace's war time response (or lack of) to the holocaust, it's important to look at the holocaust from a 1940s sensibility.
First, while there is very credible evidence to suggest that while many westerners knew about the holocaust, there is equally credible evidence to suggest that even the best informed had little understanding of the scale or method of the death camps until the liberations started. At the time, speaking in terms of overall military might, it would have seemed unthinkable to kill off a potential work force. Second, and perhaps more importantly, even if the scale of the death camps had truly been known, it happened in the midst of a war that killed about 70 million people. It was another brutal dimension in a global war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#... — "Every 7 1/2 minutes a high grade person is born in the US" almost sounds like modern tech/startup "some people are actually just better than others" rhetoric.
That's a pretty revisionist phrasing. Eugenics had a much broader base in society than anyone, regardless of politics, should be comfortable with.
From the wikipedia page you link to:
"Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community. By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States' leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum."
"By 1910, there was a large and dynamic network of scientists, reformers and professionals engaged in national eugenics projects and actively promoting eugenic legislation."
"Public acceptance in the U.S. was the reason eugenic legislation was passed. Almost 19 million people attended the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, open for 10 months from February 20 to December 4, 1915."
(citations left as an exercise for the reader)
It was and it is widespread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism ,not only at the time.
For example, story of Kristallnacht and expelling of polish jews to Poland...
Nazis expelled majority of Polish jews to Poland in 28 October 1938. However, Poland refused to accept them even though they were Polish citizens. So ~8000 people (families with young children, elders..) ended up stranded in no-mans land without food, shelter, ... (Among those stranded were parents of Herschel Grynszpan, Polish Jews who was living in Paris. He heard and saw suffering of his family and, on Monday, 7 November 1938, he murdered Ernst vom Rath in Paris. Then Nazis organized Kristallnacht...)
And seems story is happening now with refugees from Syria: ISIS is not really interested to have certain people (only "real" Muslims can stay) in their state - so they pretty much expelled bunch of people. But, for Europe, they are not good enough - as Hungarian prime minister says that refugees "are threatening Europe’s Christian culture" [1]
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89vian_Conference
Held in 1938, the question was to help Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Both the US & UK refused to increase quotas and other countries followed suit. Hitler had notably offered to let every Jewish person leave.