A Muted Memory.

As horrific as was the Holocaust in retrospect, it is surprising how muted the response to the calamity was in the 1940s. For non-Jews the Holocaust tended to be discussed in the context of German barbarism, a manifestation of the moral bankruptcy of war, or a sign of deep-seated human depravity. Many associated it with the other catastrophes of the period — with Japanese brutality toward prisoners of war, Japanese medical experimentation in Manchuria, and the Bataan death march in the Philippines; with the Lidice massacre and the murders in Katyn Forest; with scorched-earth warfare in Russia; with carpet bombing of European cities; and with V-2 rockets and the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Refugee Policy.

As terrible as these events were, to a great extent they paled before the intentional, systematic extermination of 9 million innocent human...