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עמוד:47
tendencies to the United States . Nor , however , was American public opinion favorably inclined to the Jewish capitalists . There were those in the non-Jewish majority who were angered by the wealthy Jews entering Wall Street , although they did not play a particularly significant role in the stock market . Nonetheless , the anti-Semites claimed that Wall Street was controlled and run by Jews , and that the Wall Street traders plotted to steal the money of the poor in America . The established Jewish community felt that the new Jewish immigrants had brought the “ Jewish problem ” with them from Europe , and that this generated anti-Semitism , directed not only against the newcomers , but also at the established Jews . Mass immigration did not cease until the beginning of the First World War in 1914 . More than two million Jews had come to the United States between 1880 and 1914 . Such massive numbers could not be ignored . In New York , for example , a quarter of the voters were Jews , and they constituted a major political force . In the first half of the twentieth century , up to the beginning of the Second World War ( in Europe - in 1939 , and for the United States - in 1941 ) , the bulk of the Jewish population in America was made up of foreign-born Jews . This changed only in the 1950 s , when a younger generation took the place of the immigrants . Most historians of American Jewry speak glowingly of the influence of the Jewish workers ’ organizations on the development of political thought in the United States , and write that they made a considerable contribution to Roosevelt’s New Deal philosophy . These historians prefer to disregard inconvenient truths . A prominent element of the anti-Communist propaganda in the United States , and of the actions against the Communists after the First World War , identified the Communists as Jews . This obviously was not true , but it was accepted as valid and became true by force of its very use against the Jews . About half of those who identified themselves as Communists in New York in the 1920 s were Jews . These numbers are naturally based on an educated estimate , since no actual count was conducted , but it is assumed that all of the factions of the Communist Party of America , even in its heyday , did not number more than 100 , 000 members in total . At any rate , even among the Jews only a small minority were attracted to the Communist Party and its front organizations . Anti-Semitism spread in America in the 1920 s and 1930 s . American society of those days recoiled from the masses of new immigrants who had begun to arrive in the last decades of the nineteenth century . This opposition was not directed solely against Jews : it also included Italians , Poles , and Russians - all those who did not belong to the Anglo-Saxon group depicted as having founded American society . A struggle , began at that time between those who called themselves “ true Americans , ” that is , those who did not belong to other peoples or foreign cultures , and those who prided themselves on bringing new values to America , thereby contributing to American society’s exposure to other peoples ’ cultures . These latter argued that this exposure enriched the homogeneous community that had existed until then in the United States . Following the First World War , the “ true Americans ” succeeded in having Congress pass laws that drastically limited the entry of immigrants from Central , Eastern , and southern Europe . The problem intensified at the end of the 1920 s and during the 1930 s , with the worsening of the Great Depression , the likes of which the United States had not previously experienced . When the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933 and declared their intent to expel the Jews from their land , American Jews began to exert pressure to open the gates for their brethren who were forced to migrate . More than 200 , 000 Jews came to the United States between 1933 and 1941 , but major forces opposed this immigration . The opponents claimed that there was no place in America for the immigrants , not only because they would change the cultural complexion of American society , but
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