Sydney Clark

24 October 2016
Lobbying efforts of Jewish Alabamians initiated the opening of Palestine to Jewish
refugees, a speaker told about 50 people Tuesday night at Spring Hill College.
Many are unaware that the Jews in Alabama were at the forefront of calling for a Jewish
homeland during the Holocaust, explained Dr. Dan Puckett, chair of the Alabama Holocaust
Commission. The presentation of Alabama and the Holocaust was held on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. in
the Price LeBlanc Grand Hall where several students (but mostly elderly people) attended. Dr.
Christopher Puto, president of Spring Hill College, was also present. According to Puto, the
event was a very important occasion [about] an important part of history that we will never ever
forget.
Prior to the start of the presentation, flyers were placed on each seat. These flyers
included a calendar of events as part of the series sponsored by the French National Railroad
called Filming the Camps. Puto began the presentation by introducing Dr. Don Berry, codirector of the Gulf Coast Center for Holocaust and Human Rights Education. Berry gave a brief
introduction about Pucketts background and accomplishments before inviting Puckett to speak.
Puckett opened the presentation with thanking Spring Hill College for hosting the event
and the opportunity to share his research about how the Holocaust affected Alabama and its
citizens. Puckett discussed several themes throughout the presentation in relation to Nazism,
World War II and the Holocaust. He spoke specifically about the effect that these issues had on
not only Jews in Alabama but also within the African-American community. Puckett said, We
look at this period, and we can see the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Certainly, the 1930s and 1940s would signify the beginning of this movement.

Puckett said that one has to observe the Jewish community first before one can look at
how it was transformed. Between the 1930s and 40s, about 12,000 Jews were in Alabama; in the
South, there were about 200,000 Jews, according to Puckett. He argues that Alabamian Jews
were cosmopolitan and very plugged-in to what was going on nationally and internationally
since many of them had family in Europe. Puckett disagrees that America as a whole had no idea
what was going on in Europe because of the constant radio updates and newspaper headlines.
By 1942, American citizens had knowledge of everything that Hitler was doing in
Europe, especially within the concentration camps. Puckett said that prior to 1933, the Jewish
community was divided. Jews had immigrated to the United States and adopted the reform
tradition with the already existing orthodox tradition. These religious and cultural differences
settled down due to the rise of Hitler and created a common thread within the Jewish
community, according to Puckett.
The Jews in several ways influenced the larger community in Alabama about the
occurrences in Europe. Puckett included a PowerPoint presentation that depicted several
lobbying efforts that Jews in Alabama initiated, such as protests, anti-Nazi stamps and pins.
These efforts brought the Jews in Alabama together and sparked a movement to bring attention to
the events in Europe. Puckett also touched on how Nazism and the Holocaust affected the
African-American community.
In the South, blacks were facing a similar type of discrimination: Jim Crow laws and
segregation. According to Puckett, white Southerners displayed hypocrisy by discriminating
against blacks yet condemned the Germans for mistreating the Jews. Puckett provided an
example of a black newspaper in Alabama called the Birmingham World that depicted

cartoons. These cartoons directly compared Aryan supremacy in Europe with white supremacy in
the South.
Puckett explained that the language and tone used in the black newspapers were
constructed in ways for blacks to understand, such as lynched and segregation. During this
time, there was a rise of early civil rights leaders as a response to segregation and inequality in
the South. The Jews in Alabama were hesitant to speak out against the discrimination of blacks
originally, fearing that their race would face discrimination once again.
Puckett concluded the presentation with taking questions from the audience. When asked
about the presentation, Spring Hill College sophomore Mikail Parkinson commented, I hadnt
really heard of the Jewish influence in Alabama during the time of the Holocaust. I thought it
was interesting to also find out the effect that African-Americans had on displaying the white
hypocrisy in the South that appeared early on in the Civil Rights Movement.