was there ever an official thanks from Jewish people to the Protestants of America?

What you are thinking of was only a response to & part of the relationship development of the Catholic Church to the Jewish population by Pope John Paul II when HE OFFICIALLY APOLOGIZED to the Jews for what the Church did for centuries to them & did during the Holocaust.

It's not at all a thank you your making it out to be, just a kind way of acknowledging the Pope nobel actions towards us only 20-30 years ago after 2000 years of brutality at us.

As for thanking the US military for it's efforts, well there is the debate on why Roosevelt knew what was happening in the camps, but didn't bomb the train lines to stop it, or even the camps themselves.

As for personal efforts of sacrifices, when appropriate, yes Jews are gracious & have said thank you. Victims & free-ers have forged lifelong friendships, & officially statements have been made. Israel has a very good relationship with Germany -- so obviously Jews have been amazingly resilent about moving on & forming good relationships.

However, you still haven't apologized for all the ways in which Jewish & other Holocaust victims lives weren't saved, nor does your question acknowledge all of that. People here in U.S. weren't politically fighting to free Jews. They were fighting for their own freedoms & to support European allies. Look at the posters of the day & the news media published. You see nothing about jews & everything about themselves. Furthermore, in polls at the time the population thought less than half but still plenty that maybe the Jews deserved whatever they got.

Even your question has a fatal flaw showing that you have a "problem" with Jews. You don't mention all the other groups killed & their apologies or thank yous. Roma for instance should thank people for killing millions of them too.

Your ablity to find yet another way to attack Jews for the Holocaust in some other format, is sickening. Jews have been very appropriate & gracious. You may want to check out this site for yourself & see what you can find:

http://www.nizkor.org/

====

Ocean was not the problem. They have these things called ships. It was getting papers to inmigrate. Ships were turned BACK with Holocaust refugees. (It wasn't the Exodus - what's the name anyone), of the one the US refused entry to & most of the people on it died in camps afterward. And this was only one example, but a very public one. I see someone found it - it's was the St. Louis. The Vietnamese boat people escaped in boats but were refused entrance everywhere. Only Israel picked them up. So, same thing has happened since.

Note too, while German Jews had some inking of what was going on & to flee, NO ONE expected the quick conquer of so many other countries & the rest of European Jews to need get out that early. By the time they tried...it was much harder & way too late.

Hm...in "Constantine's Sword," there appears to be documentation that Jews were deported by German SS squads or einsatzgruppen right there under the windows of the Holy See. I wonder how much help the church really gave when it didn't object to the Nazis' treatment of Jews, but had plenty to say about the Nazis' idea of euthanizing the sick, deformed, and disabled. So much to say, in fact, that Hitler abandoned that idea.

EDIT--It further makes me wonder when there in fact WAS an organized effort on the part of the church to aid former Nazis in escaping from prosecution. They helped to forge ID's, passports, and other documentation to help the former Nazis evade authorities. Just think of how many Jews' lives could have been saved if the Church had done that for them.

It seems that the Jews don't owe the Americans any more thanks than they owe the British or the Russians or the Canadians or the Australians or the New Zealanders who eventually broke the Nazi war machine.

EDIT--you are confusing having a nation full of Christians with being a Christian nation. Our laws, our governance, and our policies are not based on Christianity. No sect of Christianity is the state religino in the US. There is no such thing as a de fecto religion.

EDIT--There isn't a de facto language either. The US has a majority language: English, but no official language. From Florida to California, the majority language was Spanish for a long time. Florida was Spanish far longer than it was English, and in fact, Florida is has a prominently Spanish language sector from Gainesville to Miami. Then you have the Irish Gaelic-speaking sector of Georgia and the Carolinas. Don't get confused: the US has never, ever been English-only. It's just English-predominant, but even that's a fairly recent development in our history.

Oh, you mean the same Protestants that put a limit on how many Jewish refugees were allowed into their United States? They'll never get a thank you I hope.

The ocean didn't make it impossible, they were turned away AT ELLIS ISLAND. That's the poorest excuse I've ever heard.

And yes, English is the official language of the U.S.

You really need a read-up before you open your mouth next time, your question is full of falsehood and about nothing else.

There was no concerted effort by the US to help the Jews under the Nazis. Helping the Jews was incidental to defeating Hitler, rather than being the goal. In fact, it's the opposite. Hitler pretty baldly announced that he was going to exterminate the Jews of Europe. So countries from all over the world met to decide what they'd do about the "Jewish question." Other countries looked to the United States to see what they'd do. The U.S., which had quotas on Jews (and the quotas were based on anti-semitic policies which kept the numbers low relative to other ethnicities), announced it would not change the quota, and then other nations followed suit. Anne Frank's father desperately tried to get a US visa, but never got one, which is how they ended up in the Netherlands (they were originally German Jews from Frankfurt). Hitler capitalized on this refusal by letting a boatload of Jews leave Germany for Cuba. But no one would allow the Jews on the boat access to their country. Basically, it was a propaganda voyage on Hitler's part to show that no one would help the Jews. There was a book and movie, called Voyage of the Damned (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Damned ). Ultimately, a small number of the people on this highly publicized trip were helped, but a negligible number of the vast majority of Jews were helped. People who did make an effort, like Eleanor Roosevelt, have been thanked. Eleanor Roosevelt begged her husband to provide visas for a small number of particularly notable Jews. Meanwhile, FDR's cousin convinced him to not admit 5000 Jewish children because, "while they may be adorable children now, they will eventually grow up to be ugly Jews." In short, there's no reason to thank the United States as a whole for rescuing Jews. Roosevelt ignored the many reports of concentration camps, despite pleading and begging for action by escapees. All the US had to do was bomb the rail lines in and out of the camps, to end transportation there for a significant period. They refused. It was only after the war that the camps gained any attention.

Let me just argue on your last point; the Constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion (Freedom OF religion; notice I do not say freedom FROM religion); therefore there IS no defacto religion in the US.

NO MATTER WHAT THE CONSTITUTION SAYS??????????????????????????????????????

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???????????????

That Constitution is what governs our country. It's the Constitution that gives Black men/women and women (through amendments to correct these horrible oversights) the right to vote (among other things)!

<shakes head>

Please read this - it should be required reading for EVERY American: http://www.billofrights.com/index.htm

Jason is quite right; do not confuse a nation of primarily Christians with a "Christian Nation". The two are completely different.

Let me add to Jason's excellent edit about English; there have been a number of amendments to the Constitution to make English our official language; all of these have been turned down. The only state that has an official anything is Hawai'i; they are officially bi-lingual (English and Hawai'ian). We have a large number of languages in this country and I urge you to look at some polling places to see their ballots - many are written in both English and Spanish (in most cases). I travel a lot for work and it helps to know a smattering of Spanish in Phoenix and Tucson as well as French in parts of New England. For awhile, I spoke a few words of Finnish and Swedish when living in the middle of Massachusetts!

Edit to Frosty - thanks! I found a complete list of states and territories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_Unit...

Those crosses on graves in Arlington cemetary to which you refer mark the graves of soldiers who were sent to fight against the nations of Germany and Japan, NOT to try and rescue Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Don't you know anything about World War II history?

Deteriorating economic conditions contributed to the political and social climate which both launched World War II and fueled the anti-Semitism which encouraged the destruction of the Jews of Europe. These same economic conditions world-wide resulted in barriers placed against those potential Jewish immigrants who sought refuge from the Nazi terror. Anti-Jewish sentiment in France, England, and even the United States resulted in hundreds of thousands of European Jews being denied a safe haven, which meant virtually certain death. Simple indifference to the plight of Jews, according to many historians, also played a role in the events which led to the Holocaust.

Thousands of Jews in Germany were successful in fleeing before the onset of hostilities in 1939, especially in the early years of the Nazi period. Many of these refugees were able to find their way aboard ships headed for American ports. There are, however, tragic stories of these ships being turned away by immigration officials, and their occupants returned to Europe to face the gas chambers (see story about the St. Louis voyage). Each nation had its own story of how its government and citizens responded to the horrors of the Holocaust. The following are capsules of some of these stories.

United States — Despite the fact that the U.S. received early reports about the desperate plight of European Jewry, procrastination and inaction marked its policies toward rescue. Immigration quotas were never increased for the emergency; the existing quotas, in fact, were never filled.

One example is that of the ship St. Louis which carried Jewish refugees in search of escape from the Nazis.

The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis

After Kristallnacht in November 1938, many Jews within Germany decided that it was time to leave. Though many German Jews had emigrated in the preceding years, the Jews who remained had a more difficult time because emigration policies had toughened. By 1939, not only were visas needed to be able to enter another country but money was also needed to leave Germany. Since many countries, especially the United States, had immigration quotas, visas were near impossible to acquire within the short time spans in which they were needed. For many, the visas were acquired after it was too late. The opportunity that the S.S. St. Louis presented seemed like a last hope to escape. What is not explained is how the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt attempted to intercede on behalf of the Jews on board and her husbands refusal to help The ship was sent back to its point of departure in Europe and as you might guess it the passengers then faced certain death at the hands of the Germans.

gatita_63109

To read more about this incident go to http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/holo.h...

Actually, unlike the British, the US strictly limited the amount of Jews allowed to escape there before the holocaust, which contributed significantly to their misery and subsequent murder.

In the last years and months before the Jews were taken away into captivity by the Germans they tried desperately to escape Germany. The US Government made escape to America almost impossible by Burearacy, I will try and find you a link

English is the official language of California. It's in writing.

We don't care if we got thanked in public or not. We know and God knows we did it and that's all that matters.

There was no organized effort by protestant churches to help the Jews during the Holocaust. And the US is not an officially protestant nation, so your contention is flawed.