To make sense of the Ukrainian refugee crisis—which today involves the displacement of as many as 10 million people—the media, world leaders, and the public alike have pointed to the Second World War as a point of reference, with the UNHCR formally declaring it the worst refugee crisis since the 1940s.
Having researched and taught Holocaust history for almost a decade, I am wary of unhelpful comparisons based on the relative scale of suffering. But comparing historical events—even the most sensitive ones—to current developments can be a useful and illuminating exercise. When done responsibly, it helps us to contextualize the past and navigate the present armed with knowledge and empathy.
The earliest stages of what many are generalizing as “The World War II Refugee Crisis”—when tens of thousands of mostly Jewish migrants fled Germany in the months immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933—provides some compelling points of comparison to the events unfolding in Europe today. Thinking about the details of that particular history can, I think, shed light on common threads that define European refugee experiences almost a century apart.
Not unlike today, with Poland having received 2.5 of the 4.3 million refugees who have left Ukraine, one neighboring nation took in the lion’s share of refugees in the 1930s. In 1933 alone, France took in over 25,000 refugees from Germany, a plurality of the 60,000 people who emigrated from the country that year. Between 1933 and 1940, France continued to accept a disproportionate number of refugees and asylees (including, after 1936, those fleeing the Spanish Civil War) compared to the other Great Powers.
Much as Ukrainian refugees are currently concentrated in Polish cities, most refugees who came to France in the 1930s settled in Paris. An urban center offered easier access to aid networks and other resources. In Paris—as in Warsaw and Krakow today—refugees were largely dependent upon grassroots civilian organizers and mutual aid associations, and while funding was distributed locally, much of it came from abroad through organizations like the American Joint Distribution Committee and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
A portion of the Jewish refugees who crossed into France from Germany in the 1930s had first migrated to Germany—a country they perceived as friendly toward Jews—from Eastern Europe, and therefore underwent a doubled refugee experience. Similarly, many Ukrainian refugees now in Poland and elsewhere in Europe previously fled their homes in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, or regions of the Donbas. They too represent a group forced make the decision to flee and start over not once, but twice.
In both scenarios, individuals remain in transit for lengthy periods. Many of the refugees arriving in Poland today do not see it as their new permanent home; they either retain the hope of returning to Ukraine in the near future or look to other nations as their final destination. Similarly, a number of the refugees in 1930s Paris did not intend to stay in France indefinitely. For them, France was supposed to be a temporary stopping ground on a longer journey west, but strict immigration quotas put in place by the United Kingdom, the United States, and other nations prevented their migration onward. As a result, many found themselves under Nazi control once again after Germany invaded France in 1940.
In 1930s France, refugees were subject to different treatment depending on their nationality of origin. Individuals from Germany and Austria, for instance, were considered more desirable than those from further east. Furthermore, while France accepted refugees fleeing Nazism, it simultaneously perpetuated racist regimes in overseas colonial territories. Whereas migrants from Europe could apply to be naturalized as French citizens after three years in the country, Muslim subjects born in French North Africa were not granted full citizenship rights until after World War II. This, too, echoes the uneven treatment of perceived “others” today. As EU nations grant temporary protection to those fleeing the Russian onslaught, the disparity between the Global North’s welcome of Ukrainians and rejection of refugees from the Global South stands in sharp relief. Poland deployed border guards to block the arrival of Middle Eastern refugees through Belarus just months ago, migrants continue to perish trying to reach Europe by boat, and the US commitment to accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees (nearly doubling the previous annual refugee quota of 125,000) stands in stark contrast to the harsh treatment of migrants at America’s southern border.
These aren’t perfect comparisons. Indeed, historical comparison is an imperfect exercise. That we now know that Russia has committed war crimes, and possibly acts of genocide, in Ukraine forces us to ask darker and more difficult comparative questions. However, if we avoid generalizations and quell impulses to equate catastrophes, we can use comparisons to place current crises in historical context, deepening our understanding of both the past and present.