Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In 1912, Ernest Gruening graduated from Harvard Medical School.

In 1913, Ernest Gruening worked as a reporter for the Boston American.
He became copy desk editor and rewrite man for the Boston Evening Herald.
From 1912 to 1913, an editorial writer.
He became managing editor of the Boston Evening Traveler and the New York Tribune.
From 1920 to 1923 , be became the editor of The Nation., where he issued some of the earliest warnings about Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
He served on the board of New York's University in Exile, which had given a home to scholars who had fled the Nazis.
In 1934, he was the editor of the New York Post for four months.

In 1933, Ernest Gruening was appointed to the United States. delegation to the 7th Inter-American Conference,

From 1934-1942, Ernest Gruening served as Director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions in the Department of the Interior.

From 1938 to 1942, Ernest Gruening moved to the Alaska International Highway Commission.
In 1939, he was appointed Governor of the Territory of Alaska, and served in that position for fourteen years.
He played a major role in Alaska's statehood drive, and was elected one of Alaska's first two United States Senators.

The Roosevelt administration shot down resettlement proposals involving United States territory, or that were near America’s shores.
President Roosevelt proposed moving 10,000 settlers to Alaska each year for five years, half of them immigrants, but added, that only 10 percent should be Jewish, "to avoid the undoubted criticism" of any system bringing too many Jews.
The Department of the Interior drew up legislation for Congress to consider, and newspaper editorials around the country and letters to the government were generally enthusiastic about the proposal to develop Alaska.
Two major Roosevelt administration policy-makers on Alaska the lined up in opposition to the plan, and both were Jewish.
In October, 1939, Ernest Gruening wrote to Harold L. Ickes. "This provision would be universally resented in Alaska,"
Ernest Grruening agrued that admission of immigrants outside the normal quota would be a mistake, and would stir resentment in Alaska, and arouse national opposition to Alaska development in general
In the end, President Franklin Roosevelt not only ignored proposals for Alaska and the Virgin Islands, but undermined them.
He agreed with the State Department that “all kinds of undesirables and spies” would enter the islands disguised as refugees and from there sneak into the United States, and he told Interior secretary, Harold Ickes, to drop the idea lest it “hurt the future of present American citizens.”