Évian Conference
The Évian Conference was convened at the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss the issue of increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. For eight days, from July 6 to July 13, representatives from 31 countries met at Évian-les-Bains, France. Twenty-four voluntary organizations also attended, as observers, many of whom presented plans orally and in writing.[1] Journalists came from all over the world to observe.
The Jews of Austria and Germany were very hopeful, believing that this international conference would provide them a safe haven. "The United States had always been viewed in Europe as champion of freedom and under her powerful influence and following her example, certainly many countries would provide the chance to get out of the German trap. The rescue, a new life seemed in reach."[2]
Hitler responded to the news of the conference by saying essentially that if the other nations would agree to take the Jews, he would help them leave.
| “ | I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews], will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.[3] | ” |
With both the United States and Britain refusing to take in substantial numbers of Jews, the conference was ultimately seen as a failure by Jews and their sympathizers. Most of the countries at the conference followed suit, the result being that the Jews had no escape and were ultimately subject to what was known as Hitler's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". The conference was seen by some as "an exercise in Anglo-American collaborative hypocrisy."[3]
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[edit] Background
The Nuremberg Laws made German Jews, who were already persecuted by the Hitler regime, stateless refugees in their own country. By 1938, some 450,000 of about 900,000 German Jews had fled Germany, mostly to British Mandate Palestine, though the British had a white paper barring Jews from Palestine during the war, (a number which also included over 50,000 German Jews who had taken advantage of the Haavara, or "Transfer" Agreement between German Zionists and the Nazis), but British immigration quotas prevented many from migrating. In March 1938, Hitler annexed Austria and made the 200,000 Jews of Austria stateless refugees. In September, Britain and France granted Hitler the right to occupy the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and in March 1939, Hitler occupied the remainder of the country, making a further 200,000 Jews stateless.[citation needed]
In 1939, the British White Paper capped Jewish immigration to Palestine (then a British mandate concerning which Britain had entered into previous agreements after Arabs helped defeat Ottoman Turkey during the First World War) at 75,000 over the next five years, after which the country was to become an independent state. Britain had offered homes for Jewish immigrant children and proposed Kenya as a haven for Jews, but refused to back a Zionist state or to take steps that might imply the legitimacy of Hitler's policies. Before the Conference, the United States and Great Britain made an agreement: the British promised not to bring up the fact that the United States was not filling its immigration quotas, and any mention of Palestine as a possible destination for Jewish refugees was excluded from the agenda.[4]
[edit] Proceedings
Conference delegates expressed empathy for Jews under Nazism but made no immediate joint resolution or commitment, portraying the conference as a mere beginning, to the frustration of some commentators. Noting "that the involuntary emigration of people in large numbers has become so great that it renders racial and religious problems more acute, increases international unrest, and may hinder seriously the processes of appeasement in international relations", the Évian Conference established the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (ICR) with the purpose to "approach the governments of the countries of refuge with a view to developing opportunities for permanent settlement." The ICR received little authority or support from its member nations and fell into inaction.
No government official was sent by the United States; instead Roosevelt's friend the American businessman Myron C. Taylor represented the U.S. with James G. McDonald as his advisor. The US agreed that the German and Austrian immigration quota of 30,000 a year would be made available to Jewish refugees. In the three years 1938 to 1940 the US actually exceed this quota by 10,000. During the same period Great Britain accepted almost the same number of German Jews. Australia agreed to take 15,000 over three year, with South Africa taking only those with close relatives already resident; Canada refused to make any commitment and only accepted a few refugees over this period.[5] The Australian delegate noted: "as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one".[6] The French delegate stated that France had reached "the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees", a sentiment repeated by most other representatives.
The only country willing to accept a large number of Jews was the Dominican Republic, which offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees on generous terms.[7] In 1940 an agreement was signed and Rafael Trujillo donated 26,000 acres (110 km2) of his properties for settlements. The first settlers arrived in May 1940: only about 800 settlers came to Sosúa; most later moved on to the United States.[7]
Christopher Sykes, a BBC correspondent, claims the attitude of Zionist organization was one of "hostile indifference," since any positive outcome would reduce the numbers of people wishing to settle in Palestine.[8]
[edit] Literary references
In her autobiography My Life (1975), Golda Meir described her outrage being in "the ludicrous capacity of the [Jewish] observer from Palestine, not even seated with the delegates, although the refugees under discussion were my own people...." After the conference Meir told the press: "There is only one thing I hope to see before I die and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore."[9] Chaim Weizmann was quoted in The Manchester Guardian as saying: "The world seemed to be divided into two parts – those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."[10][11]
In July 1979, Walter Mondale described the hope represented by the Evian conference:
"At stake at Evian were both human lives - and the decency and self-respect of the civilized world. If each nation at Evian had agreed on that day to take in 17,000 Jews at once, every Jew in the Reich could have been saved. As one American observer wrote, 'It is heartbreaking to think of the ...desperate human beings ... waiting in suspense for what happens at Evian. But the question they underline is not simply humanitarian ... it is a test of civilization.'"[12]
[edit] Participants
[edit] National delegations
| Country | Delegation |
|---|---|
 Argentina |
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 Australia |
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 Belgium |
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 Bolivia |
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 Brazil |
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 Canada |
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 Chile |
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 Colombia |
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 Costa Rica |
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 Cuba |
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 Denmark |
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 Dominican Republic |
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 Ecuador |
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 France |
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 Guatemala |
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 Haiti |
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 Honduras |
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 Ireland |
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 Mexico |
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 Netherlands |
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 New Zealand |
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 Nicaragua |
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 Norway |
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 Panama |
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 Paraguay |
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 Peru |
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 Sweden |
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 Switzerland |
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 United Kingdom |
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 United States |
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 Uruguay |
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 Venezuela |
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[edit] Other delegations
| Organization | Representatives |
|---|---|
| High Commission for Refugees from Germany |
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| General Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Committee |
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[edit] Private organizations
- Agudas Israel World Organization, London
- Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris
- American,British, Belgian, French, Dutch, and Swiss Catholic Committees for Aid to Refugees
- American Joint Distribution Committee, Paris
- Association de colonisation juive, Paris
- Association of German Scholars in Distress Abroad, London
- Bureau international pour le respect du droit d'asyle et l'aide aux réfugiés politiques, Paris
- Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews, London
- Central Committee for Refugees from Germany, Prague
- Centre de recherches de solutions au problème juif, Paris
- Comité d'aide et d'assistance aux victimes de l'anti-semitisme en Allemagne, Brussels
- Comite for Bijzondere Joodsche Belangen, Amsterdam
- Comité international pour le placement des intellectuels réfugiés, Geneva
- Comité pour la défense des droits des Israélites en Europe centrale et orientale, Paris
- Committee of Aid for German Jews, London
- Council for German Jewry, London
- Emigration Advisory Committee, London
- Fédération des émigrés d'Autriche, Paris
- Fédération internationale des émigrés d'Allemagne, Paris
- Freeland Association, London
- German Committee of the Quaker Society of Friends, London
- HICEM, Paris [21]
- International Christian Committee for Non-Aryans, London
- Internationale ouvrière et socialiste, Paris and Brussels
- Jewish Agency for Palestine, London
- The Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association, London
- Komitee für die Entwicklung der grossen jüdischen Kolonisation, Zürich
- League of Nations Union, London
- New Zionist Organization, London
- ORT, Paris
- Royal Institute of International Affairs, London
- Schweizer Hilfszentrum für Flüchtlinge, Basel
- Service international de migration, Geneva
- Service universitaire international, Geneva
- Société d'émigration et de colonisation juive Emcol, Paris
- Society for the Protection of Sciences and Studies, London
- Union des Sociétés OSE, Paris
- World Jewish Congress, Paris
[edit] Press
The international press was represented by about two hundred journalists, chiefly the League of Nations correspondents of the leading daily and weekly newspapers and news agencies. This is an incomplete list of the papers and agencies, and their reporters.[22]
[edit] See also
- Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938)
- The Holocaust
- The Haavara Agreement
- Bermuda Conference
- British Mandate of Palestine
- White Paper of 1939
- SS St. Louis
- SS Navemar
- International response to the Holocaust
[edit] References
- ^ July 6-15, 1938: Évian Conference
- ^ William R. Perl (1 December 1989). The Holocaust conspiracy: an international policy of genocide. SP Books. pp. 37–. ISBN 9780944007242. http://books.google.com/books?id=SlSDYmjJNU0C&pg=PA37. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
- ^ a b Ronnie S. Landau (2006). The Nazi Holocaust. I.B.Tauris. pp. 137–140. ISBN 9781845112011. http://books.google.com/books?id=UmDZxCedaLkC&pg=PA137. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
- ^ Fischel, Jack R., The Holocaust (1998), pp. 28-29
- ^ Sykes, Christopher (1965) Cross Roads to Israel: Palestine from Balfour to Bevin. New English Library Edition (pb) 1967. Pages 198, 199.
- ^ "Australian Memories Of The Holocaust". http://www.holocaust.com.au/mm/i_australia.htm. Retrieved May 17, 2008.
- ^ a b Crassweller RD. Trujillo. The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator.. The MacMillan Co, New York (1966). pp. 199–200.
- ^ Sykes, Christopher (1965) Cross Roads to Israel: Palestine from Balfour to Bevin. New English Library Edition (pb) 1967. Pages 199, 200.
- ^ Golda Meir: An Outline of a Unique Life. A Chronological Survey of Golda Meir's Life and Legacy by Norman Provizer and Claire Wright
- ^ Manchester Guardian, May 23, 1936, cited in A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge, Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich, 1933–1939, (London, Elek Books Ltd, 1973), p. 112
- ^ The Évian Conference — Hitler's Green Light for Genocide by Annette Shaw
- ^ New York Times : Evian and Geneva By Walter F. Mondale
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Obit
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Photo
- ^ Father-in-law of Julian Asquith, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Asquith; Photo
- ^ History of HICEM
- ^ This list was published by Hans Habe, present at the Conference as a foreign correspondent of the Prager Tagblatt (Prague Daily), as an appendix to his novel Die Mission (The Mission, 1965, first published in Great Britain by George G. Harrap & Co. Limited in 1966, re-published by Panther Books Ltd, book number 2231, in 1967).
