Évian Conference
The Evian Conference was convened at the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July, 1938 to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees. For nine days, from July 6 to July 15, delegates from thirty-two 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] The fact that the conference did not pass a resolution condemning the German treatment of Jews was widely used in Nazi propaganda.[2] The lack of action further emboldened Hitler in his assault on European Jewry.
Background
By 1938, some 150,000 out of about 500,000 German Jews managed to flee Germany, and the territories of Europe recently conquered by the Nazis also had sizeable Jewish populations. Jewish refugees were unable to find countries willing to let them immigrate.
Before the Conference, the United States and Great Britain made an agreement: the British promised not to bring up the fact that the U.S. was not filling its immigration quotas, and the Americans refrained from mentioning Palestine as a possible destination for the refugees.[citation needed]
Proceedings
In the course of the conference, the delegates expressed sympathy for the refugees, but offered only excuses for not letting in more refugees.
No high-level official was sent by the U.S. Instead, American businessman Myron C. Taylor, a friend of Roosevelt, represented the U.S. at the conference and stated that the American contribution was to make the German and Austrian immigration quota fully available. The Australian delegate noted: "as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one." 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 many Jews was the Dominican Republic but the offer lacked specificity.
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."[3] 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."[4]
Aftermath
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 Evian 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 off into inaction.
Who was present at the Conference
National delegations
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Other participants in the Conference
Organization | Representatives |
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High Commission for Refugees from Germany |
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General Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Committee |
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Private organizations represented at the Conference
- 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 [17]
- 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
The 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 uncomplete list of the papers and agencies, and their reporters.[18]
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References
- ^ July 6-15: Evian Conference
- ^ quoting from "Voelkischer Beobachter," North German edition, 13 July 1938 from Yad Vashem
- ^ 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, also in The Evian Conference — Hitler's Green Light for Genocide by Annette Shaw
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Obit
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio & Photo
- ^ Bio
- ^ Photo
- ^ Bio
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- ^ 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).
- ^ Bio
- ^ Bio
See also
- Kristallnacht (November 9 1938)
- The Holocaust
- Bermuda Conference
- British Mandate of Palestine
- White Paper of 1939
- SS St. Louis
- International response to the Holocaust