Talk:Évian Conference

Untitled

I will expand the list, and other information, later, it takes some time. Kraxler 19:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

It's done. Anybody who could contribute with more information, feel free to edit. Kraxler 18:00, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

List of attendees

I have rearranged this into alphabetical order as I think it makes it easier to scan for a particular country. I listed the Republic of Ireland as beginning with "I" rather than "R" as this generally seems to be the accepted convention. Hope you agree otherwise feel free to change it back to how it was before. I would like to add that I found it to be an interesting article and not something that I've seen mentioned before for some reason. IrishPete 23:21, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

In the article it is stated that the AUSTRIAN delegate said, that his country would not like to import a racial problem by leting German Jews immigrate. I think this is a misprint: it should mean AUSTRALIAN delegate as far as I know. By the time of the conference July 1938 there was no Austria as an independent state anymore: it had been annexed by Germany 5 months earlier and had gone through a very violent perod of submission under Nazi-German law and proceedings. Certainly there was no independent AUSTRIAN delegate allowed to take part. And it would just not make sense to let German Jews "emigrate" to another part of Nazi-Germany. The new masters of Austria had set up an office in Vienna which issued "J" branded passports(J for Jude = Jew) for those who were willing to leave all their property to the Nazis. But only those who could get visas were able to emigrate. So it just does not make sense that an Austian delegate said that. banhdaya —Preceding unsigned comment added by Banhdaya (talk • contribs) 10:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

POV question

I'm just wondering whether the use of the word problem in the lead sentence is completely NPOV. It currently reads:

The Évian Conference was convened at the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July, 1938 to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees.

If others feel the same and don't want to rewrite it, I'd be happy to give it a try. Changing problem to question might be a simple solution.

This webpage [1] puts the word in quotation marks, suggesting that they have a concern over it, although that doesn't necessarily mean it's out of place here.

Sidefall (talk) 11:41, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Why not use that modern and more neutral word "issue"?89.240.108.230 (talk) 18:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Interesting - I thought I changed this last year! Have replaced it with "issue" and also made the sentence more general as the refugees weren't just leaving Germany. Sidefall (talk) 21:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

"Representative from Palestine"

Golda Meir attended the conference with the title of the "representative from Palestine." She describes (in her autobiography My Life) how she was not allowed to speak or vote, but only to observe. Yet the press conference which she delivered afterwards was one of the most covered events of the conference, since Palestine was the hot-button aspect to the whole Jewish refugee issue even then. I'm not sure which list she fits into, anybody have any ideas? Rudy Breteler (talk) 04:42, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Allegation removed

I have removed the following allegation from the article:

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.

If this is true, and not simply a "fact" of conventional understanding, it's quite a serious allegation, and therefore requires a reference to support it. Please do not restore it to the article without providing a citation. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 20:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

It's been restored, with a citation. Ed Fitzgerald _{t / c} 02:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Removing Image

The main image for this article is irrelevant to the conference and somewhat pov in that it tries to evoke sympathy for refugees. Are there any more pertinent images out there? 144.118.58.174 (talk) 23:40, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The image is relevant. The largest number of refugees admitted anywhere were the children depicted who were taken in by Britain. Telaviv1 (talk) 12:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

what I find hard to take

What I find hard to swallow is the table with the list of all the delegates and their flags and so forth. All so fine official & important-looking. They did nothing. In part because of their inaction, some six million Jews were allowed to be murdered in the most brutal and degrading fashion. I have made some changes and hope to make more, but that damned fancy list takes up 3/4 of the article. It kind of sickens to look at it. Bloody bunch of hypocrites, all of them - except possibly for the Dominican Republic, though nothing ultimately came of that offer either. Miamosa (talk) 06:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. We know who was there and did nothing. Those no-doers usually try to hide and blame others, but we know better, reading the table. (I disagree about the Dominican Republic, several hundreds of Jews went there, and thus were saved.) That the table has become as fancy as it is now (it was originally just a list), is caused by users who suffer from decoration-mania. this causes a lot of problems in other articles too, but we can do nothing against it without disrupting the whole Wikipedia... Kraxler (talk) 01:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

That's not true either. Britain itself took in 50,000 Jewish refugees by September 1939 including Sigmund Freud and the Kindertransport children. Zionists tend to ignore this help, as the British allowed few to emigrate to Palestine because of the ongoing Arab revolt. By the time of Evian the participants wanted small numbers of rich Jews. Yes, it's "hard to take", but how many of us would want to take in millions of refugees today from Assad's Syria? Not Israel anyway...86.42.223.71 (talk) 22:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

THERE ARE NO REFUGEES FROM SYRIA , THESE ARE ALL MUSLIMS WHO ARE PARTICIPATING AND SUPPORTING THE MAYHEM GOING ON THERE , GET YOUR FACTS STRIAGHT BEFORE YOU POST FALSE REMARKS PLEASE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.145.207.234 (talk) 19:13, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

As of 2017, looking at Refugees of the Syrian Civil War, Israel will take 100 children from the 5m+ refugees, and has dealt with many more hospital cases. The argument is not identical with Germany in the 1930s, as there was a hostile regime but not yet a direct threat to life. It can be argued that Israel is not any more welcoming than the states conferring in 1938; not worse, not better.78.16.38.202 (talk) 11:39, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Holocaust

I'm pretty surprised this isn't part of Wikipedia's Holocaust or Jewish projects. I'll add it and people can discuss.QuizzicalBee (talk) 20:13, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation Guide

How does one pronounce Evian with the accented e?TheThomas (talk) 18:55, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Évian is pronounced like this: three syllables, the first is like the "ay" in the word "day" (or like the name of the letter A), the second is like the "vi" in the word "heavier" (or the name of the letter V, but short), the third (and last) is the stressed syllable and consists of a nasalized a. This last sound doesn't exist in English, and is difficult to pronounce for English-speakers. Overall, it comes out very much like the English word "avian", I suppose, but in French the stress is at the end. See phonetic-alphabet renderings at Evian water or Évian-les-Bains. Kraxler (talk) 01:37, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Background Figures

The figures for the Jewish population of Germany in the background section seem off. The section says that 450,000 of 900,000 Jews had left Germany by 1938. Other articles, however, say that the Jewish population of Germany in the 1930s was a bit over 500,000, and that about 250,000 had emigrated by the start of World War II. So it looks like either the numbers in this article have been doubled, or something else is being counted (perhaps Austria's and Czechoslovakia's Jewish population, but they seem to be treated separately in the background section).Konchevnik81 (talk) 01:31, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

RfC

BAn RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 16:42, 22 September 2012 (UTC)