Evian Conference

Evian Conference - Conference on Jewish refugees held July 6 to 16 at Evian les Bains in France, on the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The conference was held in Evian, on the French side of Lake Geneva, since Switzerland declined to host the conference. The conference was held against the background of rising Nazi persecution of the Jews, as the Nazi government passed laws that progressively deprived German Jews of citizenship and property rights, rights to work in most occupations and the right to marry non-Jews.

The Nazi anti-Semitic legislation and rhetoric had accelerated since the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria in March of 1938. The major outcome of the conference was the fact that there was no outcome. None of the participating countries agreed to allow the immigration of substantial numbers of Jewish refugees. The key issue, generally neglected in accounts of the conference, was greed. The Nazis would not allow Jews to take property out of Germany. The would-be host countries would not admit Jews who did not have any capital. 

Most delegates made speeches deploring Nazi discrimination against Jews, but in some cases these speeches fronted for openly anti-Semitic policies and sentiments. The conference agreed to create an intergovernmental committee on the problem, which did practically nothing. The Nazi government gloated over the isolation of the  Jews.

Six days after the Nazi annexation of Austria, US President Roosevelt invited 33 nations to attend a conference on refugees. of the invited countries, only Italy  refused to attend in any capacity. The countries that did attend: Australia, the Argentine Republic, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. These countries were all regarded as potential places of refuge. The Union of South Africa sent an observer, and Polish and Rumanian representatives attended in an unofficial capacity. Germany was not invited. These countries were not considered potential places of refuge. In addition, numerous non-government organizations sent observers who were allowed to speak. These included the Alliance Israelite, Jewish Agency, New Zionist organization, Friends society and many others. They were allowed to speak their case to a subcommittee for the record, but no action was taken on their pleas or proposals. The conference was chaired by Roosevelt's emissary, Myron Taylor.

Outcomes of the Evian Conference

The U.S. government resumed the admission of refugees from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, which had ceased five years earlier, admitting the maximum immigration quota for each country. The combined quota of Germany and Austria was 27,000 persons annually. As Czechoslovakia would soon be annexed to the Reich, 200,000 more Jews became stateless.  Australia, which had permitted few immigrants, agreed to receive 15,000 within the ensuing three years, but in fact they only admitted about 10,000, pleading that they wanted a "uniform population."  Some South American countries undertook to accept more settlers, particularly the Dominican Republic. The Dominican dictator Trujillo, wanted Jews to provide "whiteness" in his country to balance out the large population of African dissent. Originally 100,000 were invited, but somehow, only 700 managed to get exit and transit visas to their new home, which was Sosua, an agriculture colony. Most were unsuited to agricultural work, but they adapted. ^ref Britain made promising noises about settlement in Kenya and Guiana, but not much came of that.  

The Nazi newspaper Voelkischer Beobachter summed up the proceedings of the conference in a most objective and painfully accurate article: ^ref

... The development of the Evian Conference so far is very embarrassing for the Marxists, because according to them, it leads to an international legalization of German antisemitic policy.

In accordance with their democratic ideology and political tendencies, the official statements made by the representatives of the United States, France and – to a lesser degree – England, made noises of moral outrage over the liquidation of the Jewish problem in Germany. At the same time, however, England and France were so reserved when it came to declaring readiness to accept more emigrants, that the representatives of other states, who did not wish to speak out at all at the outset, found the courage to express one after the other their reluctance to permit new Jewish emigration.

The European countries did this, while pointing to the fact that they had reached the point of saturation; the south Americans spoke unanimously of the agricultural structure of their countries which permitted the emigration of farmers, not of merchants and city intellectuals. Some of them, as for example the representative of Brazil, let it be understood that Jews often would enter disguised as farmers, only to move to the city at the earliest opportunity.

The representative of the British Dominions made excuses based on the situation of the labor market (Canada), the wish for a uniform population (Australia), or the danger of increasing anti-Semitism.

It seems, therefore, that the United States alone can be considered a target for Jewish emigration of any significant proportion. In his opening speech, the American representative pointed out the now combined immigration quota for Germany and Austria (approximately 27,000 per annum). Beyond this, most of the delegates are convinced, and the Swedish representative said so openly today, that a real solution to the Jewish emigration problem can only be solved on a territorial basis, in which the Jews will be among themselves and where, besides the German emigrants, within time also millions of Polish and other Jews can be settled. The English representative referred to the African colony of Kenya in this respect, but all this was dependent on present developments. Other colonial powers did not mention their colonies at all (France, Belgium) or they have declared that they were not fit for white settlers (Belgium, Holland).

 In his Reichstag speech of January 30, 1939, Hitler used the world's reluctance to absorb Jewish refugees to legitimize the Nazi program of expulsion:

It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard-hearted and obdurate when it comes to aiding them -- which is surely, in view of its attitude, an obvious duty. The arguments that are brought up as excuses for not helping them actually speak for us Germans and Italians.

For this is what they say:  

1. "We," that is the democracies, "are not in a position to take in the Jews." Yet in these empires there are not even ten people to the square kilometer. While Germany, with her 135 inhabitants to the square kilometer, is supposed to have room for them!

2. They assure us: We cannot take them unless Germany is prepared to allow them a certain amount of capital to bring with them as immigrants. (Stackelberg, Roderick and Sally Anne Winkle, The Nazi Germany Source book p. 228)