Dates 6 Jul 1938 – 5 Jul 1938 | Location Évian-les-Bains, France | |
 | ||
Zeid ra ad al hussein europe s migration crisis the vian conference
The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938, at Évian-les-Bains, France, to discuss the Jewish refugee problem and the plight of the increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution by Nazi Germany. It was convened at the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt who perhaps hoped to obtain commitments from some of the invited nations to accept more refugees, although he took pains to avoid stating that objective expressly. It was true that Roosevelt desired to deflect attention and criticism from American policy that severely limited the quota of Jewish refugees admitted to the United States.
Contents
- Zeid ra ad al hussein europe s migration crisis the vian conference
- Background
- Proceedings
- Consequences
- Private organizations
- Press
- References
The conference was attended by representatives from 32 countries, and 24 voluntary organizations also attended as observers, presenting plans either orally or in writing. Golda Meir, the attendee from British Mandate Palestine, was not permitted to speak or to participate in the proceedings except as an observer. Some 200 international journalists gathered at Évian to observe and report on the meeting.
The dispossessed and displaced Jews of Austria and Germany were hopeful that this international conference would lead to acceptance of more refugees and 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."
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.
The conference was ultimately doomed, as delegations from the 32 participating nations failed to come to any agreement about accepting the Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich. Only two countries, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, increased their quotas. The conference thus inadvertently proved to be a useful propaganda tool for the Nazis.
Background
The Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews, who were already persecuted by the Hitler regime, of their German citizenship. They were classified as "subjects" and became stateless in their own country. By 1938, some 450,000 of about 900,000 German Jews were expelled or fled Germany, mostly to France and British Mandate Palestine, where the massive wave of migrants led to an Arab uprising. When Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, and applied German racial laws, the 200,000 Jews of Austria became stateless.
Hitler's expansion was accompanied by a rise in vicious and violent anti-Semitic fascist movements across Europe and the Middle East. Significantly antisemitic governments came to power in Poland (from 1935 the government boycotted its own Jewish population), Hungary and Romania, where Jews had always been second class citizens. Thus the numbers of Jews trying to leave Europe was in the millions, while Jews were perceived as an undesirable and socially damaging population with popular academic theories arguing that Jews damaged the "racial hygiene" or "eugenics" of nations where they were resident and engaged in conspirative behaviour.
Before the Conference the United States and Britain made a critical 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. Britain administered Palestine as a "Jewish National Home" under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate.
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.
The United States sent no government official to the conference. Instead Roosevelt's friend, the American businessman Myron C. Taylor, represented the U.S. with James G. McDonald as his advisor. The U.S. 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 exceeded this quota by 10,000. During the same period Britain accepted almost the same number of German Jews. Australia agreed to take 15,000 over three years, 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. The Australian delegate T. W. White 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 countries willing to accept a large number of Jews were the Dominican Republic, which offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees on generous terms, and later Costa Rica. In 1940 an agreement was signed and Rafael Trujillo donated 26,000 acres (110 km2) of his properties near the town of Sosúa for settlements. The first settlers arrived in May 1940: only about 800 settlers came to Sosúa; most later moved on to the United States. The Sosúa Virtual museum is a living memorial to the settlers.
Consequences
The result of the failure of the conference was that the Jews had no escape and were ultimately subject to what was known as Hitler's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Two months after Évian, in September 1938, Britain and France granted Hitler the right to occupy the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, which made a further 120,000 Jews stateless. In November 1938, on Kristallnacht, a massive pogrom across the Third Reich was accompanied by the destruction of over 1,000 synagogues, massacres and the arbitrary arrest of tens of thousands of Jews. In March 1939, Hitler occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which now took in a further 180,000 Jews, while in May 1939 the British issued the notorious White Paper, which barred Jews from entering Palestine or buying land there. Following their occupation of Poland in late 1939 and invasion of Russia in 1941, the Germans embarked on a program of systematically killing all Jews in Europe. In this, the Nazis had local assistance in at least some cases. Sémelin argued that local help was virtually always required to identify and organize the removal of Jews. Over 99% of Denmark's Jewish population survived the Holocaust due to local resistance.
Private organizations
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.