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196 J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR
hearted toward the sufferings of the poor Jewish people at a time
when it is their obvious duty to help.”
Hitler was alluding to the failure of the Evian conference, held from
6 to 15 July 1938 at the famous French spa. It had been convened at the
suggestion of U.S. President Roosevelt and was to provide help for the
victims of National-Socialist persecutions, primarily the Jews. But right
from the beginning the good intentions of the U.S. President appeared
dubious, as we hear from the Jewish historian Michael Mazor: 567
“At his press conference in Warm Springs, President Roosevelt
had already limited the possibilities for Evian by saying that no revisions
or increases in the immigration quotas of the United States
were planned in this respect. In the invitations to the conference sent
to 33 countries, Roosevelt had underlined that it was not expected of
any country to accept more immigrants than were presently scheduled
by its laws.”
On such a basis, the Evian conference was doomed from the start.
The result was that “the free world abandoned the Jews of Germany and
Austria to their merciless fate.” 567
On 25 November 1939 Ehrhard Wetzel and Gerhard Hecht, officials
concerned with racial policy, penned a memorandum entitled “The
question of the treatment of the formerly Polish territories from the
point of view of racial policy,” which constituted a first draft of the future
“Generalplan Ost.” It contained, i.a., a plan for the resettlement of
“some 800,000 Jews from the Reich (Altreich, Austria, Sudetenland,
and Protectorate)” into the occupied Polish territories and of “another
530,000 Jews” from the formerly Polish territories now incorporated into
the Reich. 568
The destination of these deportees was undoubtedly the General
Government, which had been set up officially on 12 October. The plan
followed directives by Heydrich, addressed by express letter to all heads
of Einsatzgruppen, on the subject of the “Jewish question in the occupied
territories” dated 21 September 1939. 569 One of these directives,
the Nisko 570 plan, suggested the creation of a Jewish reservation in east-
567
568
569
570
M. Mazor, “Il y a trente ans: La Conférence d’Evian,” in: Le Monde Juif, No. 50, April-
June 1968, pp. 23 and 25.
“Die Frage der Behandlung der Bevölkerung der ehemaligen polnischen Gebietes nach
rassenpolitischen Gesichtpunkte,” PS-660, p. 25.
PS-3363.
Between 20 October 1939 and 12 March 1941, 6,615 Jews from Austria were taken to
Nisko and other towns in the General Government. Cf. chapter 9.4., p. 316.