The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

“international-political” issue that required a solution not based on “charity” but rather
upon global cooperation. 130 Roosevelt, it was believed, regarded anti-Semitic persecution
as a “Nazi germ” that posed a risk of a generalized, more widespread, infection. 131
The British Foreign Office commented that the willingness of the United States to
participate in solving an international refugee crisis represented a marked departure from
its “years of aloofness from the League of Nations refugee work” and, consequently, was
“unreservedly welcomed in Whitehall.” American participation provided an opportunity
to diffuse the refugee problem around the world; an approach to which the League had
proven inept and unsuccessful. 132
There were, however, dissident foreign voices who viewed the Conference with
concern. British Foreign Office official Roger Makins believed that Germany was
attempting to utilize real or potential violence and suppression of its Jewish and non-
Aryan population as a form of blackmail which, with the constitution of an international
refugee committee, would merely serve to “encourage” the Reich to forcibly expel those
elements residing within Germany that it considered undesirable. Such actions and the
potential for the democracies to accept refugees would lead, Makins feared, Poland,
Rumania and Hungary to pursue similar policies of persecution as a means of solving
their own Jewish Question “through the good offices of the Committee.” Therefore, he
concluded, “great caution” was needed in the formulation of the Committee and its
130 National Zeitung (Basel) July 7, 1938. Ibid., 119.
131 L’Oeuvre (Paris) June 26 and July 8, 1938. Ibid., 119.
132 Sherman, Island Refuge, 96-97.
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