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

served as a signpost on the road to totalitarianism. Similar sentiments were issued on
December 27 by the American Writers’ Committee to Aid the Jews of Poland. 157
The international protests fell upon deaf ears. The Polish Parliament or Sejm, in
response to Jews returning from Austria and Germany, empowered the Minister of the
Interior, via an edict issued on March 31, to nullify citizenship for certain categories of
Poles (with Jews undoubtedly serving as the main focus). Those who had resided outside
of Poland in Central and Eastern Europe for five or more years and adopted a “passive
and indifferent attitude” towards the State, worked overseas to the detriment of the Polish
Nation, fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side or failed to return to
Poland when summoned, would automatically lose their membership in the national
body; an act affecting forty thousand Jews in Austria. The law was set to take effect in
late October. 158
When the Evian Conference was formally announced Poland demanded that the
scope of the meeting be extended to Polish Jews. Count Potocki approached the
leadership of the American Jewish Committee and the Joint Distribution Committee
157 Ibid., 99-102, 238-241.. Two years of anti-Semitic violence in Poland culminated in major pogroms
in Brzesc and Czestochowa in May and June 1937. The American section of the International League for
Academic Freedom consisted of 994 teachers affiliated with 110 universities. The officers of the League
included President Alvin Johnson, Vice-presidents Dr. Albert Einstein, Dr. John Dewey, Dr. Wesley C.
Mitchell and Secretary Dr. Horace M. Kallen. The officers of the American Committee on Religious
Rights and Minorities included Honorary Chairman Dr. Arthur J. Brown, Rev. Dr. John H. Lathrop,
Chairman; Michael Williams and Carl Sherman, Vice-Chairmen and Linley V. Gordon, Secretary. The
Institute for International Education, directed by Dr. Stephen Duggan, issued a memo signed by 179 non-
Jewish American academics, including five Nobel Prize winners (Arthur H. Compton, Robert A. Millikan,
Thomas Hunt Morgan, William P. Murphy and Harold Urey) along with eight members of the Committee
on International Relations of the American Association of University Professors plus 59 presidents of
colleges and universities and 107 professors and deans. 33 authors signed the protest of the American
Writer’s Committee to Aid the Jews of Poland and included Van Wyck Brooks, Thornton Wilder,
Archibald MacLeish, Lewis Mumford, Kyle Crichton, Clifford Odets, Genevieve Taggard and Vardis
Fischer.
158 Miami Herald, March 27, 1938, 5A; The Times, March 30, 1938, 13.
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