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

(JDC) on June 8, 1938 and called for the emigration of fifty thousand Polish Jews per
year as a means of diminishing domestic anti-Semitism. 159 Poland (and Romania) did
offer to attend the Evian Conference with the status of “refugee producer” nations and
sought international cooperation to promote the exodus of their respective Jewish
minorities. 160
Roosevelt attempted to placate the Polish Governments and dampen its calls for
Jewish expulsion by offering Angola as a form of compensation. Confidential
discussions were held with the Poles and the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. The Poles assured the American President that they
would not publicly raise any territorial or political demands for this Portuguese African
colony. Negotiations continued under the direction of the IGCR following the
completion of the Evian Conference. 161
FDR ordered Taylor to support Angolan
resettlement as a “Supplemental Jewish Homeland” and he emphasized the significance
of this project to the “solution of the Jewish problem” as well as his ardent belief that
“Angola offers the most favorable facilities for its creation.” It was possible that
Roosevelt viewed such a scheme as a means of diverting pressure on the United States to
accept Eastern European Jewish refugees while obtaining British support in return for
ignoring the potentialities of Palestine for resettlement. The Polish Government also
159 Yehuda Bauer, My Brother’s Keeper: A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
1929-1939 available from http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/judentumaktenlage/hol/joint/Bauer_joint05-prelude-of-holocaust-whole-chapter-ENGL.html;
Internet; accessed May
2, 2010.
160 Skran, Refugees in Inter-War Europe, 209.
161 Cables sent by Potocki to Beck cited in Emanuel Melzer, “Poland, the United States, and the
Emigration of East European Jewry—The Plan for a ‘Supplemental Jewish Homeland’ in Angola, 1938-
1939,” Gal-Ed 11 (1989): 65, 81-85.
110