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

have been solved in 1919 if the country had resorted to a widespread policy of
pogroms. 189
The threat of forced mass migration from Poland, Rumania and Hungary thus
played a significant role in the conception of the Evian Conference. Fears of a flood of
destitute refugees from the East helped to shape the terms of the official invitation, the
scope of the committee’s action and the deliberate decision to avoid any reference to the
Jewish ethnicity of the real and potential refugees. Anti-Semitism would be conveniently
subsumed under the rubric of “political” persecution paving the way for the Jews of
Central Europe to merely play the role of spectator in a drama in which the central figure
was increasingly desperate for salvation. The Evian Conference was seen by many as a
beacon of light in an ever more dark and dangerous world but, as will be demonstrated, it
proved for the majority in peril to be a road to nowhere.
189 Schneiderman, ed., American Jewish Year Book Review of the Year 5698, 215-219.
118