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

the lawyers and doctors in Germany were Jews.” 62
The Socialist Medical Association in
London warned that admission of German refugees would threaten the “dilution of our
industry with non-Union, non-Socialist labor.” The Conservative Sunday Express
editorialized that “just now there is a big influx of foreign Jews” into the United
Kingdom who were “overrunning the country.” 63 An editorial in the Palestine Post
forecast the inevitable failure of the Evian Conference. Although nations had voluntarily
offered support to the cause of the Chinese Nationalists and Spanish Republicans there
remained a global “conspiracy of silence” towards tangible aid to the persecuted Jews of
Germany. 64
Echoes of the L’Affaire Dreyfuss and the lack of a meaningful international
response led commentator Victor Basch to lament that the “sentiment of human solidarity
62 Sunday Express (London) March 24, 1938. Ibid., 106. Sir Samuel Hoare, the British Home Secretary,
and Lord Winterton met with delegates of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons and the British
Medical Association, the University of London and the Society of Apothecaries and reassured them that
only a “limited number” (50) of Austrian doctors, undergoing “careful selection” would be admitted to
practice. A special committee composed of members of the British medical community would aid in this
selection. “Austrian Doctors in Britain,” The Times, July 5, 1938, 14. Dr. A. Welpy, the general secretary
of the Medical Practitioners Union, threatened that “much more drastic action will be taken—something to
arouse the whole country,” such as a “stay-in-strike” should Austrian physicians be allowed to practice
within the United Kingdom. He claimed that foreign doctors lacked the proper qualifications to take care
of local patients. “British Doctors Threaten Strike,” California and Western Medicine, 49, no. 2 (August
1938): 170. Similar concerns arose in Australia. Legislation was proposed to mandate completion of a five
year medical course in Victoria or a nation that had signed a reciprocal agreement before alien physicians
would be allowed to practice independently. “Refugee Doctors in Victoria; Proposed Restrictions,” The
Times, July 16, 1938, 12. The British Dental Association followed the lead of the BMA and called for a
limitation on the number of Austrian dentists (50) to be allowed entrance into the United Kingdom. A
similar committee would be established to evaluate the qualifications of these émigrés. The American
Medical Association echoed sentiments similar to their British counterpart and believed that a strict ceiling
needed to be placed on the number of refugee physicians. Overall, the “situation is fraught with difficulties
arising from economic stress, chauvinistic prejudices, fears that have been stimulated by propaganda, and
other motivations.” Newsweek, October 3, 1938, 30.
63 Laqueur, A History of Zionism, 2.
64 The Palestine Post, June 8, 1938, 8 cited in Abraham J. Edelheit, The Yishuv in the Shadow of the
Holocaust: Zionist Politics and Rescue Aliya, 1933-1939 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 190.
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