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

position for such a small minority.” Resentment and “opposition” to such control was a
natural reaction which, under the proper circumstances and setting, could devolve into a
“general attack” against the perceived oppressor. “’This is how pogroms occurred in
Russia and Rumania.’” 74 The right wing anti-Semitic Argentine paper, La Fronda,
cautioned that the “waters of Evian bring typhus.” El Pueblo called for immigration
restrictions that would protect Argentina from dangerous “physical, moral and
ideological point[s] of view.” 75
The extreme French Right, like its American counterpart, sought to totally ban the
admission of any political or religious refugees. Journalist Raymond Recouly
commented in the Gringoire that official German anti-Semitism was an inhumane policy
but nevertheless acceptance of persecuted Jews would result in a “violent reaction” in
France. Le Journal called for the internment of refugees within concentration camps and
during the Anschluss Lucien Rebatet predicted that “sooner or later the concentration
camp will become a necessity that remains open to the scum of the entire continent.”
Unless the French Government enacted strict controls on immigration the influx of alien
Jews would result in a “blind pogrom—brutal and liberating… [that would] take care of
everything.” Maurice Ajam strongly supported immigration restrictions in an issue of La
Dépêche de Toulouse (The Dispatch from Toulouse), a strong advocate of the Radical
Party in the provinces. “Racism may be a folly” but it was essential for a “nation’s
general well-being.” The resistance of Jews to assimilation into the dominant culture
74 Gazette de Lausanne (Lausanne), July 11, 1938. Ibid., 108.
75 Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church, 141.
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