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

Banker Max Warburg opposed mass resettlement of Jewish refugees due to its
potential for stimulating global anti-Semitism and supported a slower rate of evacuation
lest rescue efforts “defeat its own ends.” He wanted the Intergovernmental Committee
for Political Refugees to exert pressure on the German Foreign Ministry not to increase
the pace of forced emigration. A more orderly system of departure could be financed by
Jewish investment in German companies located abroad allowing, he believed, for Jews
to retain a viable amount of financial assets. By 1938 the Nazis, however, were no longer
willing to allow direct transfer of Jewish assets as had been carried out under the earlier
Ha’avarah plan and would later refuse to meet and negotiate with George Rublee, the
Director of the IGCR. 85 Jewish Federations within Poland lauded Roosevelt for his plan
to rescue refugees but Myron C. Taylor sought, prior to the opening of the Evian
Conference, to evade any consideration of the Jewish Question in Poland by avoiding
official discussions with Polish Zionists. 86
The Jewish Agency for Palestine hoped that the delegations would
“emphatically protest” German anti-Semitism and adopt a “bolder immigration policy”
1933. The organization began in 1893 but lost its autonomy following the 1938 Kristallnacht. During
1936 the association was renamed the Jüdischer Centralverein. Hirschberg was later arrested and sent to
the Sachsenhausen concentration camp but later was allowed to emigrate overseas. Katherine Morris,
Odyssey of Exile: Jewish Women Flee the Nazis for Brazil, (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press,
1996), 116. Robert Weltsch fled to Palestine in 1938 and became a correspondent for Ha’aretz. During the
Nazi economic boycott of April 1, 1933 in which a yellow star had to be prominently displayed on the
outside of Jewish establishments, Weltsch wrote: “This is a painful reminder to all those who betrayed their
Judaism...The Jew who denies his Judaism is no better a citizen than his fellow who avows it openly...The
Jew is marked a Jew. He gets the Yellow Badge...This regulation is intended as a brand, a sign of contempt.
We will take it up and make it a badge of honor.” Robert Weltsch, “Wear It With Pride, The Yellow
Badge,” Jüdische Rundschau, no. 27, April 4, 1933, available from
http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/documents/part1/doc14.html; Internet; accessed March 12,
2009.
85 Dippel, Bound Upon a Wheel, 226, 238.
86 Mashberg, “American Diplomacy,” 348.
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