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

“exemplary efficiency and dispatch” that it was completed over the course of one
afternoon. 7
Representatives of Austrian refugee organizations were barred from attending
any of the meetings. Artur Rosenberg, representing the Federation of Austrian Exiles,
labeled such a restriction as “scandalous [as] the committee was called to discuss our own
people.” 8 He had informed the American delegation that seventy-five percent of Austrian
citizens would leave Greater Germany if allowed to retain sufficient financial assets. A
Nazi Government spokesman, however, branded such a claim as “too ridiculous for
words” and cited the plebiscite of April 10, in which 99.75% of eligible Austrians
supported the Anschluss. 9
The German authorities (possibly Artur Seyss-Inquart himself) sent two Austrian
Jews, Professor Heinrich Neumann von Hethars, a noted otorhinolaryngologist and Dr.
Joseph Loewenherz, head of the Jewish community in Vienna, to the meeting and were
rumored to have been authorized to seek specific proposals that would increase the
facility and rate of Jewish emigration. 10
It was reported that Neumann bore an unofficial
plan from the Reich Government in which Germany sought the evacuation of forty
thousand Austrian Jews by August 1; a request that Neumann claimed Bérenger took
“under advisement.” The physician claimed that his personal situation was “very, very
difficult” as he was required to return to Germany “with a definite number to be
7 David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), 886.
8 Washington Post, July 7, 1938, 9.
9 “Incident Mars Calm,” New York Times, July 7, 1938, 1.
10 The Times, July 7, 1938, 16.
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