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

conference. The one remaining detail was the choice of destination and Palestine, Hirsch
believed, provided the best location. However, unbeknownst to him the British
Government, through discussions with the Americans, sought to block discussion of the
Mandate at the Conference. Winterton did allow that a limited number of Jews would be
resettled in African colonial holdings but it was not possible to increase the number of
visas for Palestine. 15
Myron C. Taylor met with Lord Winterton and Sir Charles Michael Palairet,
K.C.M.G., (a Jesuit; Minister Plenipotentiary to Austria at the time of Anschluss) during
the evening of July 5 prior to the formal opening of the conference. The British,
supportive of the work of the League’s High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany,
Major General Sir Neill Malcolm, would not agree to any measures that would lead to a
diminution of the League’s work. Taylor responded that the United States could and
would not participate in the creation of any international refugee body that would serve
an “advisory” role to the High Commission but believed that the refugee organizations
should serve complementary not subsidiary roles. He also acknowledged that it was the
bureaucracy of the Secretariat of the League, and not Secretary General Joseph Avenol,
that maintained “hostil[ity] to the extreme” towards the Evian Conference and hoped for
its failure. 16 A Major Abrams, an official involved with League refugee operations, was
15 Dippel, Bound Upon a Wheel, 231. Hirsch (1885-1941) was arrested following Kristallnacht and sent
to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp for two weeks and rearrested in February 1941 and was dispatched
to Mauthausen Concentration Camp where he died. Eppstein assumed the role of Reich Union president
following Hirsch’s demise.
16 Joseph Louis Anne Avenol (June 9, 1879-September 2, 1952). Avenol has been portrayed in James
Barros, Betrayal From Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, 1933-1940
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,1969) as an ardent supporter of British and French attempts to
appease Nazi Germany while, according to Lord Halifax, seeking to “’protect the League of Nations from
having to decide any questions of principle.’” Avenol opposed criticism of Japanese aggression in
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