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

However, by the time of the July conference the Argentine Government had
enacted a variety of immigration barriers such as the requirement of a special landing
permit issued by the Central Immigration Department located in Buenos Aires. This
prerequisite was designed to guarantee the selected entry of refugees with agricultural
backgrounds who possessed sufficient financial assets to re-establish themselves in a new
location despite the fact that the majority of the immigrants were middle-class Jews from
urban areas. 5,178 Jews were admitted during 1937 but only 1,050 in 1938. 100
The Argentine reaction to the plight of Jewish refugees had been foretold by
popular and national reaction to the Anschluss. The Catholic press in Argentina
denounced the German annexation of Austria. El Pueblo, the Catholic newspaper of
Buenos Aires, had viewed the earlier Dollfuss Government as the epitome of social
dogma as espoused by Pope Leo XIII and Pius XI and viewed the Anschluss as an
“Austrian tragedy” facilitated by international “collaboration” with the Reich. Little
attention or sympathy was focused on the plight and potential fate of Austrian Jews or on
German anti-Semitism. In fact, in January 1938, Gustavo Franceschi, the editor of
Criterio, expressed his support for an Ecuadoran edict that ordered the expulsion of all
Jews from that country. The Jewish Question in Central Europe was, many Argentine
Catholics and nationalists believed, the result of Jewish perfidy rather than anti-Semitic
governmental policies. The mass arrests of “the financiers of Vienna” were described, of
whom the majority were highlighted as “Jews.” Jewish press attempts to counter Nazi
anti-Semitism were portrayed by Church spokesmen in Argentina as “an expression of
100 Haim Avni, Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of
Alabama Press, 1991) 143; William F. Perl, The Holocaust Conspiracy: An International Policy of
Genocide (NY: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1989), 44. Each landing permit would have to be studied and
approved by representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Relations, Agriculture and Interior.
190