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

PART 1:
GATHERING STORM
Chapter 1
“Heaviest of Blows”
“The world seems to be divided into two parts—those where the Jews could not
live and those where they could not enter. 1
“The emigration problem is therefore for all practical purposes insoluble…” 2
The rise of Nazism to the central stage of domestic politics and authority
threatened and eventually revoked the rights and privileges granted to Jews following the
Emancipation of the Nineteenth Century. Jews who had considered themselves Germans
first and practitioners of the Judaic faith second found themselves in a position of
increasing social, political and economic isolation and disenfranchisement. The
application of state sponsored violence and arbitrary imprisonment eventually convinced
the majority of German Jews that continued existence within the borders of Germany was
no longer a viable or realistic possibility. Consequently, forced migration became the
primary modus of survival.
1 Chaim Weizmann, Manchester Guardian, May 23, 1936 cited in A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain
and Refugees from the Third Reich 1933-1939 (Portland Oregon: Frank Cass, 1994), 112. Weizmann was a
British Zionist leader, chemist and first President of the State of Israel.
2 Joachim von Ribbentrop, “The Jewish Question as a Factor in Foreign Policy in 1938,” Foreign
Ministry Circular January 25, 1939 available from
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kGh4aYQrNIAJ:www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso
urce/Holocaust/forpol.html+%22The+Jewisy+Question+as+a+Factor+in+Foreign+Policy+in+1938%22&c
d=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us; Internet; accessed May 29, 2010.
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