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

Walter Nash, Labor Party Minister of Customs, warned that the assimilation of Jews into
New Zealander society posed a “major difficulty” and risked generating domestic
hostility. He feared that the urban, professional and trade backgrounds of these would-be
immigrants would “beat us at our own game, especially the game of money making” and
thus foster anti-Semitism. On other occasions, Nash stated Jews lacked the requisite
aptitude needed to survive on the island nation. European Jews represented too much of
the “clerical type” rather than the “building operative type” that his country required.
However, local trade unions objected to the admission of Jewish skilled and unskilled
laborers who, they believed, would potentially compete for employment. The Federation
of Labor called for preference to be given for non-Jewish forced émigrés such as fellow
unionists from the annexed Sudetenland and Austria. 6
The local Jewish community attempted to persuade the National Government to
admit Jewish refugees on the basis of individuality and not “mass migration.” The “life
history and capabilities” of each applicant would be “known and vouched for.” 7
A writer
in the liberal publication Tomorrow called on the Government to admit German and
Austrian refugees. Such an act, it was argued, to accept a finite but liberal number of
victims of persecution would alter the entire mood of the Evian Conference. 8
6 Beaglehole, A Small Price to Pay, 8-10, 14-17.
7 Statement by Rabbi Solomon Katz, Chairman, Wellington Jewish Refugee Committee, New Zealand
Jewish Review, (October 1938): 17.
8 Tomorrow, January 18, 1939, 170 cited in “The Response of the New Zealand Government to Jewish
Refugees, 1933-1939” available from
www.holocaustcentre.org.nz/oldsite/jewish%20refugees%20website.doc; Internet; accessed June 11, 2010;
“Refugees from Nazism” Explore Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand available from
http://www.teara.govt.nz/NewZealanders/NewZealandPeoples/HistoryOfImmigration/13/ENZ-
Resources/Standard/1/en ; Internet; accessed February 25, 2008. The Immigration Act was initially passed
in 1920 and amended in 1931.
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