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

and a ban on “lucrative” employment due to the high Swiss unemployment rate. 11
Following Kristallnacht the Swiss Government, however, honored the appeal of the
Swiss Committee for Aid to Children of Germany to admit a limited number of Jewish
children on a temporary basis. 12
While ostensibly seeking an international solution to the refugee crisis
Rothmund and the Swiss Government was secretly conspiring to stem the influx of
Jewish refugees. He sought official German cooperation in halting Jewish immigration
because of governmental fears that the Swiss population would fall victim to
Überfremdung (ethnic contamination) or Verjüdung (Judaization). Germany had begun a
policy of granting German passports to all former Austrian citizens as a means of ridding
itself of its Jews. The specter of ever widening involuntary migration arose with the
Italian Government’s decision to deport all foreign Jews who had arrived after 1919
coupled with the closure of the French frontier to further refugees. In the background, of
course, lay the countries of Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary and Poland who also
sought to solve their “Jewish Question” by forced emigration. 13
On June 24 Rothmund advised the German Legation in Bern that unrestricted
admission of Austrian Jews would overwhelm Switzerland which had no more use for
Jews than had Germany. Fearing that Switzerland would be inundated by Jews with the
11 “Swiss Explain Move in Curbing Refugees,” New York Times, August 25, 1938, 8
12 “Swiss to Let 1,000 from Austria Stay,” New York Times, August 18, 1938, 10.
13 Regula Ludi, “What is So Special about Switzerland? Wartime Memory as a National Ideology in the
Cold War Era,” in Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner and Claudio Fogu, The Politics of Memory in
Postwar Europe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 235; Shaul Ferrero, “Switzerland and the Refugees
Fleeing Nazism: Documents on the German Jews Turned Back at the Basel Border in 1938-1939, ” 3
available from http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203212.pdf; Internet;
accessed January 27, 2011.
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