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

collusion of the Viennese police and aware of the probable ineffectualness of the
Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees, Rothmund filed a complaint on
August 10, 1938 with Under State Secretary Ernst Woermann, Director of the Political
Department of the German Foreign Ministry. He claimed that the entry of Jews into the
country has reached critical levels. Therefore, all Austrians seeking entry into
Switzerland would require a special visa. Otherwise, Switzerland would enact draconian
measures to prevent the continued dumping of Jewish refugees. Unless positive actions
were undertaken by the German authorities the Swiss Government would abrogate the
Swiss-German visa agreement. Rothmund agreed to limit any visa requirements to Jews
coming from Austria or Germany provided their passports unmistakably identified the
traveler as being Jewish. The Germans, in turn, called for similar designations to be
applied to Swiss passports. The end result was the cancellation of all Jewish passports
and their replacement by special documents marked by a red “J” [Jude], 3 cm. in height
affixed to the upper left-hand corner of the first page, allowing Swiss border officials to
more readily recognize the ethnicity of refugees. This policy went into effect
approximately two weeks prior to Kristallnacht. 14 Rothmund was described by Adler-
14 Tenenbaum, “The Crucial Year 1938,” 53-56; “Law on Passports of Jews October 5, 1938, 1938
Reichsgesetzblatt, Part 1, 1342; Document 2120-PS, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. IV
(Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946,) 754-755; “The 1998 Wiesenthal Reports on
Switzerland” available from http://www.alanschom.com/theReport.htm; Internet; accessed April 6, 2010;
“The Politics of ‘Transmigration’: Why Jewish Refugees had to Leave Switzerland from 1944-1954” by
Simon Erlanger. Jewish Political Studies Review 18: 1-2 (Spring 2006) available from
http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-erlanger-s06.htm; Internet; accessed June 30, 2010; Perl, The Holocaust
Conspiracy, 77-78; Doc. 5 on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Washington 1963, Series D, Vol. V, in
Adler-Rudel, The Evian Conference,” 251; “Very Important and Strictly Confidential Circular to the Swiss
Border Police” September 7, 1938, available from
http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203273.pdf ; accessed June 19, 2010.
The negotiations between the Swiss and German Governments remained a state secret until 1953 when
captured German archives were released with the publication of the “Documents on German Foreign
Policy” (Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik). There is evidence that during the Great War the files of
Jews seeking Swiss citizenship were specially marked to identify the applicant as being Jewish and a stamp
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