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

pressure on the British to open up the Mandate for migration while potentially interfering
with Zionism’s assertion to a historic right to the land of Palestine. Although Ben-Gurion
knew the territory was not ready to accept large numbers of refugees, he continued to
demand a linkage of refugee relocation to Palestine. He anticipated, however, that the
on-going Arab Revolt and its continuing unrest and violence would lessen the prospects
for mass Jewish immigration. Consequently, the future Israeli Prime Minister argued that
the primary goal of the Zionist representatives should be to diminish the harm the
Conference might create to the prospect of a future Jewish Homeland. Only the
preeminent leaders, such as Ruppin, Weizmann and Menachem Ussishkin, should be sent
to Evian, to defend against potential adversity. 2 Ben-Gurion warned that the “more we
say about the terrible distress of the Jewish masses in Germany, Poland, and Rumania the
more damage we shall inflict [on our own position] in the current negotiations [on the
future of Palestine]. 3
Ussishkin demanded that the Zionist delegation focus solely on
Palestine as the site of refuge as “all the other countries of immigration are of no interest
to us.” 4
The realization that the issue of Palestine would be excluded from discussion
dissuaded many of the leading Zionist leaders, with the exception of Ruppin, from
2 Mor, Eretz Israel, 183. Gruenbaum was active in the Polish Al Hamishmar radical Zionist faction but
immigrated to Palestine in 1933. He was appointed a member of the Jewish Agency Board of Directors
and the World Zionist Organization. Ruppin, the Chairman of the Central Bureau for the Settlement of
German Jews Mr. Kurt Blumenfeld, Dr. Siegfried Moses and Dr. Max Kreutzberger for the Organization of
Jewish Settlers from Germany based in Tel-Aviv, Mr. Zalman Rubashov representing the Hebrew paper
Davar, Tel-Aviv, and Golda Meier attended as an unofficial Palestinian delegation.
3 Jewish Agency Executive session in Jerusalem, June 26, 1938, Ben-Gurion in the chair. Central
Zionist Archives, Hahanhala ha-zionit, Protokol, no. 55, vol. xxviii, fos, 6053-61, cited in Vital, A People
Apart, 89-92.
4 Shulamit olko Germans, Jews and Antisemites: Trials in Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 60.
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