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

date (sponsor, visa, exit permit, proof of payment of the Flight Tax and after the pogrom
of November 1938 the Atonement Tax, and train or boat tickets.) 18
Dennis Laffer has argued that the summit’s sole function was to serve as a
“politically expedient means of avoiding action to assist the Jews.” This project was
constructed in such a manner as to guarantee ultimate failure. 19
It has also been
categorized as a “public relations exercise” designed to express a sense of civilized
outrage or moral duty to those individuals rendered stateless and penniless while
sidestepping any changes in American immigration quotas or laws. 20
The hollow
oratory of the delegations and their respective governments demonstrated that the
“universe of obligation” was fulfilled only in words and not in deeds. 21
Guy S. Goodwin-
Gill has argued that the “processes of appeasement in international relations” would have
been harmed if the conference had not ended in inaction. 22
Likewise, Robert Michael
claimed that FDR’s primary motivation was to “assuage” the American Jewish
18 Foreign Policy Bulletin, April 1, 1938, vol. XVII, no. 23, 3; Eve Nussbaum Soumerai and Carol D.
Schulz, A Voice from the Holocaust (West Haven, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 48.
19 Dennis R. Laffer, “Evian Conference,” History in Dispute: The Holocaust 1933-1945, vol. 11
(Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press, 2003), 56.
20 Howard Adelman, “From Refugees to Forced Migration: the UNHCR and Human Security,” The
International Migration Review 35, no. 1 (2001):7. Similar sentiments were echoed by Naomi Shepherd, A
Refugee from Darkness: Wilfrid Israel and the Rescue of the Jews (NY: Pantheon Books, 1984), 133.
21 Helen Fein, “Genocide and Other State Murders in the Twentieth Century,” October 24, 1995, 14
available from http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/analysis/details/1995-10-24-02/fein.pdf; Internet; accessed
October 4, 2010.
22 Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, “Different Types of Forced Migration Movements as an International and
National Problem,” 19 in Goran Rystad, ed., In the Uprooted: Forced Migration as an International
Problem in the Post-War Era, (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1990), 15-45 cited in David F. Good
and Ruth Wodad, eds., From World War to Waldheim: Culture and Politics in Austria and the United
States (NY: Berghan Books, 1999), 93.
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