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

community’s call for aid to their European co-religionists while simultaneously
guaranteeing that “no effective help” would be provided. 23
The invitation to attend the meeting specified that participating nations would
not have to modify their respective immigration laws and quotas and any financial cost
would have to be borne by private relief organizations, although it was clear that only
governments possessed sufficient monies to facilitate resettlement. The refusal of the
United Kingdom and the United States to alter their immigration laws led “interested and
disinterested spectators alike” to view the conference as an “exercise in Anglo-American
collaborative hypocrisy.” 24
Louise London asserted that the United Kingdom chose the
path of “caution and pragmatism, subordinating humanitarianism to Britain's national
interest.” Solution of the refugee crisis posed greater risks than benefits to British
interests, especially in the Middle East. 25
Henri Bérenger, the head of the French delegation, concluded that the Evian
Conference did not serve any significant purpose. It was not an international assembly, a
legislature or a “platform for declarations.” The delegates were “simply a body” which
Roosevelt “desired to create between America and the other continents.” 26
The French
Premier, Edouard Daladier, confided in Neville Chamberlain that FDR was acting merely
23 Robert Michael, A Concise History of American Anti-Semitism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2005), 181.
24 Ronnie S. Landau, The Nazi Holocaust, (London: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1994), 138.
25 London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1.
26 “Proceedings,” July 6, 1938, 11.
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