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

provided “a spectacle of Jewish discord and disruption.” The New York Jewish paper
regarded the entire state of affairs as a “disgrace.” 48
A number of major Jewish organizations did, however, make an attempt to
present a unified front at Evian. The Council for German Jewry, HICEM, Joint Foreign
Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jewry, Anglo-Jewish Association,
German Aid Committee, and Agudas Israel World Organization submitted a collective
memorandum (composed by Solomon Adler-Rudel serving on the Zionist Actions
Committee) to the Conference. The communication was endorsed by the Jewish Agency
of Palestine which chose to submit a separate note dealing specifically with Mandate
affairs. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee also expressed its support
but directed its delegate to the conference, Dr. Jonah B. Wise, to offer a separate memo.
The collaborative text addressed the technical issues of resettlement
organization and financing and was non-ideologically based. It was estimated that two
hundred million dollars were required to remove five hundred thousand Jews from
Germany, with additional funding needed for relocation in agricultural colonies. Eighty
million dollars were needed for the evacuation and retraining of Jews younger than forty
years of age. The associated groups concluded that German cooperation, coupled with
the release of a sufficient level of Jewish assets, was essential for a methodical and
structured emigration system. However, a special clause (XII) specifically dealt with
Palestine as a site of resettlement. The rate of immigration would be dependent upon the
48 “David S. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938-1941(Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1968), 49.
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