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

efugees to retain sufficient resources to aid their resettlement. The Conference marked
the beginning of “active aid” to the stateless refugees; assistance that was expected to
continue and grow. 130
Henri Bérenger, the French representative to Evian and the IGCR foresaw a
“happy augury for the future,” claiming that the United States had agreed to participate
for the first time in “intergovernmental action” outside of its own borders. 131
He ignored
previous American involvement in the Washington Naval Conferences, Kellogg-Briand
Pact and cooperation with the International Red Cross and the International Labor
Organization. British Viscount Samuel believed that the primary importance of the Evian
Conference had been its demonstration that the problem of Central European refugees
was not merely an internal domestic problem for Germany but posed a threat to all
countries that would be impacted by an impoverished “flood of humanity.” The creation
of the IGCR was a “wise conclusion” of the Conference but its success depended upon
adequate funding for resettlement; monies that had to be released by the German
130 The Nation, July 23, 1938, 79.
131 Time, July 25, 1938. Although later redacted from the official record Bérenger stated: “Perhaps I
ought to whisper it but it is a fact that for the first time, the United States of America has agreed to
participate in intergovernmental action for a work which reaches beyond the confines of its own country. I
see in this a happy augury for the future.” The Time article took a more pessimistic view of the Evian
Conference: “At Evian last week the British slammed the door of Palestine against any larger admissions
of Jewish refugees, intimated cautiously that a few might be welcomed in Kenya, ‘but no mass migration.’
Definitely the Evian Conference failed to discover any lands willing at this moment to accept the bulk of
Europe’s frantic, hard-pressed political refuges, although Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico and Canada
opened the door to refugee agricultural workers. The face-saving Refugee Organization created last week
seemed destined to engage in endless bickering with Germany, chiefly on the issue of whether or not
expelled Jews ought to be permitted to take most of their property with them when forced to emigrate. At
present, under various pretexts, they are plucked practically as clean as dress fowl before they are let out of
the Reich.”
289