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

would be required. Following Evian greater legal and social proscriptions were enacted
against the Jews coupled with increasingly dire threats.
Hitler advised the Czech Foreign Minister on January 21, 1939, that the “Jews
among us will be annihilated. “The Jews had not carried out 9 th November 1938
[assassination of a German diplomat in Paris that precipitated Kristallnacht] in vain; this
day will be avenged.” 159 Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, in “The Jewish
Question as a Factor of Foreign Policy in 1938,” declared that a more radical approach
must be taken against German Jews. The greater the destitution the “more burdensome”
forced migrants will become to a host country. Consequently, domestic anti-Semitism
will be promoted; a measure that would benefit the “propaganda interests” of the Reich.
Germany recognized that “the emigration problem is…for all practical purposes
insoluble.” Nevertheless, the German Government would “take the initiative” and utilize
whatever “measures” were necessary to resolve the problem and rid itself of the
unwanted Jews. However, and most importantly, “for Germany, the Jewish question will
not have found its final solution [author’s italics] even when the last Jews will have left
Germany.” 160
The Fuehrer expanded on these threats, raising the specter of extermination in an
address to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939; a speech that was widely carried in the
international press that offered both the carrot and the stick:
159 “Aufzeichnung des Legationstats Hewel,” January 21, 1939 in James Marshall-Cornwell et al, eds.,
Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Amtes, (Baden-Baden, 1051-95), Series D. IV, 167-71cited in Richard J.
Evans, The Third Reich in Power 1933-1939 (NY: Penguin Press, 2005), 604.
160 Circular letter of the German Foreign Office to German representatives abroad, dated January 25,
1939 cited in Tenenbaum, Race and Reich, 224.
298