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

This committee was to operate separately from the League of Nations High
Commission for Refugees from Germany with which the German Government refused to
cooperate and did not recognize. Both the Nansen Office headed by Judge Michael
Hansson and the League Commission for Refugees led by Sir Neill Malcolm were due to
be closed in December 1938 and it was anticipated that the League Assembly, scheduled
to meet in September, would combine the two offices under a new High Commissioner. 5
The French Foreign Minister, George Bonnet, held a meeting with his German
counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop [duly reported to Hitler] on December 7, 1938, in
which Bonnet stated that France did not want to receive any more German Jews. He
called upon the Reich to “take some sort of measures” to prevent further entry of
involuntary émigrés into the Third Republic. Additionally, the Government sought to
ship ten thousand Jews already residing within France to other locations such as the
island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. Ribbentrop replied to Bonnet that
Germany also desired to be rid of its Jews but the problem “lay in the fact that no country
wished to receive them.” 6
Bonnet assured Ribbentrop that France had no desire to
interfere with the internal affairs of Germany but the forced expulsion of Jews and non-
Aryans, stripped of sufficient financial assets to reestablish themselves, was adversely
affecting the willingness of countries of potential resettlement to accept refugees who
most likely would become public charges. The Reich Foreign Minister did agree,
however, that a German knowledgeable about the Jewish Question in Germany could
5 The Times, July 14, 1938, 16.
6 Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1951), Series D, IV, 451-452.
303