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

it was the formal discussion of altering national immigration quotas at Evian that doomed
the conference to failure. 18 Similarly, Gil Loescher alleged that the discussion of the
Jewish Question at the international level “reflected and subsequently strengthened the
restrictive attitudes and policies” of government and the public. 19 Morty Penkower
argued that nations outside of the German sphere of influence “abdicated [their] moral
responsibility” and became “accomplices” to ultimate genocide. 20 Michael Marrus
believed that most of the representatives agreed with the “mean spirited” Canadian
Minister Frederick Blair that a line in the sand had to be drawn against any weakening of
national immigration restrictions. Such resilience would compel the Reich to “solve their
Jewish question internally.” 21
Jonathan D. Sarna portrayed the Roosevelt initiative as a “politics of gestures”
introduced with an invitation that was designed to be “carefully hedged.” The overt
refusal of the United States to expand its immigration allowance for Germany and
Austria forecast the meeting’s failure. FDR and his Administration’s great interest in
colonization schemes in remote and underdeveloped sites (Philippine Islands, British
Guiana, Alaska, Lower California, Angola, Ethiopia, Australia and the Dominican
Republic) represented a hidden “form of group dissolution”; a project that was unlikely to
generate much Jewish support or enthusiasm. Such proposals “served as psychological
compensation for the inhospitality of the United States” and did receive support from
18 Konnilyn G. Feig, Hitler’s Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness (NY: Holmes & Meier, 1981), 412.
19 Gil Loescher, The UNHCR, 32.
20 Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust
(Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1988), vii.
21 Michael Marrus, The Unwanted, 172.
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