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

into Christian society. 39 Shlomo Katz described the Evian Conference as the “Jewish
Munich” in which the human rights of Jews as individuals and as a collective were
sacrificed by the League of Nations and by the world’s democracies. It was the
“weakness of public opinion,” he believed, that helped to pave the way for the ultimate
Nazi policy for the “solution of the Jewish problem.” 40 The gains of the Jewish
Emancipation of the Nineteenth Century in Central Europe were reversed and German
and Austrian Jews were cast adrift, subject to the whims and policies of an openly hostile
government and ideology. David Cesarani and Sarah Kavanaugh argued that the failure
of the American Administration to alter its immigration policies set off a “chain reaction”
in which the other nations either refused to liberalize or adopted a more restrictive policy
on immigration. Thus, from the viewpoint of the stateless refugees it would have been
better if the “conference had not been held at all.” 41
Rafael Medoff observed that Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, in fact, had frequently and
unsuccessfully implored FDR to publicly criticize the Reich and its anti-Jewish policies.
Wise acknowledged, on October 18, 1933, that “we have had nothing but indifference
and unconcern [from the Administration] up to this time.” James D. McDonald had
expressed to the President during early 1933 that “it would be very desirable” if the Chief
Executive engaged in “frank speaking” with Hitler. In response, Roosevelt claimed that
“he had a plan in mind to appeal over the head of Hitler to the German people.” FDR
also advised Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and the brother of the New York State Governor,
39 Vital. A People Apart, 890-891.
40 Katz, “Public Opinion,”105, 126.
41 David Cesarani and Sarah Kavanaugh, Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 3, (NY:
Routledge, 2004), 19.
323