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

The failure of the Administration to speak out in favor of increased entry into
the United States and the unwillingness of the various delegations and their respective
governments to offer refuge was seen by the Nazis as vindication and support of their
anti-Semitic policies. The Evian Conference symbolized the “Jewish Munich” which
reflected attempts to both appease and dodge confrontations with Germany. 67 Klaus P.
Fischer equated the response of the democracies to the plight of the Jews with the
abandonment of Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland issue. Both events represented
“western appeasement of Hitler [with] the western powers [negotiating] over the heads
the Czechs, ignoring and selling out their vital interests.” Similarly, they “negotiated
over the heads of the Jews by ignoring the deadly threat they faced from the Nazis.” The
Evian Conference itself represented, Fischer believed, another example of “western
collaborative hypocrisy” that supported Hitler’s image of democratic decadence and
weakness. 68
FDR did not actively support the 1939 Wagner-Rogers bill and opposed
settlement in Alaska but, like the British with their eye on British Guiana and Africa,
adopted “a strategy that would avoid both political conflict at home and confrontations
with London” while proposing “visionary and grandiose resettlement schemes” in Latin
67 Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (NY: Macmillan, 1978),
226-227 cited in Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley A Panorama of the 1930’s (NY: Vintage Books, 2002),
515. Following Kristallnacht FDR removed references to Nazi Germany and its leadership from a speech
of outspoken Nazi critic, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, in order to avoid incitement of the
Germans. Tampa Tribune, November 15, 1938, 1, 2 In contrast, Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York
City, ordered the police to provide a detail composed primarily of Jews led by Police Captain Max
Finklestein to protect the German Consulate. Tampa Tribune, November 17, 1938, 1.
68 Klaus P. Fischer, The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust ((NY:
Continuum, 2001), 276-277.
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