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

America and Africa. 69 Others have argued that the failure of the Evian Conference was a
blow to the concept of universal human rights and “sanctioned the belief in the inequality
of humankind.” 70
Some authors have speculated that the Jewish background of Secretary of State
Cordell Hull’s wife, Frances Witz, influenced his decision to limit aid to Jews seeking to
escape from the Reich and not to pressure the British to allow greater Jewish immigration
into Palestine. Although Frances was an Episcopalian her father, Irwin Witz, was an
Austrian Jewish immigrant. Soon after Hull’s appointment to the State Department anti-
Semitic magazine articles claimed that this represented another example of a Jewish
conspiracy to take over control of the Federal Government. Irwin Gellman, a Hull
biographer, claimed that the Secretary hid his wife’s Jewish roots in order to avoid any
controversy that would threaten a potential bid for the Presidency. He “feared that [his
wife’s] Jewish connection” opened him to criticism from American anti-Semites that he
was favoring Jewish “causes” which could translate into the loss of potential votes. Prior
to his decision to run for a third term Roosevelt was supportive of a Hull run for the
White House. However, in August 1939 he informed Democratic Senator Burton
Wheeler (Montana) that the issue of the Frances’ heritage “would be raised” by the
opposition against Hull. 71
Such sentiments were echoed by the notorious German anti-
Semite Julius Streicher in his magazine Der Sturmer, #23/1944, in which the Secretary of
69 Feingold, Bearing Witness, 178.
70 Naomi Kramer and Ronald Headland, The Fallacy of Race and the Shoah (Ottawa, Ont.: University of
Ottawa Press, 1998), xvi.
71 “Senator Allen’s ‘Jewish Problem,’” The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, March 3,
2010 available from http://www.wymaninstitute.org/articles/2006-10-senator-allen.php; Internet; accessed
March 3, 2010.
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