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

Conrad Black, one of Roosevelt’s latest biographers, concluded the President
should not be “censored” for not adopting a more outspoken platform against anti-
Semitism because his “paramount duty” to the nation was to bolster American economic
and military power “in order to exercise a decisive influence on the Manichean struggle
between good and evil political forces” then raging in Europe. 83
William Perl viewed Roosevelt primarily as a “shrewd and ruthless” politician
determined not to endanger a “fragile coalition” in Congress by supporting humanitarian
causes laden with emotional and political overtones. The President was poised on the
brink of launching a campaign for an unprecedented third term and was concerned about
issues of American rearmament and isolationism. The convening of an international
conference dealing with Jewish and non-Aryan potential and real refugees coupled with a
promise not to tamper with American immigration laws appeared to be the safest course
to follow and would “divert pressure for a change in legislation.”
Myron C. Taylor was chosen by Roosevelt over career diplomats to lead the
American delegation because of his “pragmatism” and could not be accused of being on a
“fancy love-everybody dream trip.” Taylor would demonstrate that matter-of-factness
during his opening remarks received by the delegations and public in “hushed silence.”
He expounded with “blatant bluntness,” devoid of any attempt to “veil [his statements] in
diplomatic phraseology…” The only humane “trimmings” referred to the perilous
situation of the “unfortunate human beings” who were “coming within the scope of this
Jewish in practice or by ethnicity. American Jewish Year Book, XL, 1938, 96-97. See also “Exile Haven Here
Rivals Palestine,” New York Times, October 29, 1939, 26 and Donald Peterson Kent, The Refugee
Intellectual (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), 12.
83 Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 496.
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