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

throughout Latin America; an American Congress increasingly hostile to immigration;
the insincere and superficial efforts of Britain to offer land for re-settlement in its colonial
holdings and the generalized feeling “that the only thing to do was to colonize [Jews] in
agriculture” despite the obvious disconnect between the economic, social and
technological backgrounds of Central European middle-class and urbanized Jews. 92
Following Kristallnacht, however, the President did step forward to offer refuge
to 12,000-15,000 German and Austrian refugees who were within the United States on
six-month visitor visas. The German Government had issued a decree that would annul
the visitors’ passports (Jews and non-Jews) on December 30, 1938. Consequently, he
directed Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins, to extend the visas in order to avoid the
forced deportation of the refugees to the Reich; an act that would be both “cruel and
inhuman[e]” due to the likelihood of persecution, arrest and imprisonment in
concentration camps. Citing an earlier precedent of allowing Russian refugees to remain
in the United States following the Bolshevik Revolution, he believed Congress would not
object to the visa extensions and that immigration law did not prevent the President from
taking such action. 93
Representative Martin Dies, Chairman of the House Committee
Investigating Un-American Activities, objected to the extension of the visitors’ visas,
92 “Oral History Interview with George L. Warren,” November 10, 1972 by Richard D. McKinzie, Harry
S. Truman Library available from http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/warrengl.htm; Internet; accessed
March 6, 2010. See Table 4 which provides an occupational breakdown of the German Jewish population
in 1933 cited in Arieh Tartakower, “The Jewish Refugees: A Sociological Survey,” Jewish Social Studies,
vol. 4, no. 4 (October 1942), 333.
93 Tampa Daily Times, November 18, 1938, 1, 14; Press Conference #501, November 18, 1938,
Complete Presidential Press Conferences of FDR, vol. 12 (NY: Da Capo Press, 1972) 239-240.
343