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

eluctance or outright refusal of the invitees to admit refugee Jews demonstrated to the
Nazi regime that “political considerations were paramount” in the democracies and that
Jews were regarded as a class outside the customary protections offered to political
refugees. Thus, the Jewish destiny was foretold by international “politics.” 9
As earlier
noted, the November 24, 1938 issue of Das Schwarze Korps (“The Black Corps”), the
official publication of the SS, described how the progressive impoverishment of Jews
would force Jews into a life of crime. “If things were to develop in this way we would be
faced with the harsh necessity of having to exterminate the Jewish underground in the
same manner as we are used to exterminating criminals in our Order State: with fire and
sword. The result would be the actual and definite end of Jewry in Germany-its complete
destruction.” 10
The Polish Government concluded from the limited focus of the Evian
Conference (German and Austrian Jews only) that only those nations that utilized force
and intimidation would be granted a “measure of international attention.” 11
Consequently, the influential Camp of National Unity (Obóz Zjednoczenia Nrodowego or
OZN) initiated in 1939 a “more aggressive attitude” toward Poland’s Jewish population
which was viewed as a dangerous internal foe. 12
While such warnings were clear the
9 Ernest G. Heppner, Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto (Lincoln, NE:
University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 19.
10 Holocaust, (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1974), 23, 99, 100.
11 Edward G. Wynot Jr., “’A Necessary Cruelty”: The Emergence of Official Anti-Semitism in Poland,
1936-1939,” The American Historical Review 76, no. 4 (October 1971): 1056-57.
12 E. Melzer, “Mifleget haShilton OZON veh a Yehudim be-Polin 1937-1939,” 412-13 cited in David
Engel, In the Shadow of Auschwitz: The Polish Government-in-Exile and the Jews (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1987), 45.
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