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

immigration of Austrian refugees at the present time.” 72
However, emphasis was placed
on the provision of temporary havens with a view to future migration to a place of
permanent resettlement. 73 The Foreign Office stressed that the United Kingdom was not
an “immigration country” due to its “being an old country…highly industrialized, very
densely populated” suffering from high domestic unemployment. 74 Such rationalizations
would be utilized by Britain as well as other nations during the Evian Conference as
justification for containing Jewish immigration.
Austrian Jewish refugees attempting to enter Britain without sufficient funds to
support themselves without the public dole were barred from entry. 75 Between March 13
and 20 the Home Office reported that 422 applications for landing had been received but
61 were denied. Fourteen thousand Austrians were already residing in the United
Kingdom but naturalization law required the alien to reside within the Dominions for five
out of the prior eight years, of which one must have been spent in Britain. 76 The Labor
Party introduced into the House of Commons a bill that would grant unlimited and
unrestricted admission and British citizenship to Austrian refugees but was defeated by a
72 PRO FO 372/3282, T3272/378, Director of the Central European Department of the Foreign Office
William Strang to Holderness, March 12, 1938 cited in Romain, “The Anschluss,” 90.
73 David Cesarani, ed., The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 90. A number of
refugee organizations agreed with this policy of providing only temporary refuge with the ultimate goal of
emigration overseas. Claudena M. Skran, Refugees in Inter-War Europe: The Emergence of a Regime
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 221.
74 RO FO 371/22530, March 13, 1938 cited in Fiona Horne, “Explaining British Refugee Policy, March
1938-July 1940,” Masters of Arts in History Thesis, University of Canterbury, New Zealand (March 2008),
5.
75 “Britain Stops Refugees,” Washington Post, March 16, 1938, 4.
76 “Austrians in Britain: Recent Applications to Enter,” The Times, March 31, 1938, 8
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