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

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foreign workers were discouraged and pressure was exerted upon employers to terminate<br />

these agreements. 94<br />

1931 marked the high water mark <strong>of</strong> French immigration with an estimated three<br />

million alien laborers and their dependents residing within the Republic. 95 By 1932-1933<br />

the Government attempted to limit the number <strong>of</strong> immigrants, differentiating between<br />

political refugees and economic migrants. Nazi persecution <strong>of</strong> its <strong>Jewish</strong> population was<br />

initially seen as a transient phenomenon but the realization <strong>of</strong> the scope, magnitude and<br />

probable permanence <strong>of</strong> this humanitarian problem drove the French authorities to adopt<br />

a harsher immigration doctrine. <strong>The</strong> implementation <strong>of</strong> accords dealing with the<br />

problems <strong>of</strong> Russian refugees in 1922 and Armenian refugees in 1924 elevated the issue<br />

<strong>of</strong> the care and protection <strong>of</strong> refugees onto the international stage. 96 Consequently, France<br />

would view its moral obligations towards German and Austrian refugees as a burden to<br />

be shared by the international <strong>com</strong>munity as a whole.<br />

Bolivia was one <strong>of</strong> the few nations in the world to accept <strong>Jewish</strong> refugees<br />

following the Anschluss although primarily as a temporary haven, later known as “Hotel<br />

Bolivia.” Prior to Hitler assuming the mantle <strong>of</strong> the Reich Chancellor and Fuehrer less<br />

than one hundred Jews had immigrated to Bolivia. However, beginning in the mid-<br />

1930’s thousands <strong>of</strong> refugees, Jews and non-Aryan political exiles, from Central Europe<br />

found shelter in this Latin American nation. Between Kristallnacht and the end <strong>of</strong> 1939<br />

approximately twenty thousand refugees from Germany and Austria had entered this<br />

94 Greg Burgess, “France and the German Refugee Crisis <strong>of</strong> 1933,” French History, 16, no. 2 (June 1,<br />

2002): 213.<br />

95 Dormois, <strong>The</strong> French Economy, 4.<br />

96 Burgess, “France and the German Refugee Crisis,” 211.<br />

46

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