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

foreign workers were discouraged and pressure was exerted upon employers to terminate
these agreements. 94
1931 marked the high water mark of French immigration with an estimated three
million alien laborers and their dependents residing within the Republic. 95 By 1932-1933
the Government attempted to limit the number of immigrants, differentiating between
political refugees and economic migrants. Nazi persecution of its Jewish population was
initially seen as a transient phenomenon but the realization of the scope, magnitude and
probable permanence of this humanitarian problem drove the French authorities to adopt
a harsher immigration doctrine. The implementation of accords dealing with the
problems of Russian refugees in 1922 and Armenian refugees in 1924 elevated the issue
of the care and protection of refugees onto the international stage. 96 Consequently, France
would view its moral obligations towards German and Austrian refugees as a burden to
be shared by the international community as a whole.
Bolivia was one of the few nations in the world to accept Jewish refugees
following the Anschluss although primarily as a temporary haven, later known as “Hotel
Bolivia.” Prior to Hitler assuming the mantle of the Reich Chancellor and Fuehrer less
than one hundred Jews had immigrated to Bolivia. However, beginning in the mid-
1930’s thousands of refugees, Jews and non-Aryan political exiles, from Central Europe
found shelter in this Latin American nation. Between Kristallnacht and the end of 1939
approximately twenty thousand refugees from Germany and Austria had entered this
94 Greg Burgess, “France and the German Refugee Crisis of 1933,” French History, 16, no. 2 (June 1,
2002): 213.
95 Dormois, The French Economy, 4.
96 Burgess, “France and the German Refugee Crisis,” 211.
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