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

The Anschluss (and Kristallnacht) clearly revealed the fragility and the precarious
situation of the German Jewish community. State sponsored terror generated a “flood of
visa applications.” The initial émigrés in 1933 were able to retain seventy-five percent of
their assets but expanded anti-Semitic measures, Aryanization of Jewish enterprises,
economic disenfranchisement and the pre-Nazi era Flight Tax or Reichsfluchtsteuer
reduced their resources to ten percent with the balance seized by the Nazi government. 4
Following Kristallnacht and the enactment of the Atonement Fine Jews were able to
retain only ten Reichmarks per person. The ultimate impoverishment of the real and
potential refugees would prove to be one of the critical factors complicating resettlement
efforts. It was the plight of these Jews and non-Aryans and fears of involuntary mass
migrations from other European locales that led to calls for an international solution to
this refugee crisis.
Eventually, 36,000 Jews managed to leave Germany and Austria during 1938 and
77,000 in1939. The latter year marked the first time that the entire American annual
quota for Germany and Austria was filled (including the annexed portions of
Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement). 5
305,000 Jews and non-Aryans had
filed applications for approximately 27,000 visas by June 30, 1939. Prior to the onset of
hostilities in September 1939 282,000 Jews had emigrated from Germany and 117,000
from Austria of which 95,000 entered the U.S, 60,000 Palestine, 40,000 the United
Kingdom, 75,000 Central and South America (primarily Argentina, Brazil, Chile and
4 The Times, July 6, 1938, 15.
5 The Munich Agreement of 1938 that ceded the Sudetenland to Germany, the establishment of the
Hlinka Autonomists, the pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic regime of Slovakia and the return of the Free City of
Danzig to the Reich led to a significant worsening of the Central European refugee crisis.
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