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TABLE 3: Austrian Jewish Emigration, 1933-1945
NO. OF AUSTRIAN JEWS
Europe 69,390
United Kingdom 31,050
Switzerland 5,800
France 4,800
Czechoslovakia 4,100
North America 29,942
United States 29,860
Palestine 15,200
Asia 7,190
Shanghai 6,220
South America 6,845
Argentina 1,690
Bolivia 940
Africa 1,125
South Africa 332
Australia 1,050
Jonny Moser, Demographie der jüdischen Bevökerung Österreichs 1938-1945, DÖW,
Vienna, 1999, in “The Austrian Jewish Community before the Anschluss,” Claims
Conference The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Consequently, on March 25, 1938, the U.S. State Department issued a press
release announcing that the President and the American Government had recognized the
“urgency” of the refugee crisis (ninety percent of real and potential refugees were Jews;
remainder were primarily non-Aryan Christians or political dissidents) and sought to
establish a “special committee” of European and Western Hemisphere nations, including
New Zealand and Australia, that would meet in Europe with the goal of “facilitating the
[orderly] emigration from Austria, and presumably from Germany, of political refugees.”
Invitations were to be limited to those nations that could be categorized as “receiving
States,” i.e., those countries that had already received or could potentially accept forced
emigrants. Special emphasis was placed on the countries of Latin America which, it was
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