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

to conduct negotiations with foreign governments to provide temporary or permanent
havens.
Although James G. McDonald was named to this position by the League his
salary and expenses were funded by non-governmental private Jewish organizations.
Secretary-General Joseph Avenol informed McDonald that the initial 25,000 Swiss francs
provided by the League to the High Commission was to be regarded merely as a loan to
fund and establish operations that would have to be repaid within one year. 21 In addition,
McDonald would report directly to a special Governing Body composed of nations that
were deemed likely to accept refugees rather than to the League Assembly as a whole. 22
With the exceptions of French Senator Henry Bérenger, the American Joseph
Chamberlain and the British Sir Robert Cecil the Governing Board was composed of low
level professional diplomats assigned to the League in Geneva, who, according to
Norman Bentwich, “knew little, cared little, and wanted to do as little as possible about
the cause.” 23 The democratic European powers had, by this time, concluded that
oversaturation mandated resettlement beyond the borders of Europe, funded by private
sources. Bérenger countered Chamberlain’s justification of the restrictive quota system
of the United States by noting that “hard times were universal, so was the
problem…Whereas, France was caring for nearly half the refugees, the United
21 Claudena M. Skran, "Profiles of the First Two Commissioners" Journal of Refugee Studies 1, no. 3/4
(1988): 277-95.
22 Simpson, The Refugee Problem, 216; Barbara McDonald Stewart, United States Government Policy on
Refugees from Nazism, 1933-1940 (NY: Garland Publishing, 1962), 99.
23 Norman Bentwich, My 77 Years: An Account of My Life and Times, 1883-1960 (London: Routledge,
1962), 131.
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