- In the years following the Nazi's rise to power
in 1932, over half the Jews living in Germany
and its surrounding countries fled or were expelled.
In 1938, 32 countries and 24 volunteer organizations
came together to address the escalating problem
of Jewish refugees.
Golda Meir, the 39-year old representative
from British Mandate Palestine who later became
Israel's first woman Prime Minister, was in attendance.
She was granted observer status,
but not permitted to participate in the proceedings.
She watched from the sidelines,
eager to see how the world's greatest nations
would come together to save hundreds of thousands of Jews
at the Evian Conference.
(dramatic music)
On July 6, 1938, in an idyllic spa resort town
on the France-Switzerland border,
the Evian Conference commenced
just 372 miles from where the Allied powers met
to sign the Treaty of Versailles
and end World War I 20 years earlier.
After World War I, Germany was crippled by post-war damage,
debt, and reparations.
By 1932, unemployment rose to 30%
and almost 8 million people were without jobs.
Although Jews comprised less than 1%
of the German population,
over a thousand years of life in the region
had established deeply rooted Jewish communities
and in many countries,
Jews stood as cultural and political luminaries.
By the time Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany
in 1933, he was able to marshal preexisting antisemitism
with financial insecurity to unite his country
under one singular belief that a pure Germany
had no room for the Jew.
Jewish emigration began when one of the Nazi's
first legislative acts banned Jews
from employment in the government.
By September 1935,
the Nuremberg Laws made it illegal for Jews
to have sexual relations with, or marry an Aryan.
Then, the Reich Citizenship Law passed
and stripped citizenship from Jews
and anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent.
- "A citizen of a Reich is only that person
who is of German or of the same kind of blood."
- By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt
invited countries from all over the world
to help solve the "Jewish Problem" at the Evian Conference,
Jewish refugees were pressing issue for the rest of Europe,
the Americas, and British Mandate Palestine.
Over the course of the nine-day conference,
every single country expressed sympathy
for the state of the Jews.
But few offered to actually help.
Golda Meir wrote:
"I wanted to get up and scream at them
'Don't you know that these so-called numbers
are human beings?
People who may spend the rest of their lives
in concentration camps?
Or wandering around the world like lepers
if you don't let them in?' "
Germany's smaller neighboring countries
claim limited physical capacity.
Larger countries cited their own problems.
In the midst of The Great Depression,
many Americans believe that refugees
would compete with them for their jobs
and overburden their assistance programs for the needy.
Brewing antisemitic sentiments in the States
didn't help either.
In a 1938 American survey, quote,
"Approximately 60% of the respondents
held a low opinion of Jews.
Labeling them, greedy, dishonest, and pushy."
Despite having organized the conference,
FDR didn't even send a political representative.
Instead, his friend, businessman,
Myron C. Taylor, attended on the state's behalf.
Canada refused to make a commitment saying, famously,
"None is too many."
Chaim Weizmann, who would become
the first president of Israel observed,
"The world seemed to be divided into two parts.
Those where Jews could not live
and those where they could not enter."
By the end of the nine-day conference,
the U.S. agreed to admit 30,000 Jewish refugees annually.
Britain accepted almost the same number.
South Africa agreed to admit refugees
only if they had close relatives already in residence.
In addressing the UN in 1979, the U.S. Vice President,
Walter Mondale said,
"If each nation had agreed on that day
to take in 17,000 Jews at once,
every Jew in the Reich could have been saved.
At Evian, they began with high hopes,
but they failed the test of civilization."
The country that made the largest gesture was
the Dominican Republic whose dictator President
Rafael Trujillo, offered to accept 100,000 Jews.
Ironically enough, this generosity was itself rooted
in racism as a way to fulfill his mission
to lighten the population of DR.
By accepting the light-skinned European Jews.
Decades later, Mondale told the UN,
"As the delegates left Evian,
Hitler again goaded 'the other world'
for 'oozing sympathy for the poor tormented people,
but remaining hard and obdurate
when it comes to helping them.' "
Days later, the "final solution to the Jewish problem"
was conceived.
And soon, the night closed in.
At a press conference after the gathering,
Golda Meir remarked,
"There is only one thing I hope to see before I die,
and that is that my people should not need
expressions of sympathy anymore."