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Hotel Royal in Evian-les Bains, Site of the International Conference on Refugees July 1938 |
A joke that is no joke:
Q: What do you do, if you don’t really want to do anything, but you want to look like you’re doing something?
A: You call a conference.
Roosevelt, the president of the U.S., and a number of other nations called a conference to discuss the Jewish refugee problem in July 1938. 32 nations arrived. But the unwritten fine print of the invitations said: "We are coming to try to figure out what to do for the Jews, but no nation will be asked to take any more Jews than its quota already allows." The result was sadly predictable.
The big countries did not want more Jews, and were hoping that the small countries would take them.
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Chief American Delegate at Evian Conference on Refugees |
When the small countries realized that the big countries did not want the Jews, they were not going to take any either. With the exception of the Dominican Republic, no concrete offers of refuge were made.
The conference was a failure from the beginning. It had taken place in Evian, France. The newspapers of the world had a field day pointing out that the name "Evian" spelled backwards is "naïve." The outcome of that conference was that absolutely nothing was done for the Jews.
The Jews had finally realized it was time to leave Germany.
But there was no place to go.
(7) Casey , November 20, 2009
although this is very simple and too the point it is not very informitive
(6) brittany , December 4, 2007
this was a very good article. it got right to the point. all of the other articles were really long and confusing. thank you
(5) Nina , November 28, 2006
Evian conference
I just want to say how great your article on the Evian confrence was!!!! It was clear cut, easy to understand and I got the gist without doing a heckload of reading! This article allowed me to understand the basics and hence go on to reasearch and interperate the full on facts!! Thanks again!!
(4) abby , January 27, 2004
this is a GREAT website. i had to use it for my english project, being from spain it really helped a lot. thank you
(3) Douglas L Dailey , November 20, 2002
Until now unknown to me...
Thank you for a tremendous site. In particular: please recommend further reading/sites on this quite interesting topic, thanks again...dld