Evian, Munich and their cons

The Evian conference

On March 23, 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, took the initiative to convene an international conference on the issue of refugees from the Reich. Before the conference, Roosevelt took precautions with regard to the 32 states convened, claiming that it was not a matter of increasing immigration quotas or funding the reception of refugees. Germany is not invited, the presence of Portugal is not considered useful. The USSR and Czechoslovakia do not send representatives, Italy, in solidarity with Germany, refuses the invitation. Hungary, Romania, Poland and South Africa send observers. The United Kingdom accepts the invitation not without having previously made sure that the United States would not try to obtain from it an increase in Jewish immigrants in the territories under British mandate.

The representatives of the 32 States who finally met from 6 to 15 July at the Royal Hotel in Evian (France) express their sympathy for the victims of persecution while affirming that the economic and social situation of their country does not allow them to increase immigration quotas. A sub-committee auditioned in one afternoon, the representatives of forty refugee organizations and Jewish organizations, including those from the Reich. The conference does not lead to any concrete result, except to create a Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees based in London and intended to follow up on this meeting.

German and Austrian Jews see all their hopes crumble. Nazi leaders, confident that Western governments would not stand in the way of their policies, intensified measures to force Jews to emigrate. But the absence of a host country prevents them from leaving Germany.

The Munich Agreement

Signed on the night of 29 to 30 September 1938 by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, these agreements agreed on the provisions and conditions regulating the cession of the territories of the Sudetenland where German populations reside, to Germany.

The expulsion of the Sudeten Jews

Less than a month after the signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938, Hitler expelled several thousand Jews from the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovakians refused to let them in, so they tried to take refuge in Hungary. But they were sent back to Germany by the Hungarian authorities and then again directed towards Czechoslovakia by the Nazi authorities. They are finally forced to live in makeshift tent camps set up in a no man’s land separating Hungary and Czechoslovakia, such as at Mischdorf, about twenty kilometers from Bratislava.

The expulsion of Polish Jews

On 31 March 1938, the Polish Parliament passed a law defining a series of cases in which a Polish national living abroad could be deprived of his nationality. In October 1938, a new decree announced the cancellation of passports for Poles residing abroad who had not obtained special permission to enter Poland by the end of the month. Now, more than 40% of the Jews living in the Reich were born in Poland.
On 27 and 28 October 1938, the police and SS arrested and rounded up all male Polish Jews, transported them to the vicinity of Zbaszyn, a Polish town, where they took them across the river that separated the two countries. Women and children deprived of any means of subsistence are obliged to follow the men. The majority of them arrive by train, with only a few things and a sum of money limited to 10 marks per person. The Grynszpan, a Jewish family from Hanover is among the 16,000 Polish Jews deported to the border; their son Herschel is in Paris in hiding. Upon their arrival in Poland, the Polish border guards, in accordance with the instructions received, turn them away.

Published drawing in the New York Times, on the occasion of the conference of Evian (Haute-Savoie), expressing the impossibility for a 'non-Aryan' man to find a country to escape to. United States, 3 July 1938.
Cr says photographic: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC.

Postcard from the Munich Agreement signed on the night of 29 to 30 September 1938 by Arthur Neville Chamberlain, Douard Daladier, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Germany, 1938.
Cr says photographic: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC.

A member of the Union, Tudiante am ricaine, protests against the aggression of the Soviet Union by Adolf Hitler. New York, United States, September 23, 1938.
Cr says photographic: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC/USHMM.