Evian, Munich and their cons

The Evian conference

March 23, 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, takes the initiative to convene an international conference on the issue of refugees from the Reich. Before the conference, Roosevelt takes precautions with regard to the 32 states convened, stating that it is not about 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 ensured that the United States would not attempt to obtain from it an increase in Jewish immigrants in the territories under the British mandate.

The representatives of the 32 states who finally sit from 6 to 15 July at the Royal hotel in Evian (France) express their sympathy for the victims of persecution while stating 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 of the Reich. The conference does not lead to any concrete result, other than creating a Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees sitting in London and intended to give a follow-up to this meeting.

German and Austrian Jews see all their hopes collapse. The Nazi leaders, assured that Western governments will not come to hinder their policy, intensify measures forcing Jews to emigrate. But the absence of a host country prevents them from leaving Germany.

The Munich Agreements

Signed during the night of 29 to 30 September 1938 by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, these agreements agree 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 who lived in the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovaks refusing to let them enter, they try to take refuge in Hungary. But they are sent back to Germany by the Hungarian authorities then directed again towards Czechoslovakia by the Nazi authorities. They are finally forcibly taken to improvised tenting 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 before 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 the SS arrested and rounded up all male Polish Jews, transporting them to the surroundings of Zbaszyn, a Polish town, where they took them across the river that separates 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, equipped only with 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, in accordance with the instructions received, the Polish border guards turn them away.

Drawing published in the New York Times on the occasion of the conference in Evian (Haute-Savoie), expressing the impossibility for a 'non-Aryan' man to find a country in which to escape. USA, July 3, 1938.
Cr said photographic: Shoah Memorial/CDJC.

Postcard representing the signing of the Munich agreements on the night of September 29 to 30, 1938 by Arthur Neville Chamberlain, Douard Daladier, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Germany, 1938.
Cr said photographic: Shoah Memorial/CDJC.

A member of the Tudiante am ricaine Union protests against the aggression of Hitler against Russia. New York, United States, September 23, 1938.
Cr said photographic: Shoah Memorial/CDJC/USHMM.