*Editor’s Note: This is part IV in a series from Dr. Grobman. You can read Part III , here
As the Nazis continued their conquest of Europe, Jews were desperate to find refuge. The US convened the Évian Conference from July 6-15, 1938, at Évian-les-Bains, France, ostensibly to find a solution to the refugees seeking a safe haven throughout the world. Twenty-nine countries accepted President Roosevelt’s invitation.
Roosevelt wanted to do “something,” historian Yehuda Bauer explained. Yet, once Roosevelt decided the US would not change the quota system allowing more immigrants into the America or finance ways for them to be absorbed in other countries, the conference had little chance to succeed. A liberal American immigration policy was the only option for many Jews of Europe. Had the entire quota of 30, 244 for Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia been used between 1939 and 1941, a substantial number of Jews in these countries could have been saved Bauer asserted. In the fiscal year (July, 1939 to June, 1940), he said 21,000 people succeeded in emigrating from Germany to the US; in fiscal 1941, when the unpublicized guidelines were in force, only 4,000 managed to enter the US.
Roosevelt appointed Myron Taylor as the US representative to the Évian Conference. After elected as chairman, Taylor sought to persuade the member states to accept Jewish refugees. Despite the delegate’s avowed sympathy for their plight, they were unwilling to admit them, 80 percent of whom were Jews, Bauer noted. Instead, the conference established the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (ICR) and charged it with finding a home for the refugees, anywhere but the US, by convincing Germany to allow the Jews to emigrate with their financial resources to make them desirable immigrants.
Without funds and support from Conference members, the Conference was powerless. The various attempts by American Jewish Committee leaders, separately or with other groups to save Jews “on the eve of the war will never be completely known,” according to the late historian Naomi Cohen. Part of the reason for this dearth of information she explained to me is that the Committee archives do not contain many documents on the Holocaust. She offered no explanation as to why this was so.
Cohen did find Committee records showing that Sol Stroock, President of the Committee, attempted to secure “astronomical” sums for the refugees, that Rabbi Cyrus Adler, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, pressed the US State Department to admit individual European rabbis, and that in 1940 James N. Rosenberg, a member of the Executive Committee, convinced the Dominican Republic to accept a number of Jews into the country. Lewis Strauss, a member of the Committee’s Executive Committee, wrote about his experience with the Coordinating Foundation, created in 1939 to buy the right of German Jews to emigrate: “I might have done so much more than I did. I risked only what I thought I could afford. That was not the test which should have been applied, and it is my eternal regret.”
Paper Walls: Preventing Jews from Immigrating to the US
The US State Department, under Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, thwarted Jewish immigration to America by creating a quota system of regulations and obstacles that were practically insurmountable, as Henry Feingold explains: On June 26, 1940, Long informed Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berl and the State Department Advisor on Political Relations James Dunn that the department was able to “delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length” the entry of Jewish immigrants to the US. This could be accomplished, he said, by “simply advising our Consul to put every obstacle in the way and to resort to various administrative advices [sic] which would postpone the granting of visas.”
Each Consul had wide-ranging discretion in determining eligibility of those applying to enter the US, using the restrictions stipulated in the LPC (“likely to become a public charge”) clause of the 1917 immigration act. Under LPC, a refugee could simply be denied entry, even if the Consul capriciously decided the candidate might become reliant on the US government for sustenance.
To appreciate the almost insurmountable obstacles facing Jews seeking refuge in the US, the US Holocaust Memorial provided a list of items required by the American government for all applicants seeking an entry visa during the 1930s and 1940s. (More specifically, the criteria represent those for German-Jewish applicants.)
Visa Application (five copies)
Birth Certificate (two copies; quotas were assigned by country of birth)
The Quota Number must have been reached (This established the person’s place on the waiting list to enter the United States.)
A Certificate of Good Conduct from German police authorities, including two copies respectively of the following:
- Police dossier
- Prison record
- Military record
- Other government records about the individual
- Affidavits of Good Conduct (required after September 1940)
- Proof that the applicant passed a Physical Examination at the U.S. Consulate
- Proof of Permission To Leave Germany (imposed September 30, 1939)
- Proof that the prospective immigrant had Booked Passage to the Western Hemisphere (required after September 1939)
- Two Sponsors (“affiants”); close relatives of prospective immigrants were preferred. The sponsors must have been American citizens or have had permanent resident status, and they must have filled out an Affidavit of Support and Sponsorship (six copies notarized), as well as provided: Certified copy of their most recent Federal tax return; Affidavit from a bank regarding their accounts; Affidavit from any other responsible person regarding other assets (an affidavit from the sponsor’s employer or a statement of commercial rating)
The War Against the Jews
The Évian Conference highlighted the different perspectives the Americans and Nazis had about the Jews, Bauer opined. For the Nazis, the Jewish “problem” remained a fundamental world concern, whose resolution was the “sine qua non” for achieving any possibility of a permanent solution of problems confronting the world. The West considered the Jews just like any other persecuted minority, and not as a separate national entity, as many Jews viewed themselves. Jews were also not a distinct racial group, as they Nazis claimed they were.
For Hitler, the only way to save Germany and the German people was to expand the country’s borders in order to increase the power of the Aryan race to gain hegemony in Europe Bauer added. This goal could not be achieved without resisting Germany’s enemies that encircled the country, and who were being directed by International Jewry. The primary threat came from Soviet Bolshevism, the greatest expression of the Jews determination to rule the world. The Jews dominated the US, France and the Soviet Union. Britain remained free of Jewish influence until it joined the war in September 1939. At that point, the country succumbed to Jewish power.
In other words, as long as International Jewry was allowed to exist, they would continue to thwart Germany’s efforts to “secure its predominance in Europe and the world.” Thus, the war was not driven by military, economic or political considerations, only by ideology. Antisemitism was a fundamental element in this ideology, which is why this was a war against the Jews.