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Period postcard of Evian-les-Bains, the site of the 1938 International Conference on Refugees.

The Evian Conference
The Evian Conference

In July 1938, delegates from 32 countries met in Evian, France for a conference on the refugee crisis. The delegates expressed sympathy for the Jews who were seeking to flee Nazi persecution. Most countries, however, refused to admit more refugees.

  • Site of the Evian Conference

    The Hotel Royal, site of the Evian Conference on Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Evian-les-Bains, France, July 1938.

  • Myron Taylor

    United States delegate Myron Taylor delivers a speech at the Evian Conference on Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Evian-les-Bains, France, July 15, 1938.

  • Jewish emigration from Germany, 1933-1940

    Between 1933 and 1939, Jews in Germany were subjected to arrest, economic boycott, the loss of civil rights and citizenship, incarceration in concentration camps, random violence, and the state-organized Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom. Jews reacted to Nazi persecution in a number of ways. Forcibly segregated from German society, German Jews turned to and expanded their own institutions and social organizations. However, in the face of increasing repression and physical violence, many Jews fled Germany. More Jews might have left Germany had such countries as the United States and Great Britain been more willing to admit them.

  • St. Louis photo album

    Photo album containing photographs taken by a passenger aboard the St. Louis, with a depiction of the ship on the cover. In 1939, this German ocean liner carried Jewish refugees seeking temporary refuge in Cuba. It was forced to return to Europe after Cuba refused to allow the refugees entry into the country.

  • Kurt Klein describes some of the difficulties involved in emigrating from Germany

    As Nazi anti-Jewish policy intensified, Kurt's family decided to leave Germany. Kurt left for the United States in 1937, but his parents were unable to leave before the outbreak of World War II. Kurt's parents were eventually deported to Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland. In 1942, Kurt joined the United States Army and was trained in military intelligence. In Europe, he interrogated prisoners of war. In May 1945, he took part in the surrender of a village in Czechoslovakia and returned the next day to assist over 100 Jewish women who had been abandoned there during a death march. Kurt's future wife, Gerda, was one of the women in this group.

  • Hessy Levinsons Taft describes father's attempts to obtain visas for the family to emigrate from Nice, in the south of France

    As prewar antisemitism intensified, Hessy's family fled from Germany to Paris, France. France fell to the German army in June 1940. Hessy's family was smuggled into the "zone libre" (free zone) in southern France. The family received a US visa in 1941, but was unable to leave before the visa expired and could not obtain an extension. In 1942, the family obtained visas to enter Cuba, where they settled before immigrating to the United States in 1949.

  • Carl Heumann

    Carl was one of nine children born to Jewish parents living in a village near the Belgian border. When Carl was 26, he married Joanna Falkenstein and they settled down in a house across the street from his father's cattle farm. Carl ran a small general store on the first floor of their home. The couple had two daughters, Margot and Lore.

    1933-39: Carl has moved his family to the city of Bielefeld, where he is working for a Jewish relief organization. Requests from this area's Jews to leave Germany have multiplied since a night last November [Kristallnacht] when the Nazis smashed windows of Jewish stores and burned synagogues all over Germany. Unfortunately, the United States and other countries have immigration quotas so that only a fraction of the Jewish refugees can get visas.

    1940-44: Carl and his family have been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. As a special privilege, they have been sent here rather than to a concentration camp further to the east because Carl earned the German Iron Cross in World War I. Still, the threat of deportation to a camp hangs over them daily, and they are always hungry. Their 15-year-old, Margot, has been assigned to a detail that leaves the ghetto each day to work on a farm: Sometimes she smuggles back vegetables to them by hiding them under her blouse.

    In May 1944 Carl was caught stealing food, and he and his family were deported to Auschwitz. Everyone is believed to have perished there except Margot, who survived the war.

  • Johanna Gerechter Neumann describes how her family obtained visas to emigrate to Albania

    Amid intensifying anti-Jewish measures and the 1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom, Johanna's family decided to leave Germany. They obtained visas for Albania, crossed into Italy, and sailed in 1939. They remained in Albania under the Italian occupation and, after Italy surrendered in 1943, under German occupation. The family was liberated after a battle between the Germans and Albanian partisans in December 1944.

Between 1933 and 1941, the Nazis aimed to make Germany judenrein (cleansed of Jews) by making life so difficult for them that they would be forced to leave the country. By 1938, about 150,000 German Jews, one in four, had already fled the country. After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, however, an additional 185,000 Jews were brought under Nazi rule. Many Jews were unable to find countries willing to take them in.

Many German and Austrian Jews tried to go to the United States but could not obtain the visas needed to enter. Even though news of the violent pogroms of November 1938 was widely reported, Americans remained reluctant to welcome Jewish refugees. In the midst of the Great Depression, many Americans believed that refugees would compete with them for jobs and overburden social programs set up to assist the needy.

Congress had set up immigration quotas in 1924 that limited the number of immigrants and discriminated against groups considered racially and ethnically undesirable. These quotas remained in place even after President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responding to mounting political pressure, called for an international conference to address the refugee problem.

In the summer of 1938, delegates from thirty-two countries met at the French resort of Evian. Roosevelt chose not to send a high-level official, such as the secretary of state, to Evian; instead, Myron C. Taylor, a businessman and close friend of Roosevelt's, represented the US at the conference. During the nine-day meeting, delegate after delegate rose to express sympathy for the refugees. But most countries, including the United States and Britain, offered excuses for not letting in more refugees.

Responding to Evian, the German government was able to state with great pleasure how "astounding" it was that foreign countries criticized Germany for their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the doors to them when "the opportunity offer[ed]."

Even efforts by some Americans to rescue children failed: the Wagner-Rogers bill, an effort to admit 20,000 endangered Jewish refugee children, was not supported by the Senate in 1939 and 1940. Widespread racial prejudices among Americans—including antisemitic attitudes held by the US State Department officials—played a part in the failure to admit more refugees.

Key Dates

July 6–15, 1938
Refugee conference in Evian
Delegates from 32 countries and representatives from relief organizations meet in Evian-les-Bains, a spa town in France, to discuss the German-Jewish refugees. The United States encourages all countries to find a long-term solution to the problem. However, the United States and other countries are unwilling to ease their immigration restrictions. Most countries fear that an increase of refugees will cause further economic hardships. The conference ends a week later. With the exception of the tiny Dominican Republic, no country is willing to accept more refugees. One result of the conference is the establishment of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (ICR), which will continue to work on the refugee problem.

February 9, 1939
Limited refugee bill proposed in US Congress
The Wagner-Rogers refugee aid bill is introduced in the United States Senate by Senator Robert F. Wagner (D-New York). This bill calls for the admission to the United States of 20,000 German refugee children under the age of 14 over the next two years, in addition to immigration normally permitted. The bill will be introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (R-Massachusetts) five days later. Charity organizations across the country publicize the plight of German refugee children in an attempt to gain support for the bill. However, organizations favoring restrictive immigration strongly oppose the bill and claim that the refugee children would deprive American children of aid. After several months of debate, the bill is defeated in committee. The bill would have provided refuge for thousands of German Jewish children.

May 1939
British government restricts immigration into Palestine
An Arab-Palestinian revolt against the British mandate in Palestine in 1936 and continuing Arab unrest, especially regarding the status of Jews in Palestine, leads to a decisive change in British policy in the Middle East. In the White Paper of 1939, the British government announces its policies on the future status of Palestine. The British reject the establishment of an independent Jewish state and severely restrict future Jewish immigration to Palestine. In response to the British policy, illegal immigration of Jewish refugees to Palestine increases. The British intercept the illegal immigrants and intern them in camps. During the war, there is no attempt to relax the immigration policy. Restrictions on Jewish immigration remain in force until the establishment of Israel in 1948.

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