Beyond Belief (17 page)

In reality many of these arguments had an antisemitic foundation.
The premise was that Jews—their actions, interests, economic endeavors, in short, their very presence—cause antisemitism and that Hitler, therefore, had legitimate reason for his antipathy toward them. Editorials that condemned Nazi outbreaks often went on to justify the hostility from which they sprang. Two days after it first expressed its opposition to Hull's proposal, the
Milwaukee Journal
contended that Pandora's box had already been opened as a result of the visit of a delegation of Jews to the State Department to request that the quotas be liberalized until the international program for rescue that seemed to be in the offing was formulated and placed into operation. The paper attacked “American citizens of Jewish parentage” who were asking for special privileges for European Jewry and accused them of doing “neither their country, nor themselves, nor their kin a service.” Their greatest sin was that they threatened the future of something the paper described as
“homogeneous
America.”
²⁸
Although the meaning of “homogeneous” was not spelled out, its implication was clear: Jews were different, and an influx of them threatened the nation's “racial” and “social” composition. The
Portland
(Oregon)
News
also mixed economic and antisemitic arguments. America, beset by problems of unemployment and barely able to take care of its own, could not afford to be “a dumping ground,” particularly for refugees who might not “make real Americans” and who might not subscribe to “American principles of democratic government.” Rather than admit more people, it was time to force “these trouble making aliens to go back from whence they came.”
²⁹
The
Detroit News
, without ever mentioning Jews but clearly referring to them, also objected to the potential flood of Jewish immigrants.

Further refugees would largely settle, as the others have, in cities and particularly New York, where their presence has not been to the best interests of those of their own people, already settled, whose compassion and active sympathy they have enlisted.
³⁰

During the 1930s the press generally couched its opposition to immigration in terms of unemployment, a depressed economy, and burdens on already overburdened taxpayers, all of which were supposedly exacerbated by immigration. On occasion the xenophobic sentiments and social and racial antipathies which under-girded the standard economic arguments were revealed. This was not the first or last time that such feelings were displayed. As
has been shown, during the first years of Nazi rule Jews were often blamed for bringing their suffering upon themselves. A similar argument was repeated in November 1938 after
Kristallnacht
, when
The Christian Century
argued against increased immigration. The journal admitted that it was more concerned about the social than the economic implications of a change in immigration policy. The United States, it argued, already had to contend with the problem of integrating nationalities and races who “are wholly irrelevant to our common national life.” Permitting entry of additional Jews would be a “tragic disservice to the Jews in America” because it would “exacerbate” what
Christian Century
described as America's “Jewish problem.”
³¹

Other less prestigious press voices also blamed the Jews. The
Holyoke Times Telegraph
accused Jews of provoking their persecutors by “adhering too closely to city life.” The
Allentown
(Pennsylvania)
Chronicle and News
attributed Jews' suffering to their “inability” to assimilate with “any other race” and to an innate “aggressiveness” which had always caused the Jews' “downfall.”
³²

Despite these pockets of dissent and hostility toward Jews, however, most of the papers which commented on the idea of a conference were swept up in the enthusiasm of a “rebuke to Hitler” at little cost to America. And those who feared that it would produce a wave of newcomers had little cause for real concern, for this was the politics of gestures, as the conference itself would soon demonstrate.

For eight days in July the delegates of thirty-two nations, the representatives of thirty-nine private organizations, two hundred newspaper reporters, and a myriad of unofficial observers and supplicants gathered at the luxurious Hotel Royal at the French resort of Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva near the Swiss border. Evian's mineral baths had long been a favorite of Europeans in search of cures for various ailments. On this occasion Evian's healing powers would fail to cure any of the ills plaguing those who were the subject of the conference—the refugees.

By this time much of the enthusiasm for the conference had evaporated and a keener recognition of the problems faced was to be found in news stories and editorials. Since the
Anschluss
Germany had increased the economic pressure on Jews, forcing them into what
Newsweek
described on the eve of the conference as “an isolation unequaled since the Middle Ages.” It was now clear that few nations wanted immigrants at all and fewer still were willing to provide places for those who were both penniless and Jews.
³³
Clarence Streit, writing in the
New York Times
, described the atmosphere which prevailed at this tranquil resort as “so much like a poker game . . . a none too trustful poker game particularly as between the three great democracies, the United States, the United Kingdom and France”—a poker game in which each of the players refused to even contemplate raising the stakes. This gathering, supposedly dedicated to helping refugees, was permeated by an “air of inhospitality” to them.
³⁴

During the conference various editorials energetically explained why the United States, despite its deepest sympathies, could offer little additional aid. Some papers vigorously protested, possibly a bit too much, that this was due to economic and not racial or religious considerations.
³⁵
They contrasted the contemporary situation with earlier times when “farmers needed more consumers for their products; railroads wanted new settlers along their rights of way, . . . [and] mills had room for common labor at low wages.” The press argued that while this was America's mythic identity, reality was quite different. According to the
San Francisco Chronicle
, even skilled refugees were not wanted in this country, where there was not only a surfeit of common laborers but “already as many doctors as can make a living, perhaps more.”
³⁶

Some papers ignored the issue of whether refugees should be allowed to enter the United States and simply echoed the demand of the “Big Three” powers—the United States, Great Britain, and France—that Germany permit the refugees to take a substantial portion of their income and belongings with them to facilitate their resettlement. Editorials repeatedly argued that Germany could hardly “expect other countries to admit the Jews” who had been cast “abroad penniless.”
³⁷
A New Orleans paper bluntly informed Berlin that if it was more “interested in getting rid of these people than in confiscating their property,” then the rule that Jews could only take 5 percent of their income should be eased.
³⁸
These demands seemed strangely unrealistic. Germany had previously done nothing to ease Jewish emigration, and there was no reason to expect it to begin to cooperate with other nations
now. A few press observers recognized the ludicrousness of expecting German cooperation and dismissed it as a “naive suggestion.”
³⁹
One commentator cynically mused that life would certainly be easier if the Nazis would “give each refugee a cow and a horse, seed and farm implements, as well as some cash!”
⁴⁰
The
Baltimore Sun
wryly and accurately pointed out that the fact that Jews' reception in other lands was made “doubly difficult” by their penniless state would be no “shock” to Nazis because expelling them in this condition was “part of their plan.”
⁴¹

There was nothing to indicate that Germany would change its tactics without a strong incentive such as a decision at Evian to impose economic pressure on Germany. The few editorial suggestions for explicit action—e.g., countries which owed Germany money should withhold payments as a form of protest and leverage until Germany “acquiesces”—were the exception.
⁴²

As the conference progressed, press appraisal of it grew progressively harsher. The great expectations of March dissolved in the realities of July. The
Detroit Free Press
decried the behavior of the various delegations, dismissed the reasons they gave why they could do nothing as “immaterial,” and branded the gathering a “sad commentary” on the willingness of the world's democracies to resolve one of the “most serious problems” the world faced.
⁴³
Another paper aptly categorized the meeting as a polite game of “passing the buck.”
⁴⁴
According to yet another paper the delegates had all but nullified their “profound sympathy for the tortured victims of Europe's totalitarian tyranny” with their various excuses why they were unable to provide asylum.
⁴⁵

The
New York Herald Tribune
declared the gathering “not exactly a pretty spectacle” as it got “nowhere with great dignity but at a high rate of speed.” Demonstrating both pessimism and insight, the
Tribune
observed that Evian was enough to justify the “scorn” which the fascist governments of the world “delight in pouring out” on the other nations.
Time
described Evian as a place which had heard “many warm words of idealism and few practical suggestions.”
⁴⁶
The “air of inhospitality” and undercurrent of antisemitism prevalent at Evian were most dramatically exemplified by Australia's representative, who declared that “we have no real racial problem [and] we are not desirous of importing one.”
⁴⁷
Once again Jews were explicitly and implicitly held responsible for their suffering.
The New Republic
, one of the most ardent critics of the failure to rescue, observed that the delegates'

annoyance at the Nazis seemed to proceed fully as much from the fact that they had presented the rest of the world with an awkward problem of absorption as from the cruelty practised toward the exiles, past and future.
⁴⁸

An even sharper condemnation was contained in a query by the
Richmond
(Virginia)
News Leader:

When the conference adjourns and a permanent commission is established in London to aid in mass migration, what will the United States do? Will this country set an example and modify immigration laws carefully and wisely to permit the entry of a considerable number of these intelligent refugees? Or will we simply play politics, hide behind nationalism, and insist that South America is the proper home for these people? As between the two questions, the answer is nearly obvious. The United States will be content with friendly gestures and kind words. That is why some of us not only are cold to the report of the conference but also are a bit ashamed of our country.
⁴⁹

The
Richmond News Leader's
response was unique in explicitly taking the United States to task for refusing to act. Generally press condemnations of the world's intransigence excluded the United States. Victor Wilson of the
Philadelphia Record
assailed the “indifference if not downright hostility” of the conference in a lengthy article under a telling headline:

Humanitarianism Suffers a New Blow as Evian Parley Fails to Provide System for Aiding Europe's Unhappy Exiles—France and Britain Maneuver to Shunt Burden on U.S.

As the headline indicates, Wilson's ire was directed at other nations, France and Britain in particular.
⁵⁰
Similarly
Newsweek
noted that when other nation's governments heard
American
calls for prompt action, they responded by “promptly . . . slamming their doors against Jewish refugees.”
⁵¹
The
Washington Star
also castigated Evian's participants, with the exception of the United States, for their “yes-but” behavior. The delegations “vied with one another in deploring the plight . . . faced by [the] oppressed”; the problem was that when it came to the “brass tacks . . . for facilitating emigration . . . Evian emulated a famous region paved with good intentions.”
⁵²

Then, during the meeting's final days, when the participants managed to agree on the establishment of a permanent intergov
emmental commission charged with the task of finding a solution to the refugee problem, some of the press's sharp critique was tempered.
⁵³

The vast majority of the critics in the American press refused to consider that America's refusal to change its quota laws might have been responsible in some measure for the limited results of Evian. When the United States promised that the status quo would be maintained, Evian's eventual outcome could well have been predicted. In truth, had America expanded its quota allotments or assumed responsibility for a greater number of refugees, the press would have condemned its actions just as relentlessly as it now condemned the inaction of the rest of the world. The press had supported the idea of a conference because it guaranteed no increase in immigration. In fact its stance was entirely consistent with—if not slightly more liberal than—public sentiments. A
Fortune
survey taken earlier in the year revealed that less than 5 percent of Americans favored expanding the quotas while 67 percent favored trying to keep refugees out. Only 18 percent of the public—but most of the press—favored the status quo.
⁵⁴