When the World Passed by on the Other Side

The Hotel Royal, site of the Evian Conference on Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Evian-les-Bains, France, July 1938. — National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.



US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Geneva last night for closed doors talks with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on a deal that would allow Iran to continue developing its nuclear capabilities. Capabilities that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu insists “threaten” Israel’s “existence."

But the shores of Lake Geneva have long been a pleasant distraction while discussing “the Jewish question.” 

"At the French resort of Evian on the shores of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1938, President Roosevelt initiated a nine-day international conference, supposedly to facilitate Jewish immigration from Germany and Austria.

Very important people were here and all the delegates had a nice time. They took pleasure cruises on the lake. They gambled at night at the casino. They took mineral baths and massages…some of them took the excursions to Chamonix to go summer skiing. Some went riding, some played golf. Meetings. Yes, some attended the meetings. But, of course it is difficult to sit indoors hearing speeches when all the pleasures that Evian offers are waiting right outside" (Rene Richier as quoted in Peggy Mann, When the World Passed by on the Other Side, Manchester Guardian Weekly, 7 May 1938).

Here are the recollections of an uninvited delegate, Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel:

"… sitting there in that magnificent hall and listening to the delegates of thirty-two countries rise, each in turn, to explain how much they would have liked to take in substantial numbers of refugees and how unfortunate it was that they were not able to do so, was a terrible experience, I don't think that anyone who didn't live through it can understand what I felt at Evian – a mixture of sorrow, rage, frustration and horror" (As quoted in, The Evian Conference - Hitler's Green Light for Genocide, Annette Shaw, 2001, Quoted by permission of Stephen D. Smith, Director, Beth Shalom, (Letter 15/3/2000), Perspective, Vol. 1, Issue 1, July 1998, "Nobody Wants Them,” p. 21).

"At the end of the nine-day conference, Hitler had his Green Light" (Annette Shaw, The Evian Conference - Hitler's Green Light for Genocide, 2001):

"Nobody wants them' claimed the German newspaper Völkischer Beobachter after the Evian Conference in July 1938 and Hitler gloated, saying, 'It is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard hearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them." (Perspective, Beth Shalom, p. 21).