The Evian Conference

The Évian Conference was an international meeting held from July 6 to 15, 1938, at the resort town of Évian-les-Bains on the French shore of Lake Geneva. It was convened at the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt to address the worsening plight of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany and, after the Anschluss of March 1938, in Austria as well. Delegates from thirty-two countries gathered to consider how the world might respond to a refugee crisis that was growing more desperate by the month.

For all the sympathy expressed in its speeches, the conference produced almost nothing of substance. One nation after another explained why it could not take in more refugees: the United States declined to enlarge its own restrictive immigration quotas, Britain refused to allow the question of Jewish immigration to Palestine even to be placed on the agenda, and most other states pleaded economic hardship or domestic politics. Of all the countries present, only the Dominican Republic offered to accept a substantial number of refugees.

The conference did establish the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees to continue negotiations, but the body was given little authority and accomplished little before the outbreak of war the following year. To the desperate Jews of Central Europe, Évian confirmed that few doors would be opened to them.

The meeting's failure carried consequences far beyond the disappointment of the refugees themselves. Nazi propaganda seized on the result as proof that no nation truly wanted the Jews, and Hitler's government took the world's inaction as a signal that it could pursue ever more radical measures without fear of foreign intervention. In retrospect, the Évian Conference stands as a sobering example of how international concern, unmatched by the willingness to act, can amount to no help at all.