Indifference to the plight of the persecuted in Europe, including refugees, was by no means monopolised by the United States government. In fact this indifference typified the response of the international community to the plight of European Jewry and other victims of Nazi Persecution.

Nowhere is this more evident than in minutes of the Evian Conference and the Bermuda Conference. Two conferences ostensibly set up to help Jewish refugees and others fleeing the the Nazis.

Jewish refugees had been Germany since shortly after Hitler's accession to power. As he progressively increased his oppression of Jews they fled in greater numbers.

It was not until after Anschluss in March of 1938, when Hitler peacefully annexed Austria, that governments beyond continental Europe perceived that hundreds of thousands of Jews had been made homeless and wanted to flee Europe as quickly as possible.

Having concluded that the League of Nations was incapable of devising an orderly program to deal with this humanitarian crisis, President Roosevelt moved to set up an international conference on refugees involving representatives from more than 30 countries.

Known as the Evian conference it took place in July 1938. Its only tangible legacy was the moribund Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees. Its proceedings, though, illuminate the callous unconcern  of almost all governments in the English speaking world Western Europe, and Latin America to the plight of German and Austrian Jewry.

Minutes of the meeting show that when the meeting addressed itself to how many refugees each country would take, the US claimed that as it favoured an orderly long term plan it would take only those who could be accommodated under the quota system.

Canada's representative argued that high unemployment meant that it could not absorb any refugees.

Representatives of Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Britain, and Switzerland made the same claim.

Australia's representative shamlessly declared  " it will no doubt be appreciated that as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large scale foreign migration".

One by one spokesmen for Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Peru stated the unwillingness of their governments to take any more "non- Aryan" (i.e. Jewish) immigrants.

From Saul Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1973, 59- 62.
 

Hitler did not commit to the complete extermination of European Jewry until late 1941. By November 1942 news of these plans was available to all who cared enough in the free world. Following  public reaction to this news and agitation by Christian Church leaders in Britain the British and US Governments held a conference in Bermuda.

It was a bilateral summit and included no representatives from any Jewish organisations.

War time regulations restricted media access and any outside scrutiny.

A joint US/ UK report recommended that no approach be made to Hitler for the release of potential refugees. Other minutes of the conference reveal that this is out of fear that Hitler might take up the offer and both countries would have to accommodate some or even all of these refugees.

Other recommendations of the report include that both governments act to obtain neutral shipping for the transportation of refugees, both make a joint declaration on the post-war repatriation of refugees, and that the report and its recommendations be kept secret.

From David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, Pantheon Books, New York, 1984, 114 - 119.

The last word on the Bermuda Conference most go to Richard Law. Law was  the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and a British participant. Years later Law said that the conference was established to ease the growing pressures for rescue of the Jews.

The Bermuda Conference was, to quote Law " a facade for inaction". - Abandonment of the Jews, p122.

Further Reading:

Friedman, S., No Haven for the Oppressed, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1973.

Wyman, D., The Abandonment of the Jews, Pantheon Books, New York, 1984.