Book Presentation

Erwartungen an Évian. Jüdische Positionen zur Flüchtlingspolitik 1938

Book presentation with Dr. Martin Jost and Dr. Kim Wünschmann

Titelblatt des Buches mit einer Fotografie, die vier Männer zeigt, die in einer Berglandschaft im freien um einen Tisch herum sitzen.

The Évian Refugee Conference in July 1938 was a major diplomatic event at which representatives from over 30 countries and numerous aid organizations discussed the possibilities for the emigration of Jews from Germany and Austria. After the Holocaust, the narrative of a failed rescue conference that offered neither protection nor help to the persecuted became established in memory and research.

For his book, historian Martin Jost (Leipzig) analyzed contemporary letters, diaries and memoranda from representatives of Jewish organizations. In the context of international refugee and migration policy, he opens a new perspective on the iconic event: in the summer of 1938, the Jewish emissaries regarded the negotiations and the establishment of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees as a hope-inspiring prelude and as a realistic means of enabling emigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews being persecuted under National Socialism. It was only in the face of the unprecedented Nazi politics of annihilation during the war that the conference was perceived as a missed opportunity to save European Jewry.

The historian and director of the Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg, Kim Wünschmann, discusses Évian with the author in the field of tension between hope, Realpolitik, and remembrance. The discussion will also open a view of current migration and refugee policy.

Tuesday, 25 March 2025, 6 p.m.
Dubnow Institute, Leipzig

in collaboration with Brill Deutschland – Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht