Volume 36

Erwartungen an Évian

The Évian Conference in July 1938 was a significant diplomatic event. On the basis of contemporary documents of Jewish organizations, Martin Jost opens a new perspective on this international refugee conference and the expectations it engendered: Initially, the Jewish emissaries regarded the negotiations that took place at Lake Geneva and the establishment of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees as a hope-inspiring prelude and as a realistic means of enabling emigration for those being persecuted under National Socialism. Only once the war broke out and in the face of the unprecedented politics of annihilation that followed did their assessment change. Évian would go down in historical memory as a missed opportunity to save Europe’s Jews.