The Evian Conference was convened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss the problem of refugees. For nine days, delegates from thirty-two countries met at Evian-les-Bains , France. However, not much was accomplished, since most western countries were reluctant to accept Jewish refugees; the only country willing to accept many Jews was the Dominican Republic. The conference failed to pass even a resolution condemning German treatment of the Jews, a fact that was widely used in Nazi propaganda. The lack of action further emboldened Hitler, proving to him that no country had the moral fortitude to oppose Nazism's assault on European Jewry.
By 1938, some 150,000 out of about 500,000 German Jews managed to flee Germany, but the territories of Europe recently conquered by the Nazis also had sizable Jewish populations. Many Jewish refugees were unable to find countries willing to accept them.
Before the Conference, the United States and Great Britain made an agreement with each other; the British promised not to bring up the fact that the US was not filling its immigration quotas if the Americans refrained from mentioning Palestine as a possible destination for refugees.
Myron C. Taylor, an American businessman and a friend of Roosevelt, represented the U.S. at the conference. No high-level official was sent by the US.
Golda Meir was "in the ludicrous capacity of the observer from Palestine, not even seated with the delegates, although the refugees under discussion were my own people...!" In her memoirs My Life, she describes that in the course of the conference, the delegates expressed sympathy for the refugees, but offered only excuses for not letting in more refugees.
After the conference, Chaim Weizmann was quoted in the Manchester Guardian as saying: "The world seemed to be divided into two parts – those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."
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