July 6, 1938
Evian Conference Opens
Historical context
On this day, July 6, 1938, delegates from 32 countries opened the Evian Conference. Most refused to take more Jewish refugees. Only the Dominican Republic offered to accept additional arrivals.
Archive record
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- Date
- July 6, 1938
- Verified sources
- 1
- Archive threads
- 4
On this day, delegates from 32 countries opened a nine-day conference at Évian-les-Bains, on Lake Geneva, to discuss refugees seeking to leave Nazi Germany and Austria. President Franklin Roosevelt had called the meeting. Delegate after delegate expressed sympathy. Most governments, including the United States and Britain, refused to take more refugees.
USHMM records that only the Dominican Republic agreed to accept additional refugees. Later settlement at Sosúa numbered in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands first discussed. The conference closed on 15 July 1938. Britain’s White Paper on Palestine followed in 1939.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Emigration and the Evian Conference · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum · Holocaust Encyclopedia View source
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