Conference on the problem of Jewish refugees held in Evian, France, from July 6-15, 1938. Eleven days after Austria had been annexed in March 1938 Roosevelt had proposed an international conference to facilitate the emigration of refugees from Germany and Austria, and to establish a new international organisation to work for an overall solution to the refugee problem. At the time of the proposal, Roosevelt had made it clear that no nation would be expected to change its immigration policies significantly. Delegates from thirty-two countries (the United States, Great Britain, France, six smaller European democracies, Canada, the Latin American nations, Australia, and New Zealand) met in Evian on Lake Geneva. As the conference proceeded, delegate after delegate excused his country from accepting additional refugees. The United States delegate, Myron C. Taylor, stated that his country's contribution was to make the German and Austrian immigration quota, which up to the time had remained unfilled, fully available. The British delegate declared that their overseas territories were largely unsuitable for European settlement, except for parts of East Africa, which might offer possibilities for limited numbers. Britain itself, being fully populated and suffering unemployment, also was unavailable for immigration; the question of Palestine had been excluded from the conference by prior agreement with the US. The French delegate stated that France had reached "the extreme point of saturation as regards admission of refugees." The other European countries echoed this sentiment, with minor variations. Before adjourning, the Evian Conference established the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) and commissioned it to "approach the governments of the countries of refuge with a view to developing opportunities for permanent settlement," and to persuade Germany to co-operate in establishing "conditions of orderly emigration." The IGCR, however, received little authority and almost no funds or support from its member nations, and it had virtually no success in opening countries to refugees. The advent of war cut short its efforts to arrange with Germany for refugees to bring some property out with them, and the committee soon slipped into inactivity. Months earlier, it was already clear that the IGCR and the Evian Conference had accomplished virtually nothing. The Evian Conference stands in historical perspective as a critical turning point. At the conference, the world's democracies made it clear that they were willing to do next to nothing for the Jews of Europe. Several months later, Kristallnacht signalled to the world that Jews no longer could live under Nazi rule, while at Evian, the world had shown it would not make room for those Jews. The world's doors, closed at Evian, remained shut throughout World War II.
