The Bermuda Conference of April 1943 was intended as a forum for the United States and Great Britain to develop strategies for helping European refugees. In the end, however, it only served to demonstrate the contradictions that existed in U.S. refugee policy. Although the conference had been prompted by increasing public concern about the German mass murder of Jews, the U.S. State Department prohibited U.S. delegates from pledging funds toward rescue plans or proposing changes in the strict U.S. immigration law. Ironically, the same day this ineffective conference began in Bermuda, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up in futile defiance of Nazi persecution.
