Mick Hartley

Via Snoopy, a look back to Evian – just across the lake from Geneva – in 1938:

As Hitler had annexed Austria and hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees were seeking a safe haven outside of the Nazi-controlled areas, the free world knew that something had to be done. It was the US president Franklin Roosevelt who finally called together the conference with the objective of seeking a solution to the Jewish refugee problem. Thirty-two nations were invited to participate. It soon became clear that the conference was not going to solve anything, as one country after another explained that they all agreed that this was a major humanitarian problem which needed to be solved, but that their respective country could not do anything about it. Others were less diplomatically skilled.

"Our country is simply not big enough to receive any Jewish refugees," said the Canadian representative. When asked how many refugees Canada could receive the answer was, "One is too many." "Australia has no racial problem and we are not desirous of importing one," is a quote which today is on display in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.   […]

One thing is clear. The UN conference in Geneva, which starts today and runs through Friday, will not be a friendly place for any of us who sympathize with the Jewish cause. But things could be worse. In 1938 the world was said to be divided up in two categories, those nations which Jews could not enter and those which wanted to expel them. The promised Jewish homeland was not even considered as an option for resettlement since it was believed to create more tension in then British Mandate Palestine. A few years later there would be six million Jews less to accommodate but then, finally, the urgency of creating a Jewish homeland was realized by the world community…

It is of course the irony of time that a conference dedicating itself to fighting racism, the very disease which lead to Hitler's Holocaust, is currently paving the way for a legitimizing of Jew hatred and Israel bashing around the world.