AUSTRALIA AND THE JEWISH REFUGEES - GOVERNMENT POLICY 1933-1939
by
Michael Blakeney
I hereby certify that the work contained in this thesis has not been submitted for. a higher degree to any other university or institution.
\ Signature, •••••e••••••••••••••••••et•e••••
Date •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••e••••c:1••
Thesis submitted to fulfil requirements of Master of Arts (Hons) Degree.
'JnivPrsity of New South Wales
School of History
October 1982 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis was stimulated by Dr. Jurgen Tampke's excellent Masters
Course on the Holocaust. Dr. Tampke was kind enough to act as my supervisor
for this thesis. Among the numerous persons who have assisted me special
thanks must go to the inter-library loans librarian of the Law School, Cheryl
White, the staff of the A.C.T. Office of the Australian Archives Office, and
the Rabbi L. Falk Library of the Great Synagogue (Sydney). For an excellently typed thesis I must thank Sandra Cowling.
Michael Blakeney
21.10.82
iv SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
1. Plight of the European Jews 1933-1938.
2. The Roots of Australian Policy on Jewish Immigration 1933-1938.
3. Development and Administration of Australian Immigration Policy to
1938.
4. Australia at Evian.
5. Kristallnacht 1938.
6. Immigration Policy 1939.
7. Resettlement Schemes.
8. Evaluation
Appendixes
Bibliography
i TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Plight of the European Jews 1933-1938.
(a) The Reich (b) Poland (c) Hungary (d) Romania (e) Other European Countries
2. The Roots of Australian Policy on Jewish Immigration 1933-1938.
(a) Introduction (b) Domestic Politics (c) Foreign Policy and Diplomacy (d) The 'White Australia' Policy (e) 'Populate or Perish' (f) Anti-Alien Sentiment (g) Australian Anti-Semitism (h) The Australian Jewish Community
3. Development and Administration of Immigration Policy to 1938.
(a) Introduction (b) Immigration Policy to 1933 (c) Immigration Policy 1933-1937 (d) The Crisis of 1938
4. Australia at Evian.
(a) The Road to Evian (b) By the Waters of Evian (c) Assessment
5. Kristallnacht.
(a) The Pogrom (b) Domestic Pressures (c) International Pressures (d) The Government's Response (e) Press Reactions
ii 6. Immigration Policy 1939
(a) Administration (b) The Role of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society 1938-1939 (c) Immigration Policy to the Outbreak of War (d) Public Opinion and the Jewish Refugees
7. Jewish Resettlement
(a) Introduction (b) Madagascar (c) Palestine and the British Colonies (d) American Proposals (e) The Kimberley Scheme (f) Other Australian Proposals
8. Evaluation
(a) The Statistical Record (b) The Quality of the Government's Attitude Toward the Refugees (c) Australian Jews and the Refugees 1938-1939 (d) Final Comment
Appendixes
1. Report of the Evian Conference on Refugees 2. Speech of T.W. White 3. Report of the Sub-Committee for the Reception of Organizations Concerned with the Relief of Political Refugees Coming from Germany Including Austria. 4. Memorandum on Australian Immigration Laws and Practices.
Bibliography
A. Manuscript Sources
(a) Records of Government Departments (b) Private Papers (c) Theses and Papers
iii B. Printed Sources
(a) Published Government and International Documents (b) Parliamentary Debates (c) Newspapers and Periodicals (d) Reports of Refugee Organizations (e) Contemporary Books (f) Contemporary Articles (g) Recent Books (h) Recent Articles.
iv 1. PLIGHT OF THE EUROPEAN JEWS 1933-1938
(a) The Reich
The "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" was the euphemism adopted by the German bureacracy in the summer of 1941 to describe the various arrangements which had been agreed upon for the extermination of Jews falling into German hands. The "solution" was obviously final in the sense that it was irreversible but it was also final in that a policy of extermination appears to have evolved after policies of emigration, expulsion and resettlement proved to be unworkable. 1 A lively academic debate has addressed the question of whether Jewish genocide was always the German intention.2 In
Mein Kampf, written in 1924, Hitler had declared that "if at the beginning of the [First World] War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas ••• the sacrifice of multitudes at the front would not have been in vain". 3 Hitler's political testament, written shortly before his suicide in April 1945, exhorted Germans to "adhere strictly to the racial laws and offer unmerciful resistance to the poisoner of all
peoples: international Jewry 11 • 4 Certainly Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 could not have been construed as a mandate for his Jewish policy. The Nazis were inferior partners in a right-wing coalition which was unable to command a majority in the Reichstag. In fact, for the first time . since 1930 the party had lost electoral support, receiving two million fewer votes than they had in the previous July elections and losing 34
Reichstag seats. However, within six months the Nazis had subjugated all political opponents and had embarked on their declared programme to make
Germany free of Jews (judenrein).
Despite the overwhelming significance of anti-Semitism in the Nazi political platform, the party had no coherent policy for dealing with the Jews once they had come to power. In the first months of office Hitler was concerned to maintain an appearance of legality and not to provoke the
Reichswehr into removing him. 5 The subtlety of this policy escaped the storm troopers of the S .A who were enraged by the apparent mildness of the now frock-coated Fuhrer.6 In the absence of central direction it initiated its own anti-Jewish campaign, commencing in February 1933 with a series of boycotts against Jewish businesses together with kidnapping and general mistreatment of Jews. Hitler issued a general call to avoid all
"uncoordinated incidents".7 This failed to satisfy the s.A. and in late March the decision was taken by Hitler and Goebbels to institute a nationwide boycott against Jewish businesses. The boycott was justified in Party propaganda as a defensive response to "international Jewish agitation" and a
"Central Committee for Defence Against Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Propaganda" was established under the chairmanship of Streicher. The boycott was held on
1st April, accompanied by violence and demonstrations.8
The foreign reaction to the boycott, which was influential in the first delicate months of Hitler's Ministry, dictated a more prudent or respectable approach to the "Jewish Problem" until Germany was strong enough to ignore the threat of reprisals. A Party directive of 1932 had recommended the deprivation of the rights of German Jews through legal or administrative means. 9 Legislation would be acceptable to the conservative foreign governments who looked to Hitler as the bastion against Russia and who would overlook the anti-Semitic form provided the anti-Bolshevik substance was maintained.10 Legislation would also bring order to the uncoordinated actions of the S .A. and would satisfy Hitler's peti t bourgeois penchant for the legalities to be observed. 11
Standing in the way of a programme of legislative discrimination were the
2 provisions of the Weimer constitution which guaranteed legal equality to all citizens. The Reichstag fire and the resultant Enabling Act of 23 March 1933,
the "Law for Removing the Distress of People and Reich", freed Hitler from any constitutional restraints and formed the legal basis of his dictatorship. 12
The statute from which the subsequent body of discriminatory legislation proceeded was the law of 7 April 1933 for the "Reconstruction of the Civil service"13 which provided that civil servants of "non-Aryan descent" were to be summarily retired. A "non-Aryan" was defined in a regulation of 11 April
1933 as a person one of whose grandparents or parents was "Jewish". 14 Those officials who were members of the Ci vi 1 Service before 1 August 1914 or who had fought at the front during the Great War or who had lost a father or son in that war were initially exempted from the law. The definition of "Aryan" and the "Veterans" exemption were adopted as guides for the application of administrative measures to Jews throughout Germany.
A series of ordinances and decrees implementing the provisions of the Law
led to the dismissal of university and school teachers, scientists, doctors, welfare officers, and the employees of government instrumentalities. Jewish
lawyers practising outside the civil service were excluded by the Law of 7
April 1933, "On Admission to the Bar". 15 By a Law of 22 April patients covered by national health insurance were informed that their expenses would
not be paid if they consulted a non-Aryan doctor. 16
The April Laws were the first of some four hundred pieces of anti-Jewish
legislation between 1933 and 1939 to effect the Gleichschal tung or
"Coordination" of the Reich. A Law of 25 April "Against the Overcrowding of
German Schools" restricted admissions of non-Aryans to high schools, technical
institutes and universities to 1.5 of the total enrolment. 17 Coordination of
German cultural life was effected through the establishment of guilds
(Reichskammern) for the press, theatre, cinema, radio, music, literature, art
3 and architecture. Admission to these guilds was under the direct authority of
Goebbels, Minister for Enlightenment and Propaganda, and would be refused to persons, such as non-Aryans, who "did not inspire the confidence or possess
the competence to carry on his particular activity". Exclusion from a
Reichskammer prevented a person from carrying on the relevant activity. 18
An immediate effect of these laws was to encourage emigration from
Germany and by the end of 1933 it was estimated that about 60,000 refugees had
left Germany, of whom about 80 percent were Jews.19 The principal recipients of these emigrants were the countries bordering Germany. Net German and
Austrian immigration into Australia in 1933 was only 52 persons. 20 The encouragement of Jewish emigration had not by the end of 1933 become an object of Nazi policy but this approach was prefigured by the Law of 14 July 1933 providing for the denaturalization of persons the government considered undesirable. 21 The law could be applied to anyone who had been naturalized after 19 November 1918. The same law provided for the dena turaliza tion of
German nationals residing outside Germany who "prejudiced German interests by
an attitude contrary to the duty of loyalty" towards the Reich. 22 By an order
of the Interior Ministry of 26 July the law was to be applied against the
150,000 Eastern Jews (Ostjuden) in Germany. However, few of the Eastern Jews had become German citizens so the Denaturalization Law was an academic
gesture, although it was an indication of things to come.
The majority of departures from Germany in 19 33 were between March and
July, by the end of the year it was thought that anti-Jewish activities were
subsiding. The Judische Rundschau, the leading Jewish newspaper reported in
November that,
If we review the events of the past year, we must note that many German Jews have lost their economic base for existence. Yet it appears from the announcements of authoritative sources that in future our economic existence will be guaranteed, though limited, by the new legal situation •••• 23
4 This optimism was justified. In 1934 few official measures were taken against the Jews and even S.A. harassment came to an end following its purge in June of that year. In 1934 only 23,000 Jews left Germany and in the first part of
1935 some 10,000 Jews returned.24 Net German and Austrian immigration into
Australia was 45 persons in 1934 and only 8 persons in 1935.25
From mid-1935 Nazi energies were absorbed in the preparation of the annual party Rally to be held at Nuremberg in mid-September. Hitler decided to mark this event with the order that laws be enacted "For the protection of
German blood and honour". The resultant Nuremberg Laws forbade marriage between Jews and persons of "German or related blood", and relegated Jews to an inferior civil status analogous to that of guests of the Reich. A number of supplementary decrees defined "Jews", those of "Mixed Jewish blood"
(Mischlinge) and Aryans. 26 The Nuremberg decrees contained no economic ini tia ti ves against the Jews. With the prospect of the Olympic Games the following year anti-Jewish legislation and mistreatment became quiescent.
The elimination of Jews from all aspects of the German economy had been a central feature of Nazi propaganda but the vulnerability of Germany to foreign economic pressure, illustrated by the failure of the boycott of 1 April 1933, demonstrated the necessity for a cautious approach. Indeed between 1933 and
1937 legislation protected Jewish participation in important areas of the economy. Smaller Jewish businesses, however, were vulnerable to
"Aryanization" which consisted of pressure upon them to transfer assets to their non-Jewish competi tars. This pressure took the form of boycotts, the anti-competitive activities of trade association, private trade embargoes as well as physical intimidation. In the first two years of Nazi rule some
75,000 Jewish businesses were liquidated, leaving by April 1938, some 39,532
Jewish business establishments.27
Jewish emigration from Germany in 1935 was estimated at 20,000, it
5 increased to 24,000 in 1936, dropping to 23,000 in 1937.28 The failure of the
Nazis completely to eliminate the Jews from the economy by early 1938 left the survivors with some means of sustenance and encouraged them in the belief that the Nazis did not intend a judenrein economy. Emigration was also discouraged by the financial expenses of moving. The disposal of assets could be at only a fraction of their value. In addition a "flight tax" (Reichsfluchtssteuer) which had been introduced in 1931 to conserve Germany's foreign exchange holdings was imposed from 1934 on emigrants possessing a capital of RM 50,000 or who since 1931 had an income of more than RM 20,000 in any one year. The emigrant was required to pay to the State 25 per cent of the last assessed value of all his property. The remainder of the emigrant's capital was retained in Germany and held in a special blocked mark account or Sperrkonto which could be realised abroad at a fluctuating but declining rate. 29
Additionally, an individual leaving Germany in 1933 was entitled to take with him only RM 200 in foreign currency. By 1937 that figure had been reduced to
RM 10, about $A1. The remainder of an emigrants property, aside from some chattels, was placed in the Sperrkonto. 30
Paradoxically, then, although Jewish emigration would have accorded with
Nazi desires for a judenrein Reich, Nazi policies were an effective obstruction. As the British Passport Control Officer in Berlin explained "the position of the Jew in Germany, even if he possesses capital, is therefore a desperate one: he is being ruined economically and at the same time he is unable to emigrate as he cannot obtain the release of even a moderate proportion of his capital sufficient to enable him to do so. 1131 The promotion of emigration as an instrument of Nazi policy had been considered by the s.s. in a situation report on the "Jewish Question" in 1934. The report listed as the obstacles to mass emigration the limited capacity of Palestine to absorb
Germany's half a million Jews, the reluctance of Germany's neighbours to
6 accept them all, as well as the severe immigration barriers which had been erected by the United States following the stock market collapse in 1929.32 A significant obstacle to the emigration of German Jews was their deep attachment to the homeland. 33 Before the rise of Hitler they had been well . . 34 assimilated and largely unreceptive to Zionism. In the S.A. terror following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor the spontaneous reaction of thousands of Jews was flight. All Jewish organizations in Germany condemned this reaction as irresponsible. The Central Committee for Relief and
Rehabilitation which incorporated all the large Jewish organisations in
Germany opposed emigration as an abandonment of co-religionists and as damaging to their struggle to safeguard the rights of Jewish citizens.35 Even the German Zionist organizations opposed the precipitate emigration of untrained pioneers.36 The authoritative view of the German Jewish community was that "the history of the Jews of Germany teaches that we must exhibit patience and wait. 11 3 7 Even after the Nuremberg Laws the Central Committee sought to publicise statements of German leaders which implied the possibility of a continued existence for the Jewish community in Germany. 38 The leaders of the community believed it was their duty not only to preserve the heritage of German Jewry but also to present an example to other national communities not to be intimidated by anti-Semitism. Following the Nuremburg laws the
Organization of State Zionists revised its policies and proposed an evacuation of the German Jewish community over the next twenty-five to thirty years! 39
Even had the Zionists been more prescient, a pioneering prospect was not a realistic one for most German Jews. The population was an aged one. By 1938 some 20 per cent were over 65 years of age40 making them unlikely to subject themselves to the dislocations of emigration. Thus the 350,000 Jews remaining in Germany in 1938 represented a group who were unable or unwilling to emigrate.
7 The year 1938 has been described as "a crucial mi le stone in Jewish history". 41 The various anti-Semitic policies developed by the Nazis between
1933 and 1937 were in 1938 applied simultaneously and with a ruthless
intensity.42 Boycotts were organized, Aryanization accelerated and new
legislation promulgated. More significantly, Jews were herded into concentration camps.
The renewed attack on the Jews was heralded by a "Law Regarding the Legal
Status of Jewish Communities" of 28 March 1938, which deprived Jewish legal
congregations of the legal status accorded "bodies of public law". In March and April, Jewish shops were being looted and daubed with swastikas and obscene signs and Jews were being attacked. In May all Soviet Jews were arrested and placed in concentration camps and in the celebrated "June Action"
the Gestapo arrested 1,500 "anti-social" Jews and interned them in Buchenwald.
Unquestionably the most significant event of early 1938 was the Nazi
annexation of Austria on 12 March. This added between 180,000 to 200,000
Austrian Jews to the Reich, exceeding the number who had emigrated from
Germany since 1933. The arrival of the Germans in Vienna was marked by scenes
of panic and brutality. Thousands beseiged the foreign consulates, a wave of
suicides, estimated at one hundred a day, was noted with approbation by
Goebbels in a speech to Austrian Nazis. 43 Some 34,000 Viennese were arrested,
Jewish businesses were confiscated and Jews attacked. Eichmann, who had
established himself as the leading bureacratic expert on Jewish emigration,
was sent to Vienna to direct the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The
emigration procedure involved the impoverishment of applicants who were
expelled to wherever they could find refuge. Within six months one quarter of
Austria's Jews had emigrated, but this flood of pauperized emigrants converted
the German emigration problem into a world Jewish refugee problem. For the
first time Australia became a significant object of refuge. Net inflow of
8 German and Austrian migrants in 1935 had numbered only 8 persons, this had climbed to a modest 142 in 1936 and had trebled to 410 in 1937, 44 but an estimated 10,000 visa applications lay unanswered at the Australian Consulate
in Vienna in the first three weeks of the Anschluss. 45 Extensive Australian press coverage of these events alerted the Australian public to the plight of
the refugees. 46 Australia had now to consider whether it was prepared to offer sanctuary to the Jews of the Reich.
(b) Poland
Poland's three million Jews comprised approximately eleven per cent of
the total population but played an economic and cultural role which was disproportionate to their numbers. 47 They were concentrated in industry and
trade and resided primarily in the towns and cities. 48 Poor Jews were as
numerous as the more affluent and in 1931 one third were in receipt of
charity. 49 The tendency of the Polish Jewish population, unlike in Germany,
was largely to resist assimilation with Poles and to retain distinctive
sumptuary, dietary, speech and living customs. 50 This separateness
contributed towards the growth of a spontaneous anti-Semitic movement,
indigenous to Poland and uninfluenced in its gestation by events in
neighbouring Germany.
Poland was recreated following the Allied victory in the Great War. The
emergence of the new Poland was marked by anti-Jewish pogroms in 130
places.51 Emissaries from the Polish Jewish population petitioned the Supreme
Counci 1 of the victorious powers at Paris for treaty protection and in 1919
Poland was compelled to sign a Minority Treaty which accorded Jews full civic
equality and complete religious freedom and protection of their cultural
interests.52 On 11 November 1921 Poland officially proclaimed the Minority
Rights clauses to be part of the law of the land, but when in September 1934
9 Russia became a member of the League of Nations, Poland renounced the Minority
Treaty. Foreign Minister Beck explained that "The interests of the Minorities have been and will continue to be, defended by the Constitution of the Polish
Republic which assures the lingual, racial and confessional minorities freedom of development and equality of fights 11 • 53 Despite the Minorities Treaty, pogroms continued throughout 1919 a British Mission visiting Warsaw between
September and December of that year reported that "A severe, private, social and commercial boycott of Jews ••• exists amongst the people generally, largely fostered by the Polish press • 1154 Measures adopted against the Jews in Poland predated similar stratagems in Germany by over a decade.
By early 1919 anti-Jewish boycotts were an established institution.
Jewish premises were picketed and persons breaking the picket lines were molested and compelled to wear placards declaring them traitors.55 A
"Polonization" policy was inaugurated by municipal governments who declined trading permits to Jews. A Sunday Closing Act of 1921 prevented Jews from trading on the Christian Sabbath and Guild Legislation effectively restricted
Jewish participation in the trades. Anti-Semitism to 1926 was largely a result of the general anarchy which prevailed in Poland until Pilsudski seized power in that year and until his death in 1935 there was some slackening in the number of pogroms against Jews. Following Pilsudski's death the pogroms resumed with a vengeance as anarchic elements took advantage of the ending of his strong central control.56 Reports of atrocities filtered through to the west.57
Following the accession to power of the Nazis in neighbouring Germany,
Polish anti-Semitism began to adopt German forms. Traditional Polish hostility to Germany was harmonized with a grudging approbation for Nazi innovations. Thus the journal of the Polish National Party (the Endeks) declared that "The Nuremberg Laws are nothing new for us. We consider them of
1 0 crucial importance primarily because they constitute the first attempts in
this day and age to solve the Jewish problem of the western countries within a national context, putting an end to the general Jewish influence in
Europe 11 • 58 The Endeks reacted enthusiastically to German suggestions that
the removal of Jews from Germany was insufficient and that they had to be removed also from neighbouring countries which could have been used as a base for operations. . t agains Ge rmany. 59 The Gazette Warszawska declared, on 19
April 1935, that "Germany's success teaches us in Poland to adopt the same policy, which will force the Jews to organize their own mass emigration. We can do that only by making Jews realise once and for all that there will be no stopping until not a single Jew is left in Poland 11 • 60 Each of the political parties, including Paderewski's Conservative party, had the "complete elimination of Jews from industry, trade and business" as part of their platforms.61
It was suggested that a common anti-Semi tic policy was a means for effecting a rapprochement between the two countries62 following Pilsudski 's death Polish anti-Semitism became official policy. Economic measures taken against Jews included their removal from State-run enterprises, the
restriction of the number of Jews who could practice as lawyers, doctors or
teachers, and the removal of credit facilities from Jewish enterprises. As in
Germany measures were taken against Jewish cultural and religious life.
Typical of the former was the introduction of the Numerus Clausus Iudaeorum which restricted the number of Jews allowed to study in schools, colleges and universities together with the institution of ghetto benches.63 Typical of
the latter was the anti-Shechitah legislation between 1936 and 1938 to prevent
cattle being slaughtered according to Jewish ritual. As the promoter of the
bill of 1938, Dudzinski, explained, "we desire to plunge a knife into the
vital nerve of Polish Jewry and to make their lives unbearable. 1164
1 1 All Polish political parties agreed that Jewish emigration was the
solution of the country's problems. On 31 December 1938 116 of the 208 deputies of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) demanded that the Government take
"instant measures to increase the emigration of Jews from Poland"• 65 The
Premier, General Slawoj-Skladkowski responded by agreeing that "one of the most effective measures of solving the Jewish question in Poland is a
considerable reduction in the number of Jews through emigration" and assured
the Deputies that the Government would use its influence to obtain outlets for
emigration by international efforts.66
At a meeting of the economic committee of the League of Nations on 5
October 1936 the Polish representative proposed an International Emigration
Conference "to deal with this problem" and a resolution for a conference was
submitted to the League's International Federation Conference in July 1938.
An official communique of 18 November 1938 recorded that Poland had on several
occasions informed the American Government of the need for emigration of
Polish Jews and that instructions had been given to Polish diplomatic
representatives in London and other capitals to relay this message to the
relevant heads of State.67
Between 1926 and 1935 some 186,365 Jews emigrated from Poland nearly
100,000 settling in North America and 68,142 settling in Palestine.68 From
1931 annual Jewish emigration from Poland had declined to an annual average of
17,000 because of financial restraints applied by the Bank of Poland. In
comparison with the large number of Polish Jews emigrating to the United
States the emigration of Poles to Australia was relatively trivial. In the
years 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1936 some 138, 141, 96 and 166 Poles were admitted
to Australia respectively.69 In 1937 the figure jumped to 572, in 1938 was
930 and by 1939 was 1,016, and most of these Polish immigrants were Jews. 70
The resettlement of Palestine as a Jewish national home became an
1 2 important objective of Polish and Nazi foreign policy. The Polish Government
vehemently opposed the British White Paper of 17 May 1939 which restricted
Jewish emigration to Palestine to ten thousand a year for five years and it allowed Jabotinsky, the Jewish Revisionist politician, to broadcast on Polish
radio that Eastern Europe was a "danger zone" from which Jews should be evacuated. 71 A final Polish initiative, emulated by the Nazis, was to propose
Madagascar as a desirable place for Jewish resettlement.72
As in Germany the Polish economic offensive against the Jews effectively deprived Jews desirous of emigrating of the financial assets necessary to
satisfy the requirements of the potential countries of refuge. As Samuel
Hirszhorn, a leading Polish-Jewish journalist pointed out, not only would a
lack of funds prevent extensive Jewish emigration but that "the more anti
Semitism grows in one country, the more it will also spread in other lands, a
trend that will render emigration a near impossibility."73 Although he did
not have Australia in mind when he made this latter comment, as we shall see,
the fear of importing anti-Semitism was one of the primary reasons given by
Australian Government spokesmen for wishing to restrict immigration. Also the
inter-relationship between Polish and German anti-Semitism after 1935 meant
that Australian policy on German refugees had to bear in mind the possible
Polish response. This was a significant inhibition given the large Polish
Jewish population.
(c) Hungary
After Poland, Hungary with 725,000 Jews had the largest Jewish community
in Europe.74 But, unlike the Polish community, the Jews of Hungary considered
themselves an integral part of the nation, unquestionably Magyar. 75 With the
collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, following the Great War, a revolution
in Hungary brought to power the Communist Government of Bela Kun. A number of
1 3 prominent Jews held important offices under Kun. Their participation in his
Government prompted the equating of Jews with Bolshevik subversion and attracted to Jews nationalist hostility for the humiliation of the country.
Jews were thus the principal victims of the "White Terror" which followed the defeat of Kun.
During the 1920s there was a notable growth of industry in Hungary in which Jews played an important part, but which saw the growth of a significant
Hungarian middle class. In the government of Count Bethlen, Jews recovered some of their former prestige, but the onset of the Depression in 1930, with the concomitant pauperization of the middle-class and peasantry, revived
Hungarian anti-Semitism. Following Bethlen's resignation in 1931, the
Government of Count Karolyi introduced a programme of economic retrenchment, but agitation against these policies resulted in his replacement in October
1932 by Gyula Gombos, the leader of the Right Radical Party.
Gombos had been in intimate contact with the German Nazis since 1921 and in 1923 he founded the Race-Protecting Party. In that year he was implicated in a plot to synchronize a coup in Budapest with Hitler's "Beer-hall
Putsch". Gombos was the first head of government to call on Hitler after he became Chancellor. The strident anti-Semitism of Gombos became moderated on his accession to power as he discovered the "chains of the credit system ••• as formidable as his predecessors 11 • 76 However, after Anschluss made Hungary a neighbour of the Reich, Gombos embarked on a programme of "ingratiation through imitation" and enacted a series of anti-Semitic laws designed to force
Jews out of the Hungarian economy. Law XV of 1938, entitled "Concerning the
More Effective Safeguarding of a Balanced Economic and Social System" restricted Jewish membership in professional associations of medical practitioners, lawyers, engineers and "other types of white collar employment 11 • 77 In the following year an Act "Concerning the Restriction of
1 4 the Participation of Jews in Public and Economic Life" excluded Jews from state service and from the Upper House of Parliament, reduced the quota of
Jews allowed in the professions and at university. It authorized the expropriation of Jewish-owned land, limited the number of business enterprises to be owned by Jews to 5 percent, and prescribed the maximum number of Jewish employees as 12 per cent. This Act, like the analagous German legislation, also defined Jews by reference to the religion of their Grandparents.
Baptisms performed after 1919 were not recognized. This definition added
100,000 to Hungary's pre-war Jewish population.78
The leaders of the Hungarian Jewish community appreciated that emigration was the logical objective of the anti-Jewish legislation. A memorandum was submitted to Jewish relief organizations in Britain for assistance in this regard. 79 The American Minister in Budapest, John F. Montgomery, reported that the Prime Minister had informed him, "tha t a committee composed of Jews and Gentiles would be organized to arrange for and supervise this process, on a large scale, to include twenty to twenty-five thousand persons. The Jewish leaders themselves ••• had assured him for the possibility to arrange for the emigration of as many as fifty thousand Jews. 1180
Hungarian emigration to Australia paralleled the Polish experience, although the numbers were very much smaller due to the smaller Jewish-
Hungarian population in Australia. 81 Between 1933 and 1936 less than 20
Hungarians entered Australia annually, this increased to 61 in 1937, 120 in
1938 and 522 in 1939.82
(d) Romania
The Romanian Jewish population of 728,115 in 1930 represented some 4 per cent of the population although in the cities it numbered between 23 and 53 per cent. "Romanian anti-Semitism was a variant of xenophobia. The lack of
1 5 assimilation of Jews and their appeal for international intervention against
Romanian anti-Semitic legislation as a violation of the Minorities Protection
Treaty of 1919 "deepened their reputation as seditious foreigners. 1183
The chaotic state of Romanian politics in the 1930s prevented an organized programme of anti-Semitism although the contending factions each employed Jew-baiting as a political device. The Right-Radical Iron Guard movement founded in 1927 was the indigenous fascist movement but it was ruthlessly suppressed by Premier Duca in 1933, and was dissolved in 1938, yet reemerged during the War when it could enthusiastically participate in the
Holocaust. Anti-Semitism was virtually the sole policy of the Goga-Cuza
Ministry, appointed in December 1937 and removed by King Carol in February
1938. The Carolist dictatorship embraced anti-Semitism episodically as the
King moved towards Hitler.84
Romanian emigration was not separately recorded by the Commonwealth statistician. Price records a total Romanian-Jewish immigration to Australia 85 at only 31 persons between 1931 and 1940.
(e) Other European Countries
Right wing parties had sprung up all over Europe in the wake of revolution and counter-revolution following the dislocations of the Great
War. The existence of these parties were not of themselves incentives to
Jewish refugee immigration. Indeed the radical right was invariably opposed to anti-Semi tic violence fearing that it might lead to the breakdown of law and order. Thus the regimes of Pilsudski in Poland, Horthy in Hungary, King
Carol in Romania and Serpel in Austria practiced no more than the traditional
Christian anti-Semitism which merely discriminated against Jews politically.
For this reason the Jews themselves were prepared to accept these regimes as harsh necessities, indeed Leo Baeck, the leader of the German Jewish community
1 6 saw a military dictatorship as the last hope for Jews.86
The typical response of Jews to the anti-Semitic regimes was not to adopt emigration as an option until it was beyond question that their future was imperilled. In Germany this point was reached only in late 1938, in Austria it came some months earlier but in the other countries of Europe which were to fall beneath the Nazi heel the experience of official anti-Semitism was too short to precipate emigration before the beginning of the second World War.
Thus in the period between 1931 and 1940 only a score of Jews was to arrive from countries like Lithuania and Latvia87 with a Jewish population in the latter country of 93,479 in 1939.88 Even from Czechoslovakia with a pre-war
Jewish population of 356,830, 89 only 126 Jews were to arrive in the decade between 1931 and 1940. 90 As we shall see Australian immigration policy was only expressly concerned with the Jews of Germany and Austria. The Jews of
Poland and Central Europe were relevant only as a potential source of refugees, but as such operated as an important constraint on Australian generosity because of the fear that a liberal immigration policy would encourage anti-Semitic governments to persuade their unwanted Jews to make for the Antipodes.
1 7 FOOTNOTES
1. On the evolution of German policy see K. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz, Nazi Policy Toward German Jews 1933-1939 (Urbana, Ill., 1970).
2. See the discussion in Y. Bauer, "Genocide: Was it the Nazis' Original Plan?", Annals, A.A.P.s.s., 450 (July, 1980), PP• 35-45.
3. Quoted in L.S. Davidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 (London, 1975), P• 17.
4. Quoted in J. Tenenbaum, Race and Reich, The Story of an Epoch (New York, 1956), p. 407.
5. See J.W. Wheeler-Bennett, ______The Nemesis of Power: The German Army ___.,___ in Politics 1918-1945, 2nd ed. (London, 1964), pp. 304 ff.
6. E.g. see H. Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction (New York, 1940), pp. 152-153.
7. Rumbold to Simon, April 5, 1933, E.L. Woodward and R. Butler, eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, Second Series, Vol. V 1933 (London, 1956), p. 20.
B. See Schleunes, n. 1 supra, pp. 79-88.
9. Hauptarchiv der NSDAP, Folder 504 BDC quoted in Schleunes, n. 3 supra., 70.
10. See M. George, The Warped Vision: British Foreign Policy, 1933-1939 (Pittsburgh, 1965). ------
11. See o. Kirschheimer, Political Justice: the use of legal procedure for political ends (Princeton, N.J., 1961).
12. See W.L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (London, 1962), pp. 198-200.
13. Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, RGB1, 1933, I, P• 175.
14. Ibid., P• 195.
15. Ibid., P• 188.
16. Ibid., P• 222.
17. See S. Colodner, "Jewish Education under National Socialism", Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. 3, (1959), pp. 161-180.
18. See D. Sington and A. Wiedenfeld, The Goebbels Experiment: A Study of the Nazi Propaganda Machine (London, 1942), pp. 111-113.
1 8 19. N. Bentwich, The Refugees from Germany, 1933-1936 (London, 1936), p. 33.
20. Commonwealth Year Book 1934, P• 779.
21 • N. 13 supra, p. 480.
22. See O.I. Janowsky and M.M. Fagen, International Aspects of German Racial Policies (New York, 1937), 217-223.
23. Judische Rundschau, 17 November 1933 quoted in Schleunes, n. 1 supra., p. 114.
24. w. Rosenstock, "Exodus 1933-1939. A Survey of Jewish Emigration from Germany" Year Book 1 of the Leo Baeck Institute (London, 1956), PP• 373-390.
25. Commonwealth Year Book 1935, p. 559; 1936, P• 451.
26. See R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago, 1961), pp. 46-53 for a discussion of the genesis and development of this legislation.
27. A Nazi estimate, quoted in Schleunes, n. 1 supra, p. 145.
28. Rosenstock, n. 24 supra.
29. See Dawidowicz, n. 3 supra, Ch. 3.
30. See M. Wischni tzer, "Jewish Emmigration from Germany 1933-1938" Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 2 (1940), pp. 23-45.
31. Phipps to Simon, 10 May 1935 quoted in A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge, Britain and the Regugees from the Third Reich 1933-1939 (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1973), p. 57.
32. Lagebericht-Judenfrage May/June 1934 referred to in Schleunes, n. 1 supra, pp. 178-184.
33. See G.L. Mosse, "The Influence of the Volkisch Idea on German Jewry" Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute (New York, 1967), pp. 83-114.
34. See K.R. Grossman, "Zionists and Non-Zionists under Nazi Rule in the 1930's" Herzl Year Book, vol. 4 (1961-1962), pp. 329-344.
35. See A Margaliot, "The Problem of the Rescue of German Jewry During the years 1933-1939; the Reasons for the Delay in Their Emigration from the Third Reich", in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, Proceedings of the Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference April 1974, (Jerusalem, 1977), p.249.
36. Ibid., pp.250-251.
37. Ibid., p.252.
38. See A. Margaliot, "The Reaction of the Jewish Public in Germany to the Nuremberg Laws", Yad Vashem Studies, Vol.XXII (1977), pp.75-107.
1 9 39. Margaliot, n.35 supra, p.260.
40. See n.24 supra.
41. J. Tenenbaum, "The Crucial Year 1938" Yad Vashem Studies, Val.II, (1958), PP• 49-77.
42. See s. Esh, "Between Discrimination and Extermination: the Fateful Year of 1938", in From Hatred to Extermination (Jerusalem, 1959), PP• 107-121.
43. A.D. Morse, While Six Million Died (London, 1968), PP• 204-205.
44. Commonwealth Year Book 1936-1938.
45. High Commissioner's Office to Prime Minister's Department, 6 April 1938, Department of External Affairs (11), Corresp. File, Alphabetical Series, c. 1927-1942, Refugees General No. 4 Part 1: Inter-Governmental Committee (Including Evian Conference), 1938-1940, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A981.
46. For a comprehensive discussion of press coverage see B .J. Hooper, Australian Reactions to German Persecution of the Jews and Refugee Immigration 1933-1947, M.A. Thesis (A.N.U., 1972), Ch. 1.
47. See "Population by Economic Sectors (Including Dependents), 1931 Census" reproduced in J. Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, vol. IX (Seattle, 1974), p.39.
48. See G. Castellan, "Remarks on the social structure of the Jewish Community in Poland Between the Two World Wars", in B. Vago and G. Mosse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (Jerusalem, 1974), pp.187- 201.
49. See Rothschild, n.47 supra, p.40.
50. See H.M. Rabinowicz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry: A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-War Years 1919-1939 (New York, 1975); for an Australian description see H. Bergner, Light and Shadow, transl. A. Braizblatt (Melbourne, 1963).
51. Rabinowicz, n.50 supra, p.31.
52. See J.s. Roucek, The Working of the Minorities System Under the League of Nations (Prague, 1929), pp. 25-42.
53. Quoted in S.J. Paprocki, Minority Affairs and Poland (Warsaw, 1935), p.23.
54. Report by Sir Stuart Samuel on his Mission to Poland (London, 1920), p.6.
55. See Rabinowicz, n.50 supra, pp.73-74.
56. E. Lengyel, "Europe's Anti-Semitic Twins: Poland", Current History, vol. 48 (1938), p.45.
57. See I. Cohen, "The Jews in Poland", Contemporary Review, vol. 150
20 (1936), pp.716-723; A. Druker, "Jews in Poland", Current History, vol. 45 (1936), pp.62-67.
58. Quoted in E. Melzer, "Relations between Poland and Germany and their Impact on the Jewish Problem in Poland ( 1935-1938) ", Yad Vas hem Studies, Vol.XII (Jan, 1977) p.201.
59. Ibid.
60. Quoted in Rabinowicz, n.50 supra, pp.53-54.
61. See E.D. Wynot, "'A Necessary Cruelty': The Emergence of Official Anti-Semitism in Poland, 1936-39" Am. Hist. Rev., LXXVI (Oct. 1971), p. 1028.
62. Melzer, n.60 supra, p.205, cf. Wynot, n.57 supra, p.1037.
63. See Rabinowicz, n.50 supra, Ch.6.
64. Quoted in M. Moskowitz, "Anti-Shechitah Legislation", Contemp. Jewish Record, II (May-June, 1939), p.41.
65. Quoted in Rabinowicz, n.46 supra, p.184.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., p.185.
68. Times, 2 February 1937.
69. Commonwealth Year Book 1934, p. 788; 1935, p.563; 1936, p.455; 1937, p.371.
70. Ibid., 1935, p. 374; 1939, p.404; 1940, p.574; and see c. Price, "Jewish Settlers in Australia 1788-1961 ", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. V (1964), Statistical Appendix 111c.
71 • See J.B. Schechtman, Fighter and Prophet, vol. II, (New York, 1961), p. 341 •
72. See Ch. 7 infra.
73. Nasz Przeglad 24 May 1938, quoted in Wynot, n.61 supra, p. 1053.
74. Rothschild, n.47 supra, p. 199.
7 5. See G. Bar any, "Magyar Jew or Jewish Magyar? Reflections on the Question of Assimilation" in Vago and Mosse, n.48 supra, pp.51-98.
76. C.A. Macartney, "Hungarian Foreign Policy During the Inter-War Period, Wth Special Reference to the Jewish Question", in Vago and Mosse, n.48 supra, P• 130.
77. See Rothschild, n.47 supra, p.197.
78. Ibid., 199.
21 79. See N. Ketzburg, "The Jewish Question in Hungary During the Inter-War Period - Jewish Attitudes", in Vago and Mosse, n.48 supra, pp. 113-124.
80. Quoted Ibid., p. 118.
81. See E.F. Kunz, Blood and Gold, Hungarians in Australia (Melbourne, 1969) •
82. Commonwealth Year Book, 1934-1940.
83. Rothschild, n.47 supra, p.289.
84. See s. Fischer-Galati, "Fascism, Communism and the Jewish Question in Romania", in Vago and Mosse, n.48 supra, pp.157-175.
85. Price, n.20 supra.
86. See G.L. Mosse, Towards the Final Solution (London, 1978), p.182.
87. Price, n.70 supra.
88. J.S. Roucek, "Minorities - A Basis of the Refugee Problem", Annals A.A.P.s.s., Vol. 203 (May, 1939), p.9.
89. Ibid.
90. Price, n.70, supra.
22 2. THE ROOTS OF AUSTRALIAN POLICY ON JEWISH IMMIGRATION 1933 - 1938
(a) Introduction
The Australian response to the tribulations of the European Jews after the accession to power of the Nazis was conditioned in the short term by domes tic polities and to a lesser extent by the concerns of foreign policy.
Underlying the evolution and formulation of the Australian response was its commitment to a "White Australia Policy", which had important implications for the Jewish victims of similarly racist policies. In an indirect way the burgeoning of anti-Semitism in Australia had some minor impact on the formulation of a Jewish immigration policy, of greater importance were more general anti-alien sentiments. Finally, the Australian Jewish community played a significant role in the administration of the immigration policy and, to the extent that it approved or acquiesced in that policy, the community had an indirect effect upon its formulation.
(b) Domestic Politics
From the mid-thirties until the beginning of the second world war,
Australia was ruled by a coalition between the United Australia Party {U.A.P.) and the Australian Country Party {A.C.P.). The preoccupation of both parties was with the effects of the Depression. Australia as a primary producing economy had suffered particularly badly from the collapse of world markets.
Unemployment in 1933 was 25.1 per cent of the work force. 1 The U.A.P. was led by J .A. Lyons who had been the Labor Premier of Tasmania from 1923 until
1928. He had left the Labor Party in 1931, concerned at the radicalism of the
New South Wales Labor Premier's advocacy both of the repudiation of foreign
23 debts and of controlled inflation, and he formed a new conservative party.2
The A.C.P. had been formed in 1919 to protect rural interests against those of the citites. The obvious interest of both parties was with domestic economic policy and foreign policy considerations were very much subordinated to domestic matters. In this political climate the question of Jewish immigration was approached from the position of its likely effect upon unemployment. Mass immigration was not favoured and individual immigrants had to prove that they would not become a burden on the community or displace existing Australian workmen. 3 Al though the economy had begun to improve by
1935, the trauma of the Depression in Australia combined with the conservatism of the Government meant that a significant influx of Jewish refugees would be unlikely.
The Australian Labor Party (A.L.P.) which had been forced into the
Opposition benches after the defection of Lyons was also preoccupied with domes tic polities and with the amelioration of working conditions. Its response to any Government initiatives on the admission of Jewish refugees was to stress that they should not involve any deterioration of economic or social standards.4
(c) Foreign Policy and Diplomacy
Following the apparently inconsequential slaughter of the First World
War, in which Australian troops had suffered the highest proportion of casual ties of all the victorious forces, Australia, like the United States, became strongly isolationist in outlook.5 This was combined with a popular indifference to foreign policy which was a product of the country's remoteness from world events, an overriding concern with the economic situation and the fact that the Government actively discouraged discussion of foreign affairs. 6 Allied with this isolationism and indifference to foreign affairs
24 was an imperial sentiment which manifested itself as a virtually uncritical reliance upon British diplomatic initiatives. As R.G. Casey, Australia's first Minister to the United States, explained,
It follows from the geographical position of Great Britain that her interest in European affairs is a more direct one than that of the Dominions, and that she is, accordingly, primarily responsible for the initiation of political policy in the European field. But if the security of Great Britain is menaced, so is that of the Dominions in so far as they depend for.. . their defence on the co-operation of Great Britain • British foreign policy may accordingl7 be regarded in a very real sense as Australian foreign policy.
As we shall see the British Government refused to allow any discussion of the Jewish refugee crisis to put at risk its policy of appeasing Germany.
Since the Australian Government conditioned its responses to those of the
British there was little chance that the problem would be attacked at its
German roots. The Prime Minister refused to "forward without delay the expression of the people's indignation against the pogrom in Germany118 because as he explained to the Sydney Morning Herald "it was a well established principle that one country should not interfere in the affairs of another • 119
Lyons was also responsible for bringing pressure to bear on a Sydney radio station to have a radio commentator who was critical of the German Consul
General removed, 10 and he rebuked a visiting H.G. Wells for describing
Hitler's race theories as the product of a "certified lunatic". He explained that Wells' views were not those of the Australian Government, which was anxious to create conditions of peace.11
Not only was the Australian Government dependent upon the British for the formulation of its foreign policy but it also relied upon the British for its diplomatic representation. Australia had no professional diplomatic service and no representatives in any foreign capital other than a High Commissioner in London. An independent Department of External Affairs was formed only in
1935. Australia's High Commissioner in London from 1933 was former Prime
25 Minister s.M. Bruce who was unfortunately an extreme Anglophile and a vigorous 12 , supporter of appeasement. Australian immigration policy was administered by the Department of the Interior in Canberra. An Immigration Ministry was not created until 1945. Until 1939 Australia had no immigration officers in
Europe and relied upon British Passport Officers in the various European capitals to recommend and administer its policies. All immigration enquiries, un ti 1 late 1 9 3 8, had to come through Canberra, despite suggestions from
Australia House in London that it might be granted some autonomy in decision- making. Consequently the processing of individual applications for immigration took in excess of five months to process, by which time an applicant might be interned or dead.
(d) The "White Australia" Policy
Following the massive influx of Chinese labourers into Australian goldfields in the 1850's, 60s and 70s, the colonial legislatures of Victoria,
New South Wales and Queensland had enacted exclusionary measures. One of the first pieces of legislation of the infant Australian Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. This statute was predicated on the basis that " the noble idea of white Australia 13 had become, as Alfred Deakin explained, "the Monroe Doctrine of Australia... the finest principle of federation • 1114 By the 1930's this racist policy was an accepted article of faith. 15
The White Australia policy originated from nineteenth century social
Darwinism and carried with it a fear of "racial contamination" from the
"servile race of Asia". Australia was thus conceived of as an outpost of white civilization.16 Following the enactment, in the United States, of the
National Origins Act of 1924, which restricted immigration to that country to
3 percent of the proportion of nationals who resided there in 1890, Australia
26 experienced a massive influx of southern Europeans. This generated a considerable opposition concerned with fears of the adulteration of the
"British race" and the possibility of the formation of unassimilable racial enclaves of "barbarous Medi terraneans". 17 Parallelling this assertion of the importance of maintaining a British Australia, was the contradictory development of a self-assertive Australian Nationalism, which wanted an
Australia for the Australians, unadulterated by "socially incompatible" alien
1mm1.gran, . t s. 18 Probably the most erudite example of this genre was P.R.
Stephensen's, The Foundations of Culture in Australia. Stephensen explained that,
••• the Antipodean mind moves in Antipodean categories, and ••• [provides] a culture infinitely superior to the sub civilized culture of the sabre-settling Europeans such as Hitler, Mussolini and Winston Churchill. Europe, indeed, may prove to have been no more than the experimental laboratory of the white race~ which may eventually find its fullest maturity in Australia. 1
As we shall see, the racial presuppositions and rhetoric which animated the White Australia policy in each of its manifestations also played a significant role in moulding the Australian response to the plight of the
Jewish refugees. 20 Hitler had cast the "Jewish Problem" in racial terms which, although ostensibly obnoxious to most European minds was understandable to Australians, some of whom expressed sympathy for his desire to make Germany racially homogeneous. Similarly, Australian immigration policy aimed at maintaining a "British preponderance" and articulated a restriction upon non- assimilable migrants. 21 A representative view of the Government's policy at the beginning of the period with which this book deals is that of the
Attorney-General, J.G. Latham, who explained,
In a modern civilized community substantial homgeneity of race is a great asset to the people, removing from their path the factitious obstacles which inevitably arise from their co-existence within the same area of peoples of divergent and other conflicting views of the world and of social, economic and political life. In this respect Australia is supremely fortunate today. The problems which confront
27 us ••• would be infinitely multiplied by racial heterogeneity within the continent. It is firmly and, in my opinion reasonably, believed by Australians that Australia can do most to secure what the Greeks would have called "a good life" for her people by maintaining the present composition of the community. This is not a selfish ideal, for it is, we believe, as a free, white democracy that Australia can make her contribution to the peace and well-being of the world as a whole. 21
Like the Nazis, Australian Parliamentarians and immigration authorities classified the refugees as Aryans, Non-Aryan Christians and Jews, 22 but the
Australians confused the ethnological purity espoused by Nazi theorists and drew a distinction between "desirable immigrants of Northern European race or extraction" and the undesirable Jews of F.astern Europe. 23 In to the former category were placed German and Austrian Jews, possibly on the assurance of a
British Home Office official to an Australian External Affairs Officer that some of them "although classified as Jews in Germany have a very slight strain of Jewish blood and do not show it in any way in their appearance". 24
Finally, the Australian nationalism of P.R. Stephensen and others soon transmuted into a rabid anti-Semitism. Stephensen was able to observe, with a good deal of pride, that "Australia was ••• the first nation to 'go nap• 25 on
Racialism. Within our definition of the term we antedated Hitler's Racial
Theories by fifty years". 26 He also observed with a degree of perspicacity that if "the Jewish Race, as such, would cease to exist •• the Jewish Problem would disappear", although he advocated intermarriage, rather than the gas chamber, as the solution to the problem. 27
(e) "Populate or Perish"
An effect of the Depression in Australia had been to bring about a reduction in the birth rate such that without immigration a decline in the
population was predicted "with assurance 11 • 28 The proximity of Australia, with her "wide open spaces", to the populous Dutch East Indies and Japan with their
"ominously high birth rates" was noted with apprehension by commentators in
28 29 the 1930s. Lord Gowrie, the Governor-General, warned that Australia must
"populate or perish. Australians are living in a fool's paradise; the overpopulated nations of the world were turning their greedy and hungry eyes ••• on this great undeveloped country". 30 In a symposium conducted by the
Australian Institute of Political Science in January 1937 it was urged that an increased population would "slightly reduce the risk of war" by making the empty Dominions "both less attractive and less vulnerable", 31 although a dissentient observed that an increase in population would provide simply "a
few more targets for enemy bombs 11 • 32
Strategic considerations had begun to shape Australian immigration policy by the time of the First World War. At the Imperial conference of 1921 the
British Government agreed with the Dominions to provide 3 million pounds per annum to the Dominions to promote Empire settlement. At the Imperial conference of 1923 Leo Amery had explained that "To secure our mutual peace and defence, we must in the next generation see that our population is more evenly distributed". 33 To this end Group Settlement schemes were undertaken in Western Australia.34 By the Passage Agreement of 1925 the British and
Australian Governments agreed to contribute one third towards the passage of selected migrants. 35 At the same time the Commonwealth entered into a loan agreement with Britain under which 34 million pounds was to be provided to the
States over ten years for approval development schemes for the absorption of migrants. It was hoped to settle over this period some 450,000 assisted migrants. 36 With the onset of the Depression the scheme collapsed. Assisted passages were suspended in December 1930 and the agreement was cancelled as from 1 May 1932 by an instrument signed on 29 November 1934. Also as a result of the Depression between 1931 and 1938 the number of British migrants departing Australia outnumbered arrivals of British migrants by 11,968 persons.37 The White Australia policy of establishing a "Britain in the
29 southern Seas" was thus bankrupted by the Depression.
All the demographic developments could have provided some momentum for the immigration of the large numbers of Jewish refugees in Europe. The
Government had already indicated that it was not averse to mass immigration schemes, it was not hostile to the principle of assisted migration and it could have tapped a source of Northern and Central European migrants to act as a counterpoise to the Southern Europeans. In addition it was becoming appreciated that the slow recovery from the Depression in Australia could be improved by stimulating the domestic market through increased immigration. 38
However, not one of the participants at the 1937 symposium ever adverted to the refugees as a possible solution to Australia's problems. Where commentators addressed their minds to this option they were invariably hostile to mass 1mm1gra. . t·ion. 39 At best, they were prepared to recommend only
immigration by "infiltration 11 • 40
(f) Anti-Alien Sentiment
Until the Great War non-British migration to Australia was insignificant but between 1924 and 1928 some 27,422 Southern Europeans emigrated to
Australia. 41 Despite the fact that over this period some 80 percent of migrants to Australia were Bri tish42 a significant body of publc opinion hostile to alien immigration began to develop. This intensified in the 1930s when between 1935 and 1937 there was a net loss of some 4,000 British migrants compared with a net gain of almost 7,000 Southern Europeans.43 The opposition to alien immigration was both economic and racist and was significant in that the anti-alien debate fashioned the arguments which were to be employed against Jewish refugee immigration.
With the onset of the Depression in Australia labour leaders were adamant that immigration should not put at hazard Australian living and employment
30 standards. The industry and enterprise of the Italian migrants who were attracted to the Queensland cane fields was resented by the Australian workers who claimed that they were prepared to work as "sweated labour". 44 Those allegations led to a Royal Commission in Queensland in 1924 which conceded that Southern Italians had been guilty of working for below-award wages. The commission's findings "shocked Australians into a realization that they had in their midst a minority who were culturally and socially segregated from them. 1145 Thus, allied with an economic antipathy toward alien immigration was a more hysterical opposition, infused with all the prejudice and irrationality of racism. For example, on 17 August 1937, 109 of the non-alien passengers of the Otranto, which arrived at Fremantle on that date, petitioned the Prime
Minister protesting the admission of its 200 Southern European passengers whose "physique and mentality was below that required in Australian settlers 11 •46 What the petitioners were concerned about was the possible racial adulteration of Anglo-Saxon Australians by the importation of inferior breeding stock. The President of the Immigration Study Commission in
California sent an open letter to the Australian press warning that the fecundity of the Southern Europeans was such that Australians "should look on each migrant as a prospective son-in-law11 • 47
Finally, economic and racial opposition to the alien immigrants was supplemented by political concerns with the perceived Fascist orientation of
the Italian immigrants. This was considered "the last straw11 • 48 Although the majority of Italians did not participate in political associations, their alleged propensity to participate in clandestine organizations such as the
Black Hand and the Mafia, 47 precipitated fears that the Italians would become a Fascist "fifth column". The alien Jewish refugees of the 1930s attracted most of the opposition levelled at the Southern European migrants.
Economically they were to be accused of undermining labour standards both as
31 employees and employers. Trade union leaders called for immigration laws to be tightened to prevent wholesale immigration from "southern and central
Europe". SO The Australian Worker used the rumour that a 15,000 ton liner had been chartered to bring Jewish immigrants to Australia to condemn the dumping
of foreigners in Australia "on a mass scale". 51 Similarly, the Century
sensationalized the prospect of mass Jewish immigration to oppose all alien
1.mm1.gra. . t'1.on. 52 The social element in anti-alien sentiment was obviously applicable to refugees from similar racism in Europe. This easily transmuted
into the blatant anti-Semitism of the Publicist which declared that the Jews were the "worst of the foreign peoples" who could come to Australia53 and the
Truth which warned of the "veritable deluge of unwanted and unabsorbable
Hebrews" • 54
( g) Australian Anti-Semitism
Until the refugee crisis of the 1930s, anti-Semitism was irrelevant in
Australia. In the 1890s the Bulletin magazine, which proclaimed from its masthead "Australia for the White Man", had carried a number of anti-Semi tic articles, but the smallness of the Jewish population in Australia, only 23,553 persons in 1933, 55 meant that the subject was largely academic. Also the
Jewish community was largely derived from British stock and it had developed a
"communal ideology of non-distinctiveness" whereby it minimized the
differences between Jew and Gentile.56 Leaders of the Jewish community,
particularly in New South Wales were chosen on the basis of their success in public life, rather than for their religious piety. 57 It was also not
insignificant that the first native-born Governor-General was a Jew, as was
the first Australian soldier to be given a Supreme Command by the British.58
The closest equivalent to a European style Fascist movement was the New
Guard formed in 1931 to defend the State of New South Wales from the radical
32 59 socialism of its Premier, J.T. Lang. By late 1931 the New Guard had a membership of some 87,000 recruits and was supported by businessmen, the church and the professional class. With the defeat of Lang in the 1932 elections, support of the New Guard began an immediate decline. In his memoirs, written in 1965, Eric Campbell, the leader of the New Guard, declared that he was strongly prejudiced against German National Socialism because of its anti-Jewish policy and that "one of the best friends I have ever had was a
Jew"• 60 However, after visiting Mosley and Hitler in 1933 the movement's newspaper took on an anti-Semi tic tone and he adopted "the Consular Salute of
Ancient Rome", but by this time the New Guard had declined into
1ns1.gn1.. . . f.1.cance. 61
More unequivocally anti-Semitic was the Australia First Movement formed from an association between Queensland Rhodes Scholar, P.R. Stephensen62 and
Sydney businessman W.J. Miles.62 The primary significance of the numerically inconsequential Movement was its publication from March 1936 of its journal the Publicist. In its early years the Publicist carried nationalist articles but it became increasingly anti-Semitic as war approached.63 It conducted a virulent campaign against the reception of Jewish refugees in Australia with articles entitled "To Jerusalem with the Jews! Or to Heaven", which explained that there was no solution to the Jewish problem "while a Jew lives". 64 The
Publicist bitterly opposed the Freeland League Scheme to settle a Jewish colony in the Kimberleys in Western Australia65 and campaigned against the appointment of Julius Stone to the Chair of International Law and
Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney. The Publicist ceased publication in March 1942 with the internment of its principal authors.
Like Nazism, an anti-Semi tic spawn of the Depression was the Douglas
Social Credit Movement which espoused the theories of the English economist
C.H. Douglas.66 Douglas considered the banking system to be subversive of
33 democracy and in 1934 the Douglas Credit Party of Australia was formed to advocate the nationalization of the credit system. The failure of social credit to gain acceptance coincided with a pronounced drift towards anti-
Semi. t'ism. 67 The Douglas theories were propagated by the Party's organ The New
Times. Six of its early issues were devoted to discussion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The action of the League of Nations Union, which at its annual conference in Sydney urged relaxation of the Immigration Act to allow the admission of Jewish refugees from Germany, caused The New Times to launch a sustained campaign against the refugees. 68 A key figure in the Douglas
Party was Eric Butler who was its principal anti-Semitic author and lecturer. In 1944 a Federal Commission of Inquiry was convened to report, inter alia, on the activities of The New Times. The Commissioners noted
"certain similarities in content" between articles written by Butler and broadcasts made by the British traitor John Amery (for which the latter was hanged). 69 The Commission also noted Butler's extreme anti-Semitism but recommended that no action be taken against him. Butler's principal publication The International Jew - The Truth About The Protocols of Zion appeared after the war. It indicted virtually every world and Australian public figure and institution for being either Jewish or Jewish-controlled, including Hitler, although it exonerated Jesus from "the taint of Judaism".
This book should have exposed Butler to the pity and contempt he deserves were it not for the fact that he is still active today. 70
The interrelationship between anti-Semitism and anti-alien sentiment in
Australia can be seen from the activities of the Guild of watchmen of
Australia, who were devoted to "the preservation of the British Race in
Australia and New Zealand". 71 The Guild in 1933 reissued the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a warning to Australians. Similarly, the National
Socialist was established in Sydney in 1936 as a paper "devoted to the British
34 Race and British Culture", it claimed that even British people now worshipped
"the spirit and ways of the Jewish race 11 • 72 The Bulletin, the pioneer of racist journalism in Australia, consistently opposed Jewish refugee immigration, originally as part of its generally, xenophobic demeanour, but gradually its writings took on a more stidently anti-Semi tic tone, as it inveighed against the "reception of brooding aliens, ulcerated with hatred of the coudntries that had driven them out." 73
It is obviously difficult to assess the influence which the Australian anti-Semitic movements and the anti-Semitic publications had on the formation of government policy and public opinion towards the Jewish refugees. The Nazi
Government was always convinced of the value of this propaganda. over 90 percent of all German newspapers and libraries as well as cultural institutions in Poland were subsidized by the Reich, which, for example, spent some 20 million marks annually on Nazi propaganda in Poland.74 F.arly in
1934 Der Sturmer claimed that a fascist organization had been established in
Australia and was successfully spreading anti-Semitic propaganda.75 The
"serious" readership of Australian newspapers has been put at only 10 to 13 percent of the population76 but the public debate on Jewish immigration began to take on a decidedly anti-Semi tic tone. The publication by the social credit movement in 1942 of the Protocols convinced the influential radical
Brian Fitzpatrick that an organized anti-Semitic campaign was under way and he wrote to the Attorney-General and Prime Minister urging them to take steps to terminate it.77 Anti-Semitism did not become significant in Australia until after the arrival of the first refugees, which occasioned allegations of their clanishness and dubious business practices.78 The seriousness with which the
Government treated these allegations is illustrated by the convening of immediate inquiries into them. 79 The fact of their convening must have confirmed the fears held by some of the consequences of unrestricted Jewish
35 immigration, even though their findings exonerated the refugees.
(h) The Australian Jewish Community
Australian Jews represented only 0.36 per cent of the Australian population in 1933.80 They had made a distinguished contribution to the political, professional, cultural and commercial life of the nation. 81 The immense prestige of the Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs, not to mention Sir
John Monash, might have suggested that the leaders of the community could have exhorted some considerable pressure on the Government in inducing it to offer refuge to the Jewish victims of Fascism. However, the leaders of the community, who were preeminently English in origin, placed a great emphasis on the minimization of their Jewishness. Civic recognition was seen as an end in itself and religious observance was at best as inconvenience.82 Between 1880 and 1930 some 2,782 Jewish migrants entered Australia from Fa.stern Europe.83
They were not well received by the Anglo-Australian Jews who were concerned that the influx of "a large group of unabsorbable Yiddish speaking Jews" would lead to the growth of anti-Semitism.84 The fate of the German Jewish community after the rise of Hitler confirmed the worst fears of Australian
Jews. A well-established, highly respected and prosperous Jewish community had been the objects of a persecution which had apparently been precipated by the presence of the alien Ostjuden.
Restrictions which had been placed by the Government in the 1920s on the immigration of Eastern Europeans had been approved of by leaders of the
Australian Jewish communi ty85 who "adopted their own shadow of the 'White
Australia' policy: English Jews, as many as could be persuaded to come; others only in small doses". 86 In general terms, then, news of the Jewish refugee crisis, occasioned by the accession to power of Hitler, was received by the leaders of the Australian Jewish community with mixed feelings. As
36 British patriots they shared the British antipathy to their former enemies, the Germans, and as enthusiastic representatives of the "British race" they viewed with disfavour the entry of large numbers of alien Ostjuden. As Sir
Samuel Cohen, the President of the principal Australian Jewish Welfare
Association explained,
We know of no other country. Our thoughts are British through and through ••• nothing would be more damaging to the preservation of the freedom and civilization we are all privileged to enjoy, than to allow hordes of refugee European peoples to flock into this land.87
Even the refugees who were successful in reaching Australia reported the patronizing arrogance and barely suppressed hostility of the indigenous
Jews.88 The secretary of the European Emergency Committee in Sydney even when advocating a more robust immigration policy apologised that,
It cannot be denied that there is a type of arrogant Jew, mostly rich and highly urbanised for whom there is no place in this country. Nobody is more anxious to avoid the immigration of such types to Australia than Australian Jewry and the Refugee societies.89
The Australian Jewish Welfare Society warned new immigrants not to speak
German, to modulate their voices and to "[r]emember that the welfare of the old-established Jewish communities in Australia, as well as of every migrant,
depends on your personal behaviour 11 • 90
The European refugee crisis demanded a more expansive attitude towards immigration than the case by case approach which the Australian Government had hitherto applied. A call for the adoption of such an attitude was not to come from the local Jewish community which consistently declared its opposition to mass migration91 and to "the promotion of large "block" settlements inhabited by large numbers of foreign settlers incapable of absorbing Australian habits or even of learning the English language". 92
It should not be thought, however, that the Australian Jewish community was opposed to any refugee immigration. As we shall see in the next chapter
37 the Australian Jewish Welfare Society (A.J .w .s.) worked intimately with the
Government in administering immigration policy. The A.J .w .s. successfully petitioned the Government to be granted a large measure of autonomy in administration and the society voluntarily assumed its burden of financing this administration. Unfortunately its successes in this regard were impressed with its limited conception of the form which refugee immigration should take. The Society's generosity in underwriting the support of those immigrants nominated by it, meant that the absorption of refugees depended upon the state of its finances, whereas effective ini tia ti ves depended upon the same sort of Government assistance which had, throughout the period, been extended to British migrants.
38 Chapter 2 - Footnotes
1. Commonwealth Year Book 1934, p. 738 ; and see generally C.B. Schedvin, Australia and the Great Depression (Sydney, 1970).
2. See P.R. Hart, "Lyons : Labour Minister - Leader of the U.A.P." Lab. Hist., No.17 (1970), pp.37-51.
3. See Ch.3. infra.
4. E.g. C.P.D., vol. 158, P• 2536. s. See generally E.M. Andrews, Isolation and Appeasement in Australia (Canberra, 1970).
6. See w. MacMahon Bell, "Preface" in W.G.K. Duncan, ed. Australia's Foreign Policy (Sydney, 1938), pp.x-xi.
7. R.G. Casey, "Australia's Voice in Imperial Affairs" in Duncan, n.6 supra, pp.50-51; similarly see R.G. Menzies, C.P.D., Vol.157, p.429.
8. "European Refugees - Views of the Public re Admittance of" 23 November 1938, Department of the Interior II, Correspondence files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigrants) 1939-50, Australian Archives Office A433, Item 43/2/4588.
9. Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1933.
10. See E. Baume, I Lived These Years (London, 1941), pp.14-16.
11. Sydney Morning Herald 5-10 January 1939, discussed in Andrews, n.5 supra, pp.160-61.
12. See Andrews, n.5 supra, pp.162-163; c. Edwards, Bruce of Melbourne (London, 1965), Pt. II; A. Stirling, Lord Bruce: The London Years (Melbourne, 1974).
13. Quoted in D. Johnson, "History of the White Australia Policy" in K. Rivett, ed., Immigration: Control or Colour Bar? (Melbourne, 1960), p.14.
14. Quoted in s. Rennie, "The Factor of National Identity: An explanation of the differing reactions of Australia and the United States to Mass Immigration" Jnl. Royal Aust. Hist. Soc., Vol.68 (1982), p.139.
15. M. Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (Melbourne, 1923), is the standard work.
16. See A. Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia: The Background to Exclusion 1896-1913 (Melbourne, 1964), pp.24-25.
17. E.g. see J. Lyng, Non-Britishers in Australia (Melbourne: 1927).
18. See K.H. Bailey, "Public Opinion and Population Problems" in F.W. Eggleston, P.D. Phillips and others, eds., The Peopling of Australia, Further Studies (Melbourne, 1933), pp. 79-80.
39 19. P.R. Stephensen, The Foundations of Culture in Australia (Gordon, N.s.w., 1936), PP• 162-163.
20. E.g. see C.P.D., Vol. 160, PP• 1966-67 for a Parliamentary example.
21. J.G. Latham, "Preface", P.O. Phillips and G.L. Wood, eds., The Peopling of Australia (Melbourne, 1928), p.vi.
22. E.g. see C.P.D., Vol. 158, PP• 2534-36.
23. E.g. Memorandum to Cabinet, Department of the Interior, "Alien Immigration - Question of Quota System etc", 23 October 1935. Department of Immigration, Corresp. File Class 3 (Alien Immigration 1936 Cabinet Decisions) 1935-1938, Australian Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/29456.
24. Letter 29 June 1934, reporting the view of Sir E. Holderness H.O., Department of Immigration, Corresp. Files Class 3 (Non-British European Migrants): "Admission of German Jews Cabinet Decisions re" 1933-36, Australian Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/7034.
25. Derived from the Card game 'Napoleon'.
26. P.R. Stephensen, "A Reasoned Case Against Semitism" Aust. Qtly. Vol. 12 (March, 1940), p. 60.
27. Ibid.
28. S .H. Wolstenholme, "The Future of the Australian Population", Econ. Record, Vol. 12 (Dec., 1936), p. 195.
29. E.g. W.G.K. Duncan, "The Immigration Problem" in W.G.K. Duncan and c.v. Janes, eds., The Future of Immigration into Australia and New Zealand (Sydney, 1937), PP• 1-12.
30. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 1938.
31. W.B. Reddaway, "Migration From the British Point of View", Duncan and Jones, n.29 supra p.57; see also W.J.V. Windeyer, "Population, Migration and Defence", Ibid., pp. 257-276.
32. H.L. Burton, "Australian Migration Policy Since the War", Ibid., p. 122.
33. Quoted, Ibid., p. 111.
34. See G. Taylor, "Group Settlement in Western Australia" in F.W. Eggleston et.al., eds., The Peopling of Australia (Further Studies) (Melbourne, 1933), PP• 293-314.------
35. Ibid., P• 304.
36. Burton, n. 32 supra, p. 112.
37. Commonwealth Year Books 1932-1939.
40 38. E.g., P.D. Phillips and G. Wood, "The Australian Population Problem" in Phillips and Wood, n.21 supra, p.40.
39. E.g. C. Hartley Grattan, "Refugees and an Underdeveloped Economy", Annals of the A.A.P.s.s., Vol. 203 (May, 1939), p. 178; w.o. Forsyth, The Myth of Open Spaces (Melbourne, 1942).
40. H.L. Harris, Australia's National Interests and National Policy (Melbourne, 1938), PP• 32-33.
41. This figure comprized 19,319 Italians, 4,164 Greeks and 3,939 Yugoslavs, Commonwealth Year Book, 1925-1929.
42. Some 166,123 persons out of a total of 199,482, Ibid.
43. Commonwealth Year Book 1936-1938.
44. See w.o. Barrie, Italians and Germans in Australia (Melbourne, 1954), Ch. VII.
45. Ibid. , p. 11 2.
46. Sydney Morning Herald 19 August 1937.
47. Quoted in Bailey, n. 18 supra, p. 84.
48. N .o.P. Pyke, "Some Reflections on Italian Immigration Into Australia", Aust. Qtly., 18 (Dec., 1956), p. 43.
49. See J.R. Harvey, Black Hand Vengeance (Brisbane, 1948).
50. Sydney Morning Herald 28 July 1938.
51 • Australian Worker 9 November 1938.
52. Century 29 July 1938.
53. Publicist 1 August 1938.
54. Truth 16 October 1938.
55. c. Price, "Jewish Settlers in Australia 1788-1961", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., Vol. V (1964), Statistical Appendix I.
56. P.Y. Medding, From Assimilation to Group Survival. A Political and Sociological Study of an Australian Jewish Community (Melbourne, 1968), p. 77.
57. See generally, S.D. Rutland, The Jewish Community in New South Wales, M.A. (Hons.) Thesis, Sydney University, 1978.
58. I.e. Sir Isaac Isaacs and Sir John Monash, respectively.
59. See P. Mitchell, "Australian Patriots: A Study of the New Guard", Aust. Econ. Hist. Rev. Vol. IX (2), (Sept. 1969), PP• 156-178; K. Amos, The New Guard Movement 1931-1935 (Melbourne, 1976).
41 60. E. campbell, The Rallying Point, My Story of the New Guard (Melbourne, 1965), p. 131.
61. Amos, n. 59 supra, P• 97.
62. For this description of himself see Stephenson, n. 26 supra.
63. See generally B. Muirden, The Puzzled Patriots, The Story of the Australia First Movement (Melbourne, 1968).
64. Publicist, 1 March 1938.
65. For a discussion of this opposition see I.N. Steinberg, Australia - The Unpromised Land (London, 1948), PP• 94-97.
66. See B. Berzins, "Douglas Credit and the A.L.P." Lab. Hist., No. 17 (1970), PP• 148-60.
67. See generally, K.D. Gott, Voices of Hate (Melbourne, 1965).
68. Ibid., PP• 13-14.
69. A.A. Campbell, The Australian League of Rights (Sydney, 1978), PP• 7-8.
70. See Gott, n. 67 supra, pp. 43-45.
71. W.G. Selkirk, Wake Up Australia A National Warning (Sandalwood, 1933).
72. Quoted in B.J. Hooper, Australian Reactions to German Persecution of the Jews and Refugee Immigration 1933-1947, M.A. Thesis (A.N.U.), 1972, p. 33.
73. Bulletin, 27 July 1938.
74. See H.M. Rabinowicz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry. A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-War Years 1919-1939 (New York, 1965), p. 52.
75. See Hooper, n. 72 supra, p. 32.
76. H. Mayer, The Press in Australia (Melbourne, 1964), p. 263.
77. See D. Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick. A Radical Life (Sydney, 1979), p. 125.
78. See M.L. Kovacs, Immigration and Assimilation. An outline Account of the I.R.O. Immigrants in Australia, M.A. Thesis, Melbourne University 1955; u. Wiemann, German and Austrian Refugees in Melbourne 1933-1947. A Study of their Migration, Reception and Integration into the Melbourne Community. M.A. Thesis, Melbourne University, 1965, pp. 167 ff.
79. See "Backyard Industries and Sweating Amongst Refugees" Report of A. Nutt, Dept. of the Interior (II), 1939-1972 Correspondence Files Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-50 Australian Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 39/2/909; "Migration Restrictions" No. 46, "Migration to Australia of German Jewish Medical Practitioners", Department of External Affairs (II), 1921-1970, Corresp. Files Alphabetical Series 1927-1942, Australian Archives Office CRS
42 A981 •
80. See Price, n. 41 supra.
81. See P.J. Marks, "The Jew in Australian Life" Aust. Nat. Rev., vol. 4 (Sept., 1938), PP• 12-20.
82. See Medding, n. 56 supra, Ch. 4.
83. See Price, n. 55 supra, appendix II.
84. Hebrew Standard 22 Jan. 1926 quoted in Rutland, n. 57 supra, p. 131.
85. E.g. see S. Rutland, "Historical Background ( 1): 1788-1933" in S. Encel and B. Buckley, The New South Wales Jewish Community. A Survey, 2nd ed., (Sydney, 1978), P• 10.
86. B. Litvinoff, A Peculiar People (London, 1969), p. 198.
87. Truth 7 August 1938.
88. E.g. note the criticism of G.M. Berger, "Australia and the Refugees", Aust. Qtly., Vol. 13 (Sept., 1941), pp. 55-60; Contras. Symonds, "'Australia and the Refugees'. A Reply" Aust. Qtly. (March, 1942), PP• 67-72 and those documented in J. Wilton and R. Bosworth, "Refugee Intellectuals of the 1930s", Australia 1938. A Bicentennial History Bulletin, No. 4 (Nov., 1938), pp. 31- 39 and Medding, n. 56 supra., pp. 160-161.
89. R. Lemberg, "The Problem of Refugee Immigration" Aust. Qtly., Vol. 11 (Sept. 1939), P• 20.
90. Report in Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 1939.
91. E.g. see the discussion in B. Patkin, "From Advisory Board to Board of Deputies in Australia", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl. Vol. 9 (1981), pp. 40-41.
92. de Vahl Davis to Secretary Department of the Interior 6 March 1939. Department of the Interior (II), Correspondence Files Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-45, Refugees (Jewish and Others) General Policy File (1938-1944), Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2/46.
43 3. DEVELOPMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF AUSTRALIAN IMMIGRATION
POLICY TO 1938
(a) Introduction
Until 1938, escape to Australia was not a significant consideration for the Jewish victims of Nazism. The European Jews had survived the massacres accompanying the Crusades, the Plagues, the Cossack uprisings and the Czarist persecution. Two thousand years of anti-Semi tic experience had taught the
Jews that they could survive destruction by placating and appeasing their enemies. The Jews of Germany and Austria were living in countries considered to be the most cultured and enlightened in the world. The optimistic expectation that the spirit of Goethe and Heine would reassert itself caused the German Jews to place the most favourable interpretation on the erratic oscillations of Nazi policy. If emigration was decided upon by Jews, merely temporary refuges were sought in countries adjoining Germany. If a more permanent resettlement was envisaged, the United States, with its extensive
Jewish community, was the most desirable option.
An obstacle to emigration to the United States was its restrictive immigration laws. After the First World War emigration to that country had approached one million persons annually. To check this human flood Congress adopted a system of numerical limitation and from 3 June 1921 each European country was allocated a quota of permissible immigrants. This temporary measure was augmented, three years later, by the National Origins Act of 1924 which established a quota fixed at 3 per cent of the proportion of a country's nationals who resided in the United States in 1890. This year was selected because the proportion of persons of "Nordic" origin outnumbered the Southern and Eastern European migrants. 1 With the onset of the Depression in the
44 united States, the Hoover Administration immediately implemented the provision of the Immigration Act of 1917 which provided that persons "likely to become a public charge" could not be admitted to the quota. Consequently, prospective immigrants had to establish either that they had a job on arrival, or that they had relatives or friends able to support them. Immediately upon the introduction of the new policy in 1930 the demand for visas fell by 75 per cent. Thus out of the yearly quota allowance for Germany of 25,957 only 2,273 immigrants entered the United States in 1932; 1,445 in 1933; 3,744 in 1934;
S,532 in 1935; 6,642 in 1936 and 11,536 in 1937. 2 By 1939, however, the
German quota, which had been assimilated with the Austrian quota, was fully subscribed and the introduction of a preference number system meant that a
German or Czechoslovak applying for a visa in that year had a waiting period of between four and six years. The waiting period for Poles and Rumanians was much longer, culminating in a twenty year delay for Hungarians. 3
Thus by 1938 European Jews could follow one of four courses. First, they could remain where they were and trust to an improvement in the political situation. Secondly, they could emigrate to another European country with the intention of returning home when the Nazi menace had receded. Thirdly, they could apply for an American visa as well as shifting to a more favourable temporary location, hoping to move to America when their preference number became current. Finally, a refugee could abandon the traditional havens and consider starting a new life somewhere else in the world.
{b) Australian Immigration Policy to 1933
The cultural and economic backwardness of Australia might initially have been conceived as a deterrent to prospective emigrants, but after they had observed what the sophistication of Europe had wrought, Australia might have been a welcome change. Like the United States, however, Australia had
45 developed a restrictive immigration policy. One of the earliest statutes of the infant federation was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 which was designed to implement its "White Australia Policy". 4 Section 3 of the Act defined as prohibited immigrants, "Any person who when asked to do so by an officer fails to write out at dictation and sign in the presence of the officer a passage of fifty words in length in a European language directed by the officer" and "any person likely to become a charge upon the public". 5
Although the Act contained no restriction on the ground of nationality or race it was administered to exclude non-Europeans.6
Following the coming into effect of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 there had been a substantial increase in the number of immigrants from
Southern Europe entering Australia.7 This development precipitated agitation within Australia for the adoption of a quota system on the American model but this expedient was rejected by the Government of the day because of the expense of establishing a European immigration service and because of the offence it might have given to foreign States.8 In the case of Italy,
Australia was bound by an agreement made by the British Government for the abolition of visas. To overcome the immediate problem the Australian
Government reached a "Gentleman's Agreement" with Italy to reduce the number of passports which the latter would issue to intending migrants.9
The first prospect of any large-scale Jewish refugee immigration to
Australia came in 1921 when some 40,000 Jews fled to Poland from the Ukraine as "fugitives from an indescribable anarchy and carnage". 1 O The Polish
Government announced that it would refuse the entry of further refugees unless it could be guaranteed that they could emigrate westward. The British
Secretary of State for the Colonies asked the Australian Government whether it
WO u la b e prepare d t o receive. any o f th e J ewis . h vie . t'ims. 11 The Government's response was that its immigration requirements were "being met by the
46 immigration of ex-service men whose passage were being paid by the British
Government" and that "the immigration of refugee Jews would involve exclusion of some of these British emigrants 11 • 12
In 1924, primarily in response to the influx of Southern European migrants the Government introduced the requirement that immigrants possess a visa and that they possessed 40 pounds or its equivalent or that some resident in Australia would be responsible for them. 13 This administrative means of restricting the influx of Ostjuden was opposed by Alfred Harris, editor of the
Hebrew Standard who explained that,
The danger was imminent that the progress of a century might be suddenly undone and Australian Jews swamped by a sudden eruption unable to speak English and, in many ways, failing to understand the Australian outlook or prepared to undertake Australian nationality. Fortunately this danger is guarded against through restricting visas.14
The possibility of increased Polish Jewish emigration was brought to the attention of the Australian Government by the British Passport Control
Officer, Warsaw in mid-1925. 15 The Officer reported that "you are no doubt aware that the Polish Jews cannot be considered a suitable type of emigrant and I presume that the Australian Government would strongly object to a large number of them arriving as settlers.1116 Commenting that it was easy for them to obtain permits he concluded "my private opinion is that it would be a good thing to limit the number of Jewish emigrants from Poland because as a rule they are men of poor physique and it wi 11 be difficult for me to take responsibility for the safety of their political views". 1 7 The British
Passport Officer's views and recommendations were accepted by the Australian
Government which requested that "the immigration of these people to Australia should be discouraged as far as it may be in the power of the [Officer] discreetly to do so". 18 The Australian Home and Territories Department expressed the concern that "if a large number came they would probably tend to form into communities as they have done in East London" and it recommended
47 that the British Passport Officer discourage their entry by creating difficulties with the language test.19 Rabbi Francis Cohen, Chief Minister of the Great Synagogue in Sydney, wrote to the Secretary of the Home and
Territories Department drawing attention "to the fact the language test is very often being abused by consulates who make it a pretext for hindering
Jewish emigration". 20 He pointed out that Canada had accepted 24,722 East
European Jews between 1921 and 1926 at a rate well in excess of 4,000 in the preceding 3 years whereas Australia had averaged only 150 per year. 21 The
Secretary of the Department pointed out that the language problem was substantial as was that of supporting indigent immigrants.22 An unsigned annotation on this correspondence drew the Minister's attention to the desirability "of avoiding transfer to Australia of large numbers of poor Jews as the tendency was for them to live in the poorer portions of the cities and to become exploited by the more enterprising business Jews". 23
In respose to a request from Rabbi Cohen in September 1928 for a statement of Australian policy on non-British immigration, 24 the Minister for
Home and the Territories informed him that Australia had adopted a quota system for immigrants from Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Estoria.25 In December of that year Lucien Wolf, a representative of
Hias-Ica-Emigdirect, an association of three Jewish refugee societies, met with the Director of Migration at Australia House, London, to request an increase in the Jewish quota for Australia and that the quota be allocated to the association who would give a guarantee that the refugees would never become a charge on the public. 26 Although this offer was considered with interest by the Home and Territories Department27 it was declined. 28
A detailed consideration of the Australian response in the 1920s to the question of accepting Jewish refugees from Poland is useful in that it represents a fairly faithful precursor to the Australian response to the
48 Jewish refugees in the next decade. First, the reliance upon British perceptions of Australian solutions became typical; secondly, a general prejudice against poor immigrants was manifest; and thirdly, the lack of enthusiasm of the local Jewish community, or its acquiescence in Government decisions became characteristic, al though the local community was eventually conferred the sort of administrative role envisaged by Wolf.
With the onset of the Depression in Australia administrative action was taken to restrict the arrival of migrants. From December 1931 the Department of the Interior restricted the issue of permanent resident permits to those nominated by close relatives who guaranteed their support for five years. 29
The following year the Immigration Act was amended to provide that an alien was a prohibited immigrant if not in possession of a landing permit or otherwise authorized by the Minister. The landing permit system was to become the administrative basis for regulating the arrival of Jewish refugees after
1933.
(c) Immigration Policy 1933-1937
With the accession to power of Hitler in 1933 it immediately occurred to the Australian Government that "Australia may be selected as a country having attractions" for German Jews. 30 A memorandum prepared for Cabinet by the
Minister of the Interior reported that "it is not considered desirable that any special facilities should be given for Jews from Germany to migrate to
Australia". 31 The Australian Archives do not disclose the basis of this decision but it characterised the Government's approach to the question until the end of 1938.
In September 1933 the Australian High Commissioner in London, s.M. Bruce, was approached by Simon Marks, a prominent member of the English Jewish community to seek the assistance of the Australian Government in accepting
49 German Jewish refugees on a temporary basis. The Government's decision was that no departure could be made from the conditions it imposed on alien immigration.32 Australian Jewish leaders decided to appeal to the Government to modify this policy and in January 1934 the Victorian Jewish Immigration
Questions Commission approached the Sydney Great Synagogue Board with a view to sending a joint delegation to Canberra. 33 The Great Synagogue Board opposed this on the grounds that it could result in publicity harmful to
Australian Jewry and was unlikely, in view of the adverse economic conditions, to be attended with success.34 The objections of the Board were overcome and a delegation presented a petition to the Minister of the Interior, J.A.
Perkins, requesting the Government to view favourably the admission of a limited number of German refugees. 35 The memorandum emphasised that the
Jewish community did not support mass immigration or group settlements, that it would only sponsor an excellent type of immigrant who would not be a charge on the State and who would bring new skills and not compete with Australians for employment. 36
At the beginning of 1934 the Government began to issue landing permits to independent migrants with landing money of 500 pounds. 37 This precaution was not considered adequate to the Federal Council of the British Medical Society in Australia which suggested that "the Customs authorities refuse admissions
through failure to pass a language test11 • 38 The doctors were concerned at the competition they would be receiving from German practitioners who had become registered in Bri tian. 39 The Department of the Interior suggested that the question of eligibility to practice was a State, rather than Federal, matter.40
With the improvement of economic conditions in 1935 the Department of the
Interior, in October of that year, suggested to Cabinet that restrictions on alien immigration be modified.41 Cabinet accepted the Department's
50 recommendations that in addition to the grant of landing permits to dependants
of relatives in Australia, persons with 500 pounds landing money and experts
required for special industries, the Minister also be granted a discretion to
authorize intending migrants of "a desirable type" who were not likely to
become a burden on the community or interfere with the labour market. 42
"Desirable type" was defined by reference to "general assimilability ••• due
consideration being given to the question of avoiding as far as possible the
establishment of alien communities" and special consideration was to be given
to "intending immigrants of Northern European race or extraction. 1143
In 1936, following the Nuremberg laws, an agreement was reached between
the British and American Jewish communities to raise 3 million pounds to
assist 100,000 young Germans to emigrate. In response to an appeal from the
British Council for German Jewry, the German Jewish Relief Fund was
established in Sydney under the chairmanship of Sir Samuel Cohen and it was
decided that Australian Jewry should contribute 50,000 pounds. 44 In March
1936, T. Peterson, the Minister of the Interior, recommended, on the urging of
Jewish community representatives, that the landing money requirement be
reduced from 500 pounds because of the impossibility of raising that
amount. 45 The representatives were reported to have offered to advance
landing money on behalf of refugees and to guarantee that they would not be
allowed to become charges on the community.46 Cabinet approved that in
relation to non-British migrants who were nominated by persons or associations
prepared to guarantee that they would not become a charge on the State, and
' would not engage in employment to the detriment of Australians, landing money
was to be reduced to 50 pounds. Landing money for migrants without guarantors
was reduced to 200 pounds.47
In September 1936 the Council for German Jewry in London requested that
the money raised for the German Relief Fund be retained in Australia to cover
51 the 50 pound lan d1.ng. money requ1.remen. t • 48 The change in Government policy necessitated the coordination of Jewish communal support for the refugees.
Following meetings with the Assistant Minister of the Interior and local
Jewish leaders it was decided, in 1937, to form the Australian Jewish Welfare society (A.J.w.s.). The Society was to be responsible for the admission, reception and integration of refugees and consisted of prominent members of the patrician Sydney Jewish community, Sir Samuel Cohen, his son P.A. Cohen and son-in-law K. Moss.49 Sir Isaac Isaacs became the society's patron on the assurance that refugees it sponsored would become British subjects as soon as possible.50
Although the Government appeared to have made some important concessions it still maintained a conservative attitude towards the immigration of Jews.
A memorandum of the Department of the Interior of August 1936 explained,
Jews as a class are not desirable emigrants for the reason that they do not assimilate; speaking generally they preserve their identity as Jews. It would not be desirable that the Government should give its blessing to any scheme involving block nominations of Jews for admission into the Commonwealth. It is considered that individual nominations should be submitted by the representative Jewish Communities in Australia, which should be required, when submitting each nomination, to state the particular avenue of employment in which it was proposed the nominee should be placed. That this should be alone is most important, in order that before the acceptance of a nomination this Department may be in a position to satisfy itself that the introduction of the nominee would not be detrimental to Australian workers.51
The conservatism of the Department of the Interior was complemented by the conservatism of the A.J.w.s. To minimise the possibility of anti-Semitic opposition to the immigration programme it had been decided that migrants be sent out in batches not exceeding six persons, that each ship be accompanied by an English language instructor.52 When in late 1938 it was reported that a ship was to leave Germany with 800 to 900 refugees bound for Australia, 53 the
A.J.w.s. cabled London to prevent the ship's leaving.54 Refugees were requested by the Society to settle in the country, to adopt Australian customs
52 and manners, to anglicise their names, and were required to sign an undertaking to become naturalized as soon as possible.55
(d) The Crisis of 1938
The German annexation of Austria in March 1938 placed impossible strains on the administration of the Australian immigration system. On 6 Apri 1 the
Prime Minister's Department received an urgent request from London for 10,000 additional immigration forms, reporting that the British Consul-General who represented Australian interests in Vienna had received more than that number of applications for emigration to Australia in three weeks. 56 The High
Commissioner in London reported that Australia House was receiving approximately 120 inquiries daily. 57 The plight of the refugees received widespread publicity in Australia and considerable sympathy was generated for them.
At this juncture, the High Commissioner, on 6 April, reported to the
Prime Minister an enquiry from the United States as to whether Australia would be prepared to cooperate in setting up a committee for the purpose of facilitating the migration from Austria of political refugees.58 Bruce explained that, although representatives on the committee would be designated by the invited Governments, any funding of emergency migration was to be undertaken by private organizations within the respective countries and that no country was expected to receive a greater number of immigrants than was permitted by its existing legislation.59 The High Commissioner reported that the United Kingdom had drawn attention to certain difficulties in the proposal such as the American's own immigration quotas and the desirability of not encouraging "other countries such as Poland to take further steps to get their
Jews to leave". 60 He concluded,
suggest in view of desirability responding to any American initiative for co-operative action and the fact that the United
53 Kingdom Government will probably accept, that we should accept also. Our reply might however await despatch U .K. reply and follow down same lines.61
In evaluating the American invitation, the Secretary of the Department of
External Affairs observed that "Australia would be subject to criticism if the invitation was refused, especially as the need for increased population for
Australia has been recently and consistently stressed by Government and other
spokesmen 11 • 62 He concluded that "in all the circumstances it might be advisable for the Commonwealth Government to reply accepting the invitation in principle without waiting on the reply of the United Kingdom". 63 Al though the
High Commissioner was instructed immediately, on 8 April, to accept the
American invi tation64 a Cabinet Minute of the same date noted "Approved that
Commonwealth be represented at Conference proposed by u.s.A. only if Great
Britain decides to be represented. 1165 At the Cabinet discussion on 8 April,
J. McEwen, the new Minister for the Interior, sought to define the current policy on Jewish immigration. It had been noted with some considerable irritation that the United States had erroneously suggested that Australia maintained an annual quota of only 100 for German refugees.66 McEwen reported that the A.J.w.s. sought permission to introduce up to 500 persons per year and he recommended that the society be granted this number of permits
"provided that not more than 20 persons arrive on any one ship". 67 Cabinet approved this request adding that the German quota would include Austrian Jews but it affirmed the existing policy of a case by case approach to immigration with appropriate guarantees and financial collateral. 68 The Prime Minister informed Bruce of Cabinet's modification of immigration policy but emphasized that Australia's representative at the conference would be instructed "that no special facilities can be granted for the admission of groups of Jewish migrants whether from Germany or Austria but that each case would be considered on its merits on applications in the usual form being submitted to
54 the Department of the Interior", and that "there will in all cases be customary safeguards that admission will not be detrimental to Australian workers" • 69
On 4 May the Government's immigration policy was placed on public record by McEwen in a statement to Parliament, 70 but the panic in Europe was beginning to throw this policy into jeopardy. In a memorandum to Cabinet of
25 May, McEwen reported that applications for immigration by German Jews without sponsors, in possession of 200 pounds landing money were running at
300 per week," and not taking the racial aspect into consideration would mean the issue of approximately 20,000 permits to Jews for this year". 71 McEwen conceded that "there is no doubt that the majority of Jewish applicants if admitted would be able to establish themselves in business or occupations without much difficulty" and he drew attention to the pre-Depression
Australian immigration rate of 50,000 persons per year and the fact that unemployment had now fallen to only 8 per cent. In this memorandum McEwen was suggesting that Cabinet had to address the failure of its immigration policy informally to exclude Jews and whether for the first time Australia would have to establish "a quota for Jews who are a race as distinct from a nationality". Although he conceded that only 50 per cent of the applicants had given their race as Jewish he explained "The balance can be judged fairly clearly by means of the names, particularly their first or 'Christian' names, the photographs and statements in accompanying documents. Apart from indicating some familiarity with the theories being propounded contemporaneously by Der Sturmer and Der Volkischer Beobachter, McEwen' s racist attitude foreshadowed his recommendation that,
If it were decided to limit the number of Jews to be granted permits to enter Australia it would appear desirable to give preference to Austrian and German Jews because of their greater need, and because they have become more assimilated in European ways, say, than the Jews of Poland where they have practically formed a State within a State.72
55 On 9 June Cabinet agreed to establish a quota of 300 landing permits to be granted to Jews per month, that preference be given to Austrians and
Germans instead of Poles, and that preference be related to amount of capital, occupation and age and that "discretion [was] to be used in selection as to types (to be judged by photographs and questions of nationality)". 73 Finally it was decided to approach the A.J.w.s. to assist in the selection of the best type of migrant. 74 The Cabinet's decision was communicated to the High
Commissioner in London on 22 June and the Prime Minister requested that he advise the British Consuls at Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw and Budapest to exercise discretion in giving publicity to the fact that in the past few months many thousands of applications had been received from Jews residing in Europe for permission to enter Australia "and that, as the number seeking admission is far in excess of the number which the Commonwealth Government considers could readily be absorbed without detriment to Australian workers it has been decided that only a limited, specially selected number should be granted each month". 75 Lyons concluded by pointing out that,
As there are sufficient applications directly on hand to cover the number likely to be approved during the next twelve months, intending applicants are warned that there is little prospect of further applications being granted during present year except in very special circumstances.76
This cable summarised the final Australian position on the admission of
European Jews prior to the Inter-Governmental Committee which had been scheduled to commence at Evian-les-Bains in France on 6 July 1938. Bruce was requested to inform the Committee of the quota and that the applications which were running at a rate of 600 per week would be sufficient to provide enough eligible applicants for the next twelve months.77
56 CHAPTER 3 - FOOTNOTES
1. See B.M. Lieglen, Immigration: an American Dilemma (New York, 1965), P• 97.
2. H.L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue, The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938-1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970), p. 313, n. 39.
3 0 R. Lewis and M. Schibsby, "Status of the Refugee under American Immigration Laws" Annals of the A.A.P.s.s., Vol. 203, (May, 1939), p. 76.
4. See Ch. 2 supra. s. Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth), s. 3.
6. See M. Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (Melbourne, 1923), Ch. 6.
7. See C.A. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia (Melbourne, 1963).
8. See A.H. Charteris, "Australian Immigration Laws and their Working" in N. MacKenzie, ed., The Legal Status of Aliens in Pacific Countries (London, 1937), P• 20.
9. Memorandum, Dept. Int., "Alien Immigration - Question of Quota System etc", 23 October 1935. Dept. Immigration, Corresp. Files, Class 3 "Alien Immigration 1936 Cabinet Decisions", 1935-1938, Aust. Archive Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/29456.
10. Cable, High Commissioner's Office (London) to Prime Minister's Department, 19 May 1921, Dept. Immig., Corresp. Files., Class 3 (Non-British European Migrants), "Admission of Jews to Australia 1921-1938", Aust. Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/3196.
11. Ibid.
12. Cable, Prime Minister's Department to High Commissioner's Office, 1 June 1921, Ibid.
13. See Charteris, n. 8 supra, p. 17.
14. Hebrew Standard 19 October 1928, quoted in s. Rutland "Historical Background (1) 1788-1933" in s. Encel and B. Buckley, The New South Wales Jewish Community. A Survey, 2nd ed., (Sydney, 1978), p. 9.
15. F.C. Derbyshire to H.E. Spencer, 20 June 1925, copy sent to Secretary Prime Minister's Department 8 August 1925. Dept. Immig. Corresp. Files, Class 3 (Non-British European Migrants), "Admission of Jews to Australia 1921-1938", Aust. Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/3196.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
57 18. Secretary Prime Minister's Dept. to Official Secretary (London) 3 Oct. 1925, Ibid.
19. Memorandum Home and Territories Dept. "Polish Jews", Ibid.
20. Cohen to Secretary Home and Territories Dept., 15 October 1926 referring to letter from Vereinigtes Komite Fur Judische Auswanderung (Emigdirect), 1 Sept. 1926, Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Quinlan to Cohen, 28 Oct. 1926, Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Cohen to Minister Home and Territories Dept. 13 Sept. 1928, Ibid.
25. Quinlan to Cohen, 18 Sept. 1928.
26. Wolf to Australian High Commissioner, 23 January 1929, Ibid.
27. Memorandum, Home and Territories Dept., "Jewish Emmi gra tion to Australia" 23 April 1929, Ibid.
28. Quinlan to Official Secretary (London), 29 April 1929, Ibid.
29. Commonwealth Year Book 1931, p. 678.
30. Memorandum for cabinet from J.A. Perkins, Interior Min., "Question of Admission of Jews from Germany", 2 June 1933, Dept. of Immig. Corresp. File, Class 3 (Non-British European Migrants), "Admission of German Jews Cabinet Decisions re, 1933-1936, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/7034.
31. Ibid.
32. Dept. Interior, Memorandum 6 Nov. 1933, Ibid.
33. Great Synagogue Minutes, 17 Jan. 1934.
34. Ibid.
35. Great Synagogue Minutes, 31 Jan. 1934.
36. Ibid.
37. Commonwealth Year Book 1935, P• 562.
38. Lawes, Gen. Sec. F.C.B.M.A.A. to Sec. Dept. External Affairs, 8 March 1934, Dept. Immigration, Corresp. File, Class 3 (Non-British European Migrants) "Admission of German Jews Cabinet Decisions re", 1933-36, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/7034.
39. See also E. Kunz, The Intruders: Refugee Doctors in Australia (Canberra, 1975). ------='------...;...;;...;...;..;.;.;;;__
40. Department of the Interior, Memorandum, 1 May 1934, n. 38 supra.
58 41. Department of the Interior, Memorandum to Cabinet, "Alien Immigration _ QUestion of Quota System etc", 23 October 1935, Dept. Immigration, Corresp. File, Class 32, "Alien Immigration 1936, Cabinet Decisions", 1935-1938, Australian Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/29456.
42. Ibid., para. 24.
43. Ibid.
44. S. Rutland, "Jewish Immigration to New South Wales - 1919-1939", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., Val.VII (1973), p.341.
45. T. Peterson, Memorandum to Cabinet, 9 March 1936, "Question of Admission of Jews from Germany", n .41 supra.
46. Ibid.
47. Cabinet approved 7 April 1936, Ibid.
48. Rutland, n.44. supra., p.342.
49. s.D. Rutland, The Jewish Community in New South Wales 1914-1939, M.A. (Hons.) Thesis, University of Sydney, 1978, p.172.
50. Ibid.
51. Department of the Interior, Memorandum "Question of Admission of Jews into Australia", 6 August 1936, Department of Immigration, Corresp. File, Class 3 (Non-British European Migrants): "Admission of German Jews Cabinet Decisions re", 1933-1936, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/7034.
52. Minutes of the German Jewish Refugees Fund, 3 Dec. 1936; 25 Nov. 1937 quoted in Rutland, n.49 supra, p.173.
53. Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Nov. 1938.
54. See Rutland, n.44 supra., p.342.
55. See "Report on Activities of Australian Jewish Welfare Society" "Refugees (Jewish and Others) General Policy File (1938-1940)", Department of the Interior, Corresp. File Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-1949 Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2/46; Australian Jewish Welfare Society, "Form of Guarantee", Ibid., IHM 48/3/149605.
56. High Commissioner's Office to Prime Minister's Department 6 April 1938, Department of External Affairs (11), Corresp. Files, Alphabetical Series, C.1927-1942, Refugees, General, No. 4, Part 1: Inter-Governmental Committee (Including Evian Conference), 1938-1940, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A981.
57. Bruce to Lyons (Cable), 5 April 1938, Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
59 60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. W.R. Hodgson, Memorandum to Minister, Department of External Affairs, 6 April 1938, Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. Lyons to Bruce, 8 April 1938 (Cable), Department of the Interior (11), Corresp. Files Class 2, (Restricted Immigration) 1939-45, Refugees (Jewish and Others) - General Policy File (1938-1944) CRS A433, Item 43/2/46.
65. Prime Ministers Department, Extract from Cabinet Minutes 8 April 1938, n.56 supra.
66. Bruce to Lyons, n.645 supra.
67. J. McEwen, Memorandum to Cabinet, "Immigration of Jews to Australia", 8 April 1938, Ibid.
68. Secretary Prime Minister's Department to Secretary Department of External Affairs, Memorandum 8 April 1938, Ibid.
69. Lyons to Bruce, 8 April 1938 (Cable), Ibid.
70. McEwen, "White Alien Immigration", C.P.D., vol.155, p.p.784-785 (4 May 1938).
71. McEwen, Memorandum to Cabinet, 25 May 1938, Department of the Interior ( 11), Corresp. Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration), 1939-1945 Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2146.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. Lyons to Bruce, 22 June 1938 (Cable), Department of External affairs ( 11 ) Corresp. Files, Alphabetical Series, c.1927-1942, Refugees General No.4, Part 1: Inter-Governmental Committee (including Evian Conference), 1938-1940, Aust. Archives Office CRS A981.
76. Ibid.
77. Lyons to Bruce, 4 July 1938 (Cable), Ibid.
60 4. AUSTRALIA AT EVIAN
(a) The Road to Evian
Refugee problems arising out of the First World War fell within the province of the League of Nations which in 1921 established the office of High commissioner for Russian Refugees. This office was conferred on Dr. Fridjtof
Nansen, the Norwegian Polar Explorer. He devised the "Nansen passport", an identity document for stateless persons, which had been recognised by over 50 nations in 1922. By 1929 Nansen believed that refugee work could be completed within ten years. 1 In that year the League dissolved the High Commissioner's office and established an autonomous body, outside the League, the Nansen
International Office for Refugees, which was to complete the refugee work and dissolve on 31 December 1938. The problem of refugees from Nazi Germany was brought up in the League Assembly in September 1933. 2 Objections by the
German delegate to any direct action being taken by the League resulted in a compromise which was the establishment of a "High Commission for Refugees
(Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany". Although created by the League the body was entirely autonomous, its administration and settlement activities being funded by private contributors.
The first Commissioner, American James G. McDonald, was hampered by the lack of authority of the agency and he resigned two years later. In his widely publicized letter of resignation, dated 27 December 1935, he described in detail the Nazi persecution of the Jews and called for "friendly but firm intercession with the German Government by all pacific means" on the part of the League. 3 He declared this exercise of "moral authority" as imperative, since the refugee exodus constituted "a danger to international peace". 4 The
McDonald letter was ignored by League members, the British Foreign Office
61 described it as "an unwise document which did a disservice to the real interests of the Jews in Germany" and in which "the guiding hand of Zionism was apparent". 5 McDonald was replaced as High Commissioner by an Englishman, sir Neil Malcolm.
On 23 March 1938, only eleven days after the German occupation of
Austria, President Roosevelt instructed Secretary of State Cordel Hull to ask the British and Dominion Governments and the Governments of France, Belgium,
Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy and the Governments of the other American republics, "if they would be willing to co-operate with the Government of the United States in setting up a special committee composd of representatives of a number of governments for the purpose of facilitating the emigration from Austria and presumably from Germany of political refugees". 6 The resultant letter of invitation from Hull to the various governments, as we have already seen, considerably circumscribed this initiative by stating that,
" ••• our idea is that whereas such representatives would be designated by the governments concerned, any financing of the emergency emigration referred to would be undertaken by private organizations within the respective countries. Furthermore it is to be understood that no country would be expected or asked to receive a greater number of imigrants than is permitted by its existing legislation.7
In the press conference which announced the President's initiative it was declared that the German and Austrian quotas would become fully available.
Until that announcement, it will be recalled, the United States had admitted only 27,000 Germans between 1933 and 1938 out of a possible quota of
130,000. A Presidential Proclamation of 26 March 1938 announced the merging of the tiny Austrian quota with that of the German, 8 thereby manifesting
American good intent within the existing legislation.
The Australian response to the American invitation was conditioned, along with the rest of its diplomacy to the British response. The Australian
62 delegate to the Evian Conference was to consist of Colonel T.W. White,
Minister for Trade and Customs, Alfred Stirling, an External Affairs Officer based in London, and A.W. Stuart-Smith an Australia House official. The delegation was reported to have taken an "early opportunity ••• to establish
contact with the United Kingdom delegation 11 • 9 Stirling wrote that:
Before setting out for the Conference, the view of the United Kingdom government, as far as I could gather, was that the "ini tia ti ve" of President Roos eve 1 t should be encouraged as much as possible, as a sign, however faint, of increased American interest in international affairs, and particularly in Europe. At the same time the Foreign Office felt that little of a practical character could come of the Conference. Difficulties of finance loomed large; it was not expected that governments would do anything in this direction, and the resources of the voluntary refugee organizations were, of course, limited. Secondly, ••• it was doubtful whether the United States, or any other country, would be ready to propose any large scale acceptance of refugees... Thirdly, there was the fear that if the Conference should by any chance show any great readiness to accept refugees, Poland and Roumania would feel encouraged to get rid of the several millions of Jews within their borders and might start repressive measures to achieve that end. Finally, their attitude towards the United States proposed to constitute yet another organization for the relief of refugees, was one of disapproval. It was not desirable to overlap with the already existin_q League organizations for refugees from Germany and Austria.1~
Consultation with Australia and the other Dominions, prior to the
Conference was also in Britain's interest since its Palestine Mandate would potentially be the subject of suggestions for Jewish immigration, together with its African Colonies. Although the United States had suggested on 7 May that the first meeting of the proposed Conference be held on 6 July 1938 at
Evian in France, 11 a number of weeks passed without any indication from
Washington as to what precisely the State Department had in mind as to the scope of the Conference and the procedures that would be adopted. 1 2 The
Foreign Office predicted that "in default of a lead from the United
States ••• the outlook for Evian was gloomy ••• the meeting would be chiefly occupied with passing the buck". 1 3 Speculation as to the President's motives
in calling for the Conference were not assisted by reports from the United
63 states. Time magazine believed that the proposal was designed to express, in a practical way, American disapproval of the Anschluss, Newsweek thought it was part of the Administration's plan to divert public opinion from
isolationism to more "active opposition" to "international gangsters 11 • 14 other contradictory possibilities were that the President was under pressure from the American Jewish community to intervene on behalf of its co religionaries or that more conservative elements sought international action to deflect attempts to liberalize the immigration laws. 15
As Stirling reported, the British prognosis for the success of the
Conference was not optimistic. It was not encouraged by the announcement that
James G. McDonald "a very tiresome individual" whose letter of resignation as
High Commissioner for Refugees had been described as "a very ill-advised document". 16 Also discouraging was the announcement of Myron C. Taylor, former President of the United States Steel Corporation, as Leader of the
American delegation. He had no experience in international affairs and
Ambassador J. Kennedy expressed a very low opinion of him. 17 A meeting between the Foreign Office and the Australian and other Dominion High
Commissioners disclosed complete opposition to any proposal which might be raised at Evian for government financial assistance for migration or resettlement schemes.18
The question of finance was perceived to be critical to the Evian deliberations. The landing money requirements were an insuperable obstacle to refugees who had experienced the confiscatory legislation of the Nazis.
Australia House reported that the British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Neville
Henderson, had mentioned the Evian Conference to the German Foreign Minister van Ribbentrop. 19 The latter, declaring that this was his first news of the event, expressed concern that the Conference might be used as a forum for
anti-German propaganda and conveyed the impression that any adverse criticism
64 might result in a worsening of the Jews' predicament.20 Henderson advised that the British delegates at Evian bring pressure to bear on the German
Government by making the reception of German and Austrian Jews in England dependent on the amounts of property they be permitted to export.21 He concluded,
I would deprecate too dogmatic an attitude by British delegates as regards German policy toward Jews. However uncivilised and deplorable, it is, in the Chancellor's eyes, Germany's own business, even though she will probably be the greatest sufferer for it in the end. 22
This advice was heeded by all delegates and criticism of Germany was avoided in every speech. As Stirling explained, it was hoped that the Conference and the Committee it established would "lead to something more than the question of refuges, to some general appeasement". 23
(b) By the Waters of Evian
Delegates from 32 nations participated in the Conference which was opened at the Hotel Royal, Evian-les-Bains on 6 July 1938. Poland and Romania, anxious to arrange the emigration of Jews from their countries, sent observers and Germany allowed representatives of German and Austrian Jewry to attend in an official capacity. In opening the proceedings the French delegate Henri
Berenger also welcomed the "refugee associations who have come here of their
own free will 11 • 24 He explained that "if they were not convened, the reason is that we are not an international conference ••• nor is it a platform for declarations. Rather we are simply a body which the President of the United
States desired to create between American and the other continents 11 • 25 The various refugee organizations might have been understandably irritated by this patronising welcome since it was they who had borne the primary expense of rescuing the refugees to the date of the Conference and it was they who
Roosevelt envisaged would bear the costs of rescue in the future.
65 The Australian delegates were appointed to the Credentials Committee and the leader of the Australian delegation, Colonel White, was appointed to the chairmanship of the important Sub-Committee on the Reception of Those concerned with the Relief of Political Refugees from Germany (including
Austria). This Sub-Committee received memoranda of suggested action from representatives of about 40 private refugee aid agencies. The 20 Jewish private groups in attendance26 could not unite on any proposed course presenting a "spectacle of Jewish discord and disruption" • 27 The Sub- committee, in what was described as "a humiliating procedure" gave each representative about ten minutes to make their submission28 and Berenger in his closing address communicated the Committee's appreciation to White for
"the work he did in so short a space of time". 29 This Antipodean contribution to the refugee problem had taken a mere afternoon. 30
In the opening speech of the Conference, Myron c. Taylor stated that the
United States' contribution lay in making the preexisting German-Austrian quota of 27,370 fully available and managed to avoid using the word "Jew" in his speech. Having established what has been described as a "precedent for inaction", 31 each delegate listed reasons why their nation was unable to receive more refugees. These included existing saturation levels having been reached, the unsuitability of their territories and the economic problems resulting from the Depression. The French delegate lamented that his country had "already almost exhausted her own resources, which unfortunately are not
so boundless as her zeal to save the cause of humanity11 • 32 But he concluded
To what do the Americas and Australia owe their expansion during the last three centuries if not to the constant influx of European emigrants, refugees and exiles •••• It is, therefore, part of the logic of world history that today ••• the initiative and the resources of the new worlds are offered to these fresh swarms of refugees who are being ejected by new revolutions from their old homes. 33
This historical challenge was emphatically rejected in the speech of
66 Australia's delegate. Conceding that Australia, as well as the United States, owed its development to migration from the Old World White explained "in
Australia's case such migration has naturally been predominantly British; nor is it desired that this be largely departed from while British settlers are forthcoming". 34 Colonel White maintained that,
under the circumstances, Australia cannot do more, for it will be appreciated that in a young country man power from the source from which most of its citizens have sprung is preferred, while undue privileges cannot be given to one particular class of non-British subjects without injustice to others. It will no doubt be appreciated also that, as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.35
Before adjourning, the Evian Conference established a permanent
Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees and commissioned it to "approach the governments of the countries of refuge with a view to developing opportunities for permanent settlement" and to attempt to persuade the German Government to cooperate in establishing conditions of "orderly emigration". 36 In closing the Conference the Chairman was "happy to report" that,
••• due to the serious spirit of cooperation which had animated this first intergovernmental meeting, due to the deep-rooted conviction that we were dealing with a harrowing human problem, we have been able to recommend to our respective Governments the establishment of machinery that should ••• bring about a real improvement in the lives and prospects of many millions of our fellow men. 37
The Evian Conference decided to reconvene its executive committee in
London on 3 August 1938 when a permanent organization would be formed. 38 The meeting of that date appointed George Rublee, a Washington lawyer and personal friend of the President, as director. Earl Winterton, the anti-Zionist leader of the British delegation at Evian was appointed its chairman. 39 Rublee was enthusiastic in initiating negotiations with the Germans on the refugee question but reported considerable British opposition to such an approach.40
As Stirling reported, Sir Neville Henderson doubted "the utility of an approach to the German government (which means in the end Herr Hitler) so long
67 as the Czechoslovak question remains in the present critical phase1141 with the
onset of the Munich crisis the Intergovernmental Committee became increasingly
irrelevant and was virtually exterminated by the same shot that killed von
Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.
(c) Assessment
Myron c. Taylor's euphoric avowal of the success of the Conference was
not shared by everyone. Time magazine observed that "Evian is the home of the
famous spring of still and unexciting table water. After a week of many warm words of idealism and few practical suggestions, the Intergovernmental
Committee on Political Refugees took on some of the same characteris ties". 42
William Shirer, who attended the opening of the Conference doubted whether
much would be accomplished "The British, the French and the Americans seem too
anxious not to do anything to offend Hitler. It is an absurd situation: They
want to appease the man who was responsible for their situation". 43 The
official and semi-official press of the participating countries declared the
conference a success, but this was adjudged in terms of conducing to
appeasement. 44 In this regard the Conference was a success. The Danziger
Vorposten observed that the Conference justified Germany's policies against
Jewry. 45 The Deutsche Diplomatische Korrespondenz, the offical organ of the
German Foreign Office, observed in its 12 July edition "since in many foreign
countries it was recently regarded as wholly incomprehensible why Germans did
not wish to preserve in its population an element like the Jews •••• it appears
astounding that countries seem in no way particularly anxious to make use of
these elements themselves now that the opportunity offers". 46
It had been observed by a number of correspondents that Evian spelt
backwards gave the word "naive". This was the impression of Alfred Stirling,
Australia's observer at the Conference which he attributed to the religious
68 simplicity of Chairman Taylor.47 He commented particularly, that "on the immediate question, that of finding a home for refugees ••• my own impression is that the Conference made little or no progress 11 • 48
The Evian Conference presented Australia with an opportunity to demonstrate its statemanship, maturity and humanity. Australia had become "a
'blessed word' to the victims of persecution. Her vast spaces, her small populace, and her need for workers for primary and secondary industries1149 were perceived as "a case where the self-interest of the Dominions, the
Imperial interest and the spirit of humanity coincide". SO The more populous participating nations also looked to Australia to make a significant contribution in alleviating the pressure upon their strained economies. 51 For these reasons Colonel White's speech was later considered to be "the most depressing" of all delegates.52 Prior to arriving at Evian, White had given a number of addresses in England encouraging British emigration to . 53 Austra 1ia. His Evian speech was perceived as being consistent with the proposition that "only Englishmen were wanted in Australia". 54 Particularly to be condemned was the "racial antipathy" apparent at the Conference which was articulated in White's speech.55
Australian press reaction to Australia's performance at the Evian
Conference ranged across the entire spectrum from strong disapproval to enthusiastic approbation. The Sydney Morning Herald and the West Australian disagreed with White's declaration that Australia was doing as much as it could to assist the refugees. The West Australian maintained that humanitarian considerations were of prime importance and that Australia should be willing to assist in solving the refugee problem. 56 The Sydney Morning
Herald was particularly critical of the Australian delegate. In an editorial of 9 July 1938 it declared,
••• there cannot but be disappointment with the negative nature of the speech made by the Australian representative •••• The
69 Minister for Trade and Commerce expressed a pious hope for "a solution of this tragic world problem".
It is a truism that the Commonwealth has no racial problem and has no desire to import one. One the other hand it prides itself on being a democracy with a strong tradition of tolerance, and any undue suggestion of racial intolerance constitutes a betrayal of our cherished traditions.67
The Herald urged the streamlining of immigration procedures and the establishment of a migration bureau. In addition to the dictates of humanity,
the press supporters of a positive immigration policy adduced the self
interested considerations which should have dictated a more generous
Australian attitude at Evian. The Sydney Morning Herald pointed out that the
European refugee crisis presented Australia with a unique opportunity to
"obtain some of the best stock and finest minds of Europe 11 • 58 A parallel was drawn between the refugees and the Flemish and Huguenot immigrants who had
established the textile industries of England.59 The Melbourne Herald
considered that this was the "opportunity to obtain industrious citizens who
will. •• become 100 percent democratic Australians" within a generation or 60 two.
Qualifying the enthusiasm, even of supporters of a positive immigration
policy was the considerable middle-ground of opinion which insisted that
Australia's living standards be safeguarded and her racial homgeneity be
protected. 61 This was the view of Professor Stephen Roberts62 whose
influential eye-witness account of life in Nazi Germany63 played such a
significant role in framing Australian attitudes towards the Reich and in
generating sympathy for its victims. Labor newspapers and politicians
condemned even assisted immigration from Britain at a time of depressed . . 64 economic circumstances. The yellow press was commendatory of Australia's
posture at Evian. The Sydney Truth warned of the danger to Australia "race,
blood and ideals" from the impending deluge of "unwanted and unabsorbable
Hebrews". 65 The Bulletin agreed with the strict limitation placed on the
70 number of immigrant Jews, 66 warning that "if unrestricted immigration were permitted it would mean the herding into cities - already overcrowded in proportion to the population of the interior - of brooding aliens, ulcerated with hatred of the countries that had driven them out, and grouped in their own colonies which ••• might become the foci of disorder 11 • 67
It is difficult to assess which of the extremes of press opinion enjoyed the greatest support in Australia. Benjamin suggests that in general the conservative approach of Colonel White enjoyed the widest public support. 68
It is of course difficult to determine public opinion even from newspaper editorials and correspondence, but until a significant number of refugees arrived in Australia there was no touchstone against which this opinion could be tested. 69
In the formation of policy on Jewish immigration the Government adopted the secretive approach which characterised all its diplomacy at this time.
The report of the Australian delegation at Evian, although completed on 31
August 1938 was only presented to Parliament on 1 December 1938 when the pressures arising out of the Kristallnacht pogrom had precipitated another change in policy.70 Even then the report and a copy of the proceedings of the
Intergovernmental Committee were only ordered by the Minister for External
Affairs to be laid on the table of the Library1171 and thus did not become published Parliamentary Papers, open to public scrutiny. The immigration policy which the Government had adopted for the Evian Conference was little different to the one adopted by it for the Ukrainian pogroms of 1921.72
71 Chapter 4 - Footnotes
1. L.W. Holborn, "The League of Nations and the Refugee Problem" Annals of the A.A.P.s.s., Vol.203 (May, 1939), p.131.
2 • Ibid • , p. 1 3 3 •
3. Reproduced in N. Bentwich, The Refugees From Germany, April 1933 to December 1935 (London, 1936), pp.219-228.
4. Ibid., p.227.
5. Foreign Office Memorandum 1 September 1936 quoted in A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich 1933-1939 (Berkley, Los Angeles, 1973), p.65.
6. Foreign Relations of the United States - 1938 Vol.1, (Washington, 1955), pp.740-741.
7. Ibid.
8. u.s., Department of State, Press Releases, Vol.XVIII (March 26, 1938), p.411.
9. Australian Delegation, Evian, to Department of External Affairs, Memorandum 13 July 1978, Department of External Affairs (11), Corresp. Files, Alphabetical Series, e.1927-1942, Refugees General No.4, Part 1: Inter Governmental Committee (including Evian Conference), 1938-1940,Aust. Archives Office, CRS A981.
10. Stirling to Hodgson, 17 July 1938, Ibid.
11. S. Adler-Rudel, "The Evian Conference on the Refugee Question", Year Book XIII of the Leo Baeck Institute, (1968), p.238.
12. J. Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem (London, 1939), p.223.
13. Quoted in Sherman, n.5 supra, p.104.
14. Quoted in D.S. Wyman, Paper Walls, America and the Refugee Crisis 1938-1941 (Amhurst, Mass, 1965), p.44.
15. See H.L. Feingold, The Poli ties of Rescue, The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938-1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970, pp.22- 25; s. Spear, "The United States and the Persecution of the Jews in Germany, 1933-1939" Jewish Soc. Studs. Vol.30 (1968), pp.228-229; A.D. Morse, While Six Million Died (London, 1968), p.203.
16. Quoted in Sherman, n.5 supra, p.100.
17. Ibid., p .1 04.
18. Ibid., p.106.
72 19. Hood to Secretary, Department External Affairs, 13 July 1938, Inter- Governmental Committee, n. 9 supra.
20. Ibid.
21. Henderson to Halifax 4 July 1938, Sherman, n. 5 supra., p. 113.
22. Ibid.
23. Stirling to Hodgson, n. 10 supra.
24. Proceedings of the Intergovernmental Committee, Evian, July 6th to 15th, 1938. Verbatim Record of the Plenary Meetings of the Committee. Resolutions and Reports. London July, 1938, p. 11.
25. Ibid.
26. Listed in Adler-Rudel, n. 11 supra., 253-254.
27. Wyman, n. 14 supra., P• 49.
28. Adler-Rudel, n. 11 supra., p. 255.
29. Proceedings, n. 24 supra., p. 45.
30. Stirling to Hodgson, n. 10 supra.
31. s. Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed, United States Policy Toward Jewish Refugees 1938-1945 (Detroit, 1973), p. 59.
32. Proceedings, n. 24 supra., p. 16.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., P• 19.
35. Ibid., P• 20, author's emphasis.
36. Ibid., PP• 54-55.
37. Ibid., p. 41.
38. Taylor to Hull, 14 July 1938, Foreign Relations of the United States - 1938, n. 6 supra., PP• 754-56.
39. Draft Stenographic Notes of the First Meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee to Continue and Develop the Work of the Evian Meeting, 3 August 1938, n. 9 supra.
40. See generally, J. Mendelsohn ed., The Holocaust, Vol. 6, Jewish Emigration 1938-1940 Rublee Negotiations and the Intergovernmental Committee (New York, 1982).
41. Stirling to Hodgson, 26 August 1938, n. 10 supra.
42. Time, 18 July 1938, p. 16.
73 43. w. Shirer, Berlin Diary (London, 1941), p. 101.
44. For a comprehensive survey of press comments see s.z. Katz, "Public opinion in Western Europe and the Evian Conference of July 1938", Yad Vashem Studies, Vol. IX (1973), PP• 105-132.
45. Quoted in A.D. Morse, While Six Million Died (London, 1968), p. 214.
46. Quoted in Feingold, n. 15 supra., p. 36.
47. Stirling to Hodgson, n. 10 supra.
48. Ibid.
49. N. Bentwich, "The Evian Conference and After" Fortnightly Rev. (Sept. , 19 38) , p. 291 • so. Manchester Guardian 6 July 1938.
51 • E.g. the comments in Times 8 July 1938; New Statesman 16 July 1938.
52. G. Warburg, "None to Comfort the Persecuted", The Wiener Library Bulletin, Vol. XV (1961), p. 43.
53. Times 18 May 1938; Times 30 June 1938.
54. Manchester Guardian 8 July 1938.
55. Manchester Guardian 16 July 1938.
56. West Australian 11 July 1938.
57. Sydney Morning Herald 9 July 1938.
58. Sydney Morning Herald 8 August 1938.
59. Sydney Morning Herald 18 August 1938.
60. Herald 14 October 1938.
61. Sydney Morning Herald 8 August 1938.
62. Sydney Morning Herald 7 July 1938.
63. S.H. Roberts, The House that Hitler Built (London, 1937).
64. See B .J. Hooper, Australian Reactions to German Persecution of Jews and Refugee Immigration 1933-1947, M.A. Thesis (A.N.U.), 1972, pp. 71-75.
65. Truth 16 October, 1938.
66. The Bulletin, 13 July 1938.
67. The Bulletin 27 July 1938.
74 68. D.J. Benjamin, "Australia and the Evian Conference" Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., Vol. V (1961), p. 219.
69. See Hooper, n. 64 supra, Ch. 3.
10. c.P.D., Vol. 158, 1 December 1938, p. 2536.
71. Ibid, the delegation's report is reproduced as an appendix.
72. See Ch. 3.
75 5. KRISTALLNACHT 1938
(a) The Pogrom
Two weeks after the German invasion of Austria the Polish Government announced, on 31 March 1938, an Expatriates Law which obliged Polish citizens living outside the country to have their passports reviewed and stamped by
Polish consular officials before 31 October that year. Some 70,000 Polish
Jews were living in Germany and when they approached their consulates for the validating stamp it was denied them, having the effect of rendering them stateless.1 This prospect was horrendous for the Jews, who without statehood would have been unable to emigrate and also for the Nazis who would therefore not have been able to persuade them to emigrate. As the critical deadline approached, the Gestapo on 27 October began rounding up Polish Jews and the following day they were transported to the Polish frontier and dumped in appalling conditions in no-man's-land on the Polish side of the border. It took several days for the two Governments to reach a compromise, during which time the Polish Vice-Premier, Kwiatkowski took the opportunity to criticize
Australia for not admitting more Polish emigrants.2
Herschel Grynszpan, whose parents were victims of the expulsion, resolved to assassinate the German ambassador to Paris and on 7 November shot and wounded the Third Secretary, vom Rath, who died the following day. In retaliation, an orgy of violence was unleashed against the Jewish Community on the night of 9 November and by the morning some 300 synagogues had been destroyed, 7,500 shops plundered, 91 Jews killed and 25,000 arrested. 3 The value of the broken glass, from which the Kristallnacht took its name was thought to be about 3 million Reichsmarks. 4 The economic consequences of the pogrom were of concern to Goering in his capacity as Plenipotentiary for the
76 Four Year Plan and after conferring with Hitler he announced on 1 2 November that measures "would be taken for the elimination of the Jew from the German economy". These measures were to include the imposition of a billion mark fine on the Jews by the "Order Regarding the Atonement for Jews of German
Citizenship". 5 More importantly, the last foothold Jews had in the German economy was removed by a Decree which excluded them from retail stores; export mail-order firms; from selling goods or services anywhere; from serving as executives for any firms; from being the members of a cooperative and from practising as craftsmen. Finally, a Decree of 3 December provided for the
Aryanization of all remaining Jewish businesses and for the compulsory deposit with the Reich of all Jewish-owned valuables and securities.6
The November pogrom generated a wave of revulsion against Nazi Germany throughout the non-Fascist world. 7 The British Prime Minister, Neville
Chamberlain, expressed his "deep and widespread sympathy for those who are being made to suffer118 and the House of Commons passed a motion condemning the persecution. 9 Kristallnacht and the world reaction were also headline news in
Australia. 1 O The pogrom presentd "a nauseating picture of twentieth century civilization", 11 defying not only the theory of human progress but also of the basic principles of "elementary justice". 12 The Germans were said to have reverted to the "Dark Ages and the Days of Atilla". 1 3 The Australian Worker suggested that they were acting on a "lower ethical plane than the anarchy of the Stone Age" • 14 The furthest regression perceived was that by the Honorary
Secretary of the Legion of Christian Youth who described the Nazi frenzy like
"the animal lust seen in the red glare of an infuriated ape's eye". 15 Both within and from outside Australia pressure was being brought to bear on the
Government to humanise its immigration policy.
77 (b) Domestic Pressures
Despite the campaign of papers like the Sydney Morning Herald and the west Australian for a liberalisataion of Australia's conservative immigration policy, J. McEwen, the Minister for the Interior on 21 September 1938 had reaffirmed the Governments policy of admitting refugees within the "white alien" principles and had declared that it was against official policy to discriminate between aliens from different countries.16
From mid-1937 some refugees had attempted to evade immigration requirements by booking passages to Australia as tourists. The Department of the Interior had engaged in a heated correspondence with the shipping lines insisting that they not accept bookings from Jewish aliens unless they held return tickets and had landing money of at least 50 pounds. 17 Customs officials were instructed not to permit aliens to leave their ships unless t h ey hldle an d 1.ng. perm1.'t s. 18 Government policy was tested by the arrival at
Brisbane on 5 October 19 36 of the Niew Holland, en route to Sydney, and
Melbourne. On board were 27 German, Austrian and Czech "tourists" who did not possess landing permits but who requested permanent residence in Australia.
The Government's refusal to allow the refugees to disembark at Brisbane was given wide press coverage as was their personable appearance and the fact that they each possessed at least 200 pounds landing money.19 By the time the Niew
Holland reached Sydney the Government announced that it had decided to grant the refugees permits for three months with the promise of a review of their case at the end of the period. 20
When the reports of Kristallnacht reached Australia the press campaign for a modification of Australia's policy towards the refugees intensified.
The Sydney Morning Herald maintained that it was incumbent on Australia to bear its share of the international responsibility for the refugee problem21
and the West Australian pointed out that there was little overseas sympathy
78 for Australia's "rather prickly attitude to immigration 11 • 22 Even the
Australian Worker conceded that "Australia must do something" and that Jewish refugees were at least preferable to alien fascist immigrants.23 Amongst the respectable press the Melbourne Argus was virtually the only proponent of the view that the problems created by Kristallnacht should be solved by countries other than Australia.24
(c) International Pressures
Following Kristallnacht, the refugees problem was beginning to impose strains on Anglo-American relations. The United States Ambassador to London,
Joseph Kennedy, expressed the view that the appeasement policy was misconceived and that American public opinion considered that Britain was not doing enough to assist the refugees. 25 At a Cabinet meeting on 16 November, in which those issues were discussed, Prime Minister Chamberlain suggested allowing Jewish refugees to come to Britain as a temporary refuge. 26 In discussing other action, the Dominions Secretary expressed the hope that it might be possible to induce the Dominions to accept more refugees, it being noted that the Australian High Commissioner had felt that his Government might increase admissions to 6,000 or 7,000 refugees a year. 27 Five days later, on
21 November the High Commissioner cabled the Australian Prime Minister suggesting that the Australian Government announce its willingness to take
30,000 refugees over the next three years. 28 Bruce explained,
owing to the wave of indignation consequent upon the treatment of Jews in Germany strong feeling is rapidly developing, particularly in the United Kingdom, United States, Scandanavian Countries, Holland and France that an international effort on an unprecedented scale must be made to find means whereby refugees can be absorbed. Many impracticable schemes are being put forward and impossible suggestions made, especially with regard to the possibility of absorption of great numbers in underdeveloped areas of the Dominions and Australia is particularly mentioned. This movement has already led to an announcement which the United Kingdom Government is making today with respect to the
79 Colonial Empire and we may find ourselves in an embarrassing position if no public statement is made as to our attitude, notwithstanding the fact that the number we are taking at present bears favourable comparison with what is being done by every other country. It occurs to me that it would be a wise move for the Commonwealth Government to make an announcement, as by declaring our policy we would, I am convinced, put an end to the present and growing suspicions as to what Australia might do and would gradually increase, particularly in the United States, the goodwill towards the prestige of Australia, as the country that has made the most practical and sympathetic solution of a problem that is causing the greatest concern to Governments and arousing increasingly popular feeling. 29
The High Commissioner concluded by referring to the fact that while public opinion was running high in Australia
an immediate announcement of a definite policy, even a bold one, would probably be accepted, whereas if the opportunity is allowed to pass even the present number of refugees to whom we are granting permits mad prove an embarrassment to the Government in the future. 3
Bruce did not refer to his discussions with the Dominions Secretary and it is difficult to ascertain whether his cable was actuated by his perception of
Australia's best interests or by the Anglophilic desire to get Britain off the hook. Such was Bruce's immense prestige with the Australian Government that the subsequent Cabinet deliberations were not about whether a new policy should be announced but with the scope of the gesture. A secret memorandum from the Secretary of the Department of the Interior recommended that Bruce's suggestion of 30,000 refugees over three years be halved to 15,000 over that period31 and this was the figure subsequently announced in Parliament by
McEwen on 1 December 1938.32
(d) The Government's Response
For the Australian Government, Kristallnacht had two immediate political consequences: it weakened press support for its policy of appeasement 33 and it precipitated the first debate of any consequence in Federal Parliament on
the refugee question. On 22 November 1938, the day following the Bruce cable,
80 E.J. Holloway the Labor member for Melbourne Ports asked whether the
Australian Government could respond to the "unique and unfortunate" circumstances and "consider whether or not it is justified in taking some small quota of Jewish refugees of a type suitable for absorption in this country". 34 He suggested that the Government "in the interests of all of us, should consider what Australia's attitude shall be towards this international appeal to the humanitarian instincts of the people of democratic countries. 1135 Labor party policy was not necessarily in agreement with
Holloway's sentiments, as an interjector pointed out36 particularly because of its concern with the employment implications of refugee immigration.37 McEwen responded by assuring Holloway "that, as the policy of the Government stands today ••• regard is definitely paid to the needs of these particular people to whom he has referred this evening. I am glad to be able to assure him that, acting directly within the limits of the Government's immigration policy ••• it is possible for us to admit to this country annually some few thousands of the class of people on behalf of whom he has made his plea". 38 The delicacy of the Minister in declining to name the "class of persons" to whom he was referring was not shared by the anti-Semi tic Labour member for Kalgoorlie,
A.E. Green, who interjected that "they will grab your farm if you let them in"• 39 McEwen referred to his "very sad duty" of having to interview people
"who, with tears in their eyes, plead for the admittance of relations at present, perhaps confined in concentration camps where, my interviewers explained to me, they are enduring a living death" but, he explained, the
Government "must be careful not to admit aliens in such numbers as to create alien blocs or troublesome minorities [and] ••• persons of undesirable character, or those not in good health". 40 The latter ea tegory would presumably cover applicants from concentration camps. Finally, McEwen, concluded by reiterating the Government's inability to "admit persons able to
81 engage only in such occupations as would tend to depress Australian living standards". 41
Within two weeks of the Minister's disavowal of Government flexibility on immigration came his 1 December statement that Australia would be taking up to
15,000 refugees over the next three years. He explained that in arriving at this figure the Government was "influenced by the necessity that the existing standards of living should not be disturbed and for reconciling with the interests of refugees, the interests of Australia's present population, and of the people of British race who desire to establish themselves in
Australia". 42 McEwen also explained that permits would be granted these refugees within the general white alien immigration policy, thus they had to have the approved amount of landing money or be guaranteed by some approved individual or organization. Also existing labour conditions were to be taken into consideration together with the special expertise which refugees might have.43 McEwen did not consider that the quota would constitute a very great increase of the rate at which permits had been issued over the preceding six months. 44 He concluded by stating that the Government intended that the aliens would be widely distributed to facilitate their assimilation and that it maintained "a steady policy against facilitating or permitting undue
aggregation of aliens in any particular towns or centres 11 • 45
John Curtin, the leader of the Labor Opposition, expressed general support for the Minister's statement particularly in view of the Government's desire not to allow a deterioration in economic or social standards. 46 He felt confident that the "vigilance exercised by the Government over those people will be sufficient to prevent the formation of racial colonies in
Australia" and he approved of the application of the pre-existing immigration conditions on the new quota.47 The following day Colonel T.W. White, who had been leader of Australia's delegation at the Evian Conference, observed that
82 the policy announced by McEwen was in line with that of the participating nations at that conference who generally approved "of any large-scale scheme of migration as being calculated to arouse racial feeling" and that the
Government was continuing the approved approach of immigration by infiltration. 48 He welcomed the "unhesitating acceptance", by the Leader of the Opposition, "of the principle of the help that Australia is giving to those refugees in their time of trouble", but White expressed the hope that the Opposition "will also adopt a liberal outlook in respect of the admission to Australia of people of our own race 11 • 49
(e) Press Reactions
The Government's announcement of its new immigration policy was well received in Britain where The Times declared that Australia had "made a c h arac t eris· t·ica 11y generous · con t ri · b u t·ion to the refugee problem1150 1· t expressed the hope that other governments would follow Australia's example.51 The London Observer rhapsodised that the Government's decision was a "striking illustration of how noble compassion can circle the globe 11 • 52 The
Melbourne Herald's correspondent reported that there were "scenes of joy" in
London after evening newspapers had publicized the decision.53 The following day thousands of refugees visited Australia House in London, made written or telephone enquiries and had approached Australian businessmen and newspaper offices.54 The German Nacht Ausgabe ridiculed the 15,000 quota claiming that
Australia could absorb at least 30 million settlers, it sneared that the trivial quota was because "the fine gentry of Sydney and the six other large towns only want British settlers". 55
The Australian press supporters of a liberal immigration policy were qualifiedly favourable. The Sydney Morning Herald and the West Australian commended the Government's action as a useful initiative, but expressed the
83 hope that the quota might be enlarged in the future. 56 The Sydney Morning
Herald doubted that the quota met world expectations. 57 The anti-refugee
Bulletin, which following Kristallnacht declared that "Australia cannot be expected to imperil its existence or to receive vast masses of alien refugees for the gratification of German Jews, [and] New York politicians and
editors 11 , 58 expressed its satisfaction with the quota, provided it was rigidly enforced. 59
The labour press which had bitterly attacked the pogrom was placed in the difficult position of having to countenance the arrival of some of its victims. Its reaction to the quota was thus non committal beyond statements that "charity begins at home". 60
The Catholic press had remained largely silent on the refugee question.
Following Kristallnacht the leading Catholic journal, the Advocate, in an examination of "The Peril of Antisemi tism" explained,
that despite "the unending flow of words" about the pogrom The true facts about the Jewish problem have not been faced; and this is an especially serious matter for Australia at the present time, for if the present policy of admitting large numbers of Jewish immigrants is continued, we are likely to be confronted with a rapid increase of anti-Semitism in this Commonwealth.61
It declared
••• The Jews are not simply an international religious body like the Catholics: they are a nation with well marked characteristics, both mental and physical, with their own virtues, vices and talents, and with their peculiar loyalties. It is Israel's misfortune to live as a guest in the midst of the nations; but while her children take their colour from their surroundings - being infinitely adaptable - they remain essentially alien and apart from the Gentiles, and linked both by blood and sympathy with their brethren throughout the world. It is the sense of this difference which has caused friction between the Jew and his hosts throughout the ages, and which has constantly brought tragedy to the Jews through the very gifts and genius by which that power has been attained. The Jew himself though rightly proud of his ancient nation, and the glory and tragedy of its destiny - has been driven to conceal it by fear of persecution: he has veiled himself under alien names and nationalities to be let alone. Unhappily this very secrecy has served only too often
84 to enhance the friction by creating new distrust; for there has been no real absorption - Israel, hidden beneath the disguise, remains Israel.62
The principal writer for the Advocate was D.G.M. Jackson, an appointee of
Archbishop Mannix, drawing many of his ideas from Belloc, Chesterton, and
Bainville who published in two French right-wing and anti-semi tic newspapers
L'Action Francais and Je suis partout.63 Jackson's closeness to Mannix led to the views of the Advocate being imputed to the Archbishop, but following
McEwen's 1 December speech, Mannix announced his approbation for the
Government's policy in the following terms
I want to emphasise that I and all Catholics are in complete sympathy with the Jews in their sufferings and we are anxious that anything that can be done will be done to mitigate the sufferings under which they are now labouring •••• r am glad that the Government of Australia is providing for the reception of some thousands of the Jewish and other refugees within the next two or three years. I hope their reception will be kindly, and I hope they will be absorbed into the Australian economy without dislodging Australians from their work, and without in any way upsetting the economic conditions of the country. I think this can be done, and I hope it will.64
The subsequent editions of the Advocate made no further comment on Jewish immgration.
Although Protestant churchmen took an active role in lending their support to the Jewish refugees the Anglican Church Standard expressed the view that Australia already had enough Jews and that the average Australian was
"far too 'feckless' to hold his own against a designing Hebrew, 1165 and the
Argus published the comment of the Rev. B.H. Dewhurst of the Holy Trinity
Church, Ararat that Jews should not be admitted to Australia because their principles "were diemetrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ" as well as "the traditions of the British people". 60
85 CHAPTER 5 - FOOTNOTES
1. See w. Jedrzejewicz, Diplomat in Berlin 1933-1939: Papers and Memoirs of Josef Lipski, Ambassador of Poland (New York, 1968), p. 464.
2. Sydney Morning Herald, 1 November 1938.
3. See generally R. Thalmann and E. Feinermann, Crystal Night 9-1 O November 1938 (London, 1974).
4. L. Kochan, Pogrom, 10 November 1938 (London, 1957), pp. 279-280. s. LA 107, 722, 000 Current Notes on International Affairs 5 (1938), p. 336.
6. See L. Davidowicz, The War Against the Jews (London, 1975), pp. 139- 140.
7. See A. Sharf, The British Press and Jews Under Nazi Rule (London, 1964), pp. 171-174; Kochan, n. 4 supra, pp. 125-129.
8. 341 H.C. Debs. 58, P• 503.
9. Ibid., PP• 1428-1483.
10. See B.H. Hooper, Australian Reactions to German Persecution of Jews and Refugee Immigration 1933-1947, M.A. Thesis (A.N.U.) 1972, pp. 38-40.
11 • Daily Telegraph 5 December 1938.
12. Argus 17 November 1938.
13. Sydney Morning Herald 12 November 1938.
14. Australian Worker 16 November 1938, quoted in Hooper, n. 10 supra 89.
15. Quoted, Ibid.
16. C.P.D., vol. 157, p. 11 (21 September 1938).
17. See Department of Interior Memorandum, "Alien Tourist Visas - Landing Money Requirements", 12 July 1937, Department of the Interior, Corresp. File Class 3, "Alien Immigration 1936 Cabinet Decisions 1935-1938", Aust. Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 49/3/29456.
18. Sydney Morning Herald 6 October 1938.
19. Sydney Morning Herald, Courier Mail, Argus, Herald, 6 October 1938.
20. Ibid., 8 October 1938.
21. Sydney Morning Herald 18 November 1938.
22. West Australian 23 November 1938.
86 23. Australian Worker 23 November 1938, quoted in Hooper, n. 10 supra, p. 83.
24. Argus 17 November 1938.
25. A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge, Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich 1933-1939 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1973), p. 173.
26. Ibid., p. 176.
27. Ibid.
28. Bruce to Lyons, 21 November 1938, Department of the Interior (11), Correspondence Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration), 1939-45, Refugees (Jewish and Others) General Policy 1938-1944, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2146.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. J.A. Carrodus, Secret Memorandum, Department of the Interior 24 November 1938, Ibid.
32. McEwen, c.P.D., Vol. 158, PP• 2534-2536.
33. See E.M. Andrews, Isolationism and Appeasement in Australia (Canberra, 1970), p. 162.
34. C.P.D., Vol. 158, P• 1850.
35. Ibid.
36. Jennings (U.A.P.), c.P.D., Vol. 1 58, p. 1851.
37. E.g. see Collings, Vol. 159, C.P.D., p. 349, 16 May, 1939.
38. McEwen, c.P.D., Vol. 158, P• 1851.
39. Ibid., See also his comments in C.P.D., Vol. 160, pp. 1965-67, 15 June 1939.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. C.P.D., Vol. 158, p. 2535.
43. Ibid.
44. C.P.D., Vol. 158, P• 2356.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
87 47. Ibid.
48. C.P.D., Vol. 158, p. 2626, 2 December 1938.
49. Ibid., PP• 2626-2627.
50. The Times 2 December 1938.
51. Ibid.
52. Observer 4 December 1938.
53. Herald 2 December 1938.
54. Sydney Morning Herald 5 December 1938.
55. Quoted Ibid.
56. Ibid., 3 December 1938; West Australian 5 December, 1938.
57. Ibid.
58. Bulletin 23 November 1938.
59. Ibid., 7 December 1938.
60. See Hooper, n. 10 supra, p. 90.
61. Advocate, 24 November 1938.
62. Ibid.
63. See Andrews, n. 33 supra, p. 12.
64. Advocate, 8 December 1938.
65. Church Standard 2 December 1938, quoted in Hooper, n. 10 supra, p. 91 •
66. Argus 20 December 1938, quoted Ibid.
88 6. IMMIGRATION POLICY 1939
(a) Administration
In his speech of 1 December 1938, in which he announced the quota of
15,000 refugees over the next three years, the Minister of the Interior did not indicate how many of the quota would be Jews. A memorandum from J.
Carrodus, the Secretary of the Ministry suggested that four-fifths of the annual total of 5,000 should consist of Jews. 1 This proposal was confirmed by
Cabinet on 31 January 1939 to come into effect from the beginning of that
2 year.
By the outbreak of war in September 1939 when Jewish refugee immigration ceased only a fraction of the promised 15,000 immigrants had entered
Australia.3 One of the reasons for this were the very significant bureacratic obstacles which intending migrants had to surmount as well as the fact that the insistence - the decisions on landing permit applications be taken in
Canberra. As George Berger a victim of these obstacles explained, the intending migrant
••• had to prove to the Australian Government in Canberra the possession of a comparatively large amount in foreign currency, possession of which was a criminal offence in Nazi Germany, for which Jews were shot. He had to obtain a certificate as to his blameless character from the Nazi President of Police, in whose eye every Jew had to be considered as a criminal. And he had to wait approximately four months until he received a reply for the Department of the Interior in Canberra whether he would be admitted to Australia or not. Then, in the positive case he had to wait until the Department had issued and forwarded the permit certificate - if, by that time he was still free and alive.4
In Berger's case it took almost eight months to obtain a permit during which time he had fled from Vienna, been imprisoned in Yugoslavia, crossed Italy and had waited in France for three months. 5 During this waiting period applicants in Austria and Germany would be under the constant shadow of internment in
89 concentration camps, in addition to the general abuse and terror inflicted upon them by their countrymen. In the result there was an inevitable discrepancy between landing permits issued and the number actually used and the Department of Interior files carry evidence of successful applicants having been interned or dying in Dachau whilst awaiting confirmation of their app 1ica. t'ions. 6
The absence of Department of Immigration officials in Europe threw the burden of administration upon the already harassed British Consular officers. The Sydney Morning Herald criticised this as totally inadequate in view of the urgency of the situation7 and it declared that the Government's approach merely "created work for extra civil servants" and did not allow "an appreciable number of approved migrants entrance to Australia within reasonable time". 8 The centralized administration of immigration policy was criticized by the Australian High Commissioner in London who suggested that the selection of migrants could be done in Europe with the aid of the British
Consular officers and European Jewish refugee organizations.9 He also suggested that an immigration official be sent to Europe.10 A memorandum of
T.H. Garrett, the Acting Secretary of the Department of the Interior dated 25
January 1939 detailed the implementation of Bruce's suggestion. 11 Garrett recommended that Australia House be a place of application and that it decide whether an applicant was a Jew, Aryan or Non-Aryan Christian. In the case of migrants possessing in excess of 3000 pounds landing money, he recommended that Australia House be allowed to issue permits. In the case of Aryans and
Non-Aryan Christians possessing in excess of 1000 pounds he recommended the issue of permits by Australia House where there was "no doubt as to sui tabi li ty in all respects" and in the case of those ea tegories of persons possessing between 200 pounds and 1000 pounds landing money they could only issue landing permits where satisfied that the immigrant could be absorbed
90 without detriment to Australian workers. All other cases, which in fact represented most of the Jewish four fifths of the total eligible applicants, had to be submitted to Canberra. The Garrett memorandum did not indicate why a distinction was to be drawn between Jewish and non-Jewish applicants. These recommendations were accepted by Cabinet12 which also resolved to send Garrett to London to implement the policy13 and he departed for London by ship on 5
April 1939.14
(b) The Role of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society 1938-1939
McEwen in his December speech commended the important work of the
Australian Jewish Welfare Society (A.J.w.s.) in assisting in the absorption of
Jewish refugees and recommended the establishment of a similar body to handle non-Jewish immigration, for which he offered "some small financial assistance" to enable its establishment.15 Government policy originally favoured the establishment of a single non-denominational society to be responsible for the selection and absorption of all migrants irrespective of race or religion. 16
This had been objected to by the A.J.w.s. because of the delicate position it would have been in as the principal funder of such a society.17 In response to the Minister's invitation the Catholic Continental Migrant Welfare Society was established and to deal with Protestant immigrants, the German Emergency
Relief Council. Following a meeting in the Melbourne Town Hall the Victorian
International Relief Emergency Committee was formed under the auspices of the
League of Nations Union and the Protestant Churches. 18 These associations obviously had nothing to do with Jewish immigration, which was left to the
A.J.w.s. and when the Victorian Association made criticisms of Government 19 policy in its Annual Report, J. Carrodus, the Secretary of the Interior
Department was quick to point out its jurisdictional error.20
As we have already seen the A.J.w.s. had a close relationship with the
91 Department of the Interior in the administration of its Jewish refugee policy. On 6 September 1938 Sir Samuel Cohen, the President of the A.J.w.s. had written to the Department proposing that all applications, or as many as possible, from Jewish refugees for landing permits be submitted to the Society and that it would select the persons to whom the permits should go. It undertook to guarantee that those immigrants would not become a charge on the public purse for at least five years and it offered to pay an amount equivalent to the salary of a Department official who would supervise the activities of the Society and assist in the selection of migrants. 21 This proposal had been rejected by the Minister. On 23 September the A.J.w.s. again requested an increase in the number of landing permits to be allowed to direct the disposition of and, additionally, suggested the formation of the non-denominational refugee association to deal with the immigration of Aryan or Non-Aryan Christian immigration. 2 2 These suggestions were approved by
Cabinet. 23
Following McEwen's 1 December statement the Secretary of the Department of the Interior prepared a memorandum detailing the way in which the annual quota of 5000 migrants should be divided up. 24 Of the 4,000 Jews within this quota he suggested that the A.J.w.s. be allowed to approve migrants with not less than 1000 pounds capital and without guarantors at a rate of 900 per annum. Migrants with no guarantors and less than 1000 pounds capital were to be approved both by the A.J.w.s. and the Department of the Interior and would be admitted at a rate of 1500 per annum. Migrants guaranteed by the A.J.w.s. were to be admitted at a rate of 750 per annum and guaranteed by persons other 25 than the A.J.w.s. at a rate of 600 annually. Finally a special category of
250 persons per annum were recommended to be admitted on the approval of the
Department without consultation with the A.J.w.s. 26 Carrodus recommended that the migrants be dispersed among the States in the following proportions:
92 N.s.w. 33%; Victoria 27%; Queensland 15%; South Australia and Western
Australia 10% and Tasmania 5%. He proposed that at least 50% of the immigration be 25 or under. Where Jewish migrants were not refugees he recommended that landing permits be granted only sparingly to those with less than 1000 pounds. In the case of the 1000 Aryans and Non-Aryan Christians he recommended that they be dealt with on their merits in accordance with the general policy on white alien immigration. These recommendations were passed on to the A.J.w.s. on 19 December 1938 and were acknowledged without comment by the society three days later. 27 Cabinet approved of the recommendations on
31 January 1939.28
With the now rapid deterioration of the position of European Jewry a cable from London-based refugee organizations urged the A.J .w .s. to "redouble already great efforts to save a harrassed and tormented people". 29 A deputation from the society had sought an increase in the number of permits granted direct to it and to reduce the quota of refugees with landing money of between 200 pounds and 1000 pounds because most of this category came to the
Society for assistance and placed a strain on its resources. 30 The Society was informed that its direct quota was to be increased by 250 persons per year and that this number would be deducted from the 200 pound to 1000 pounds quota. 31
(c) Immigration Policy to the outbreak of War
Criticism of the Government's financial requirements began to increase as the unreality of its insistance that the victims of Nazi rapacity finance their own salvation was appreciated in Australia. The Australian Council of
Trade Unions suspected a class bias in the Government's restriction of refugee immigration to "prosperous and middle-class people with capital and ready money, while persecuted trade unionists and workers generally ••• are preventd
93 from coming 11 • 32 The Sydney Morning Herald, similarly argued,
The financial criterion is obviously not all important. Large numbers of the victims of Nazi tyranny have been completely robbed of all their possessions ••• and they will naturally include many individuals of the very type, with outstanding technological or cultural attainments who would enrich the life of this country •••• The plain truth is that the Federal Government has not yet tackled the whole problem of the refugees with that rigour and enthusiasm which it demands. 38
With the approaching spectre of war the administration of Australian immigaration policy was becoming chaotic. Berger mentions the escalation of the landing money requirement to 5000 pounds and that corruption played its part, "the names of the solicitors who would understand how to influence officials [being] ••• highly treasured". 34
In April 1939 the Government decided to increase the number of permits issued to Jews by 1000 to relieve pressure on the Department of Immigration.
This increase was affected by adding 600 to the Form 40 category of refugees with guarantors and 400 to the Form 4 7 ea tegory of those without guarantors but with capital and excellent qualifications.35 A week later the Government was preparing to extend the quota within reasonable limits "because it recognized a moral responsibility in the circumstances and believed that accepting more migrants was in Australia's interests 11 • 36
In the summer of 1939 comments were made in the British Parliament suggesting that Australia recognise the exceptional circumstances of the time. The Lord Bishop of Chichester expressed the hope that the Australian
Government would increase the quota following a decision of the New South
Wales Trades and Labour Council which he considered favoured refugee immigration. 37 In the same debate Lord Noel-Buxton declared that Australia's
"potential activity" in solving the refugee problem was very great. 38 In responding to these comments the Australian Prime Minister, R.G. Menzies, declared that the country's refugee quota was a generous one and that "it was unlikely that any extension would be made to existing arrangements. 1139
94 The outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 put an effective end to refugee immigration. On 14 September, Senator Foll announced that the immigration of refugees from enemy countries would henceforth cease.40 In a further statement of 22 September he announced that refugees who had already received landing permits would still be admitted and that the cases of those temporarily resident in non-enemy countries would be considered on their meri. t s. 41
(d) Public Opinion and the Jewish Refugees
Until the German annexation of Austria in Spring 1938 created the prospect of a substantial Jewish immigration to Australia, public opinion was largely sympathetic toward the plight of the European Jews. It was noted that the Australian press led the world in its outcry against the Nazi boycott of 1
April 1933 and the contemporaneous anti-Jewish legislation.42 In May 1933 a protest meeting was held at the Sydney Town Hall by the Lord Mayor and the
State Premier.43 In the same month the Presbyterian General Assembly passed a resolution of sympathy and appointed a special day of prayer for the Jews.44
Following Kristallnacht, as we have seen, 45 humanitarianism reasserted itself as a reaction to the bestiality of the Nazis. Most of these reactions occurred without much of an appreciation by the Australian community of the nature of the Jewish refugees. The Australian Jewish population in 1933 was only 23,553 persons, some 0.36 per cent of the total Australian population.46 It was derived largely from Britain stock and was well assimilated. 47 With the arrival of the first Jewish refugees traditional xenophobia reasserted itself often in the guise of a concern for living standards and conditions of employment.
In February 1939 the leader of the Federal Labor Opposition, J. Curtin, who had already expressed a concern that the McEwen policy did not lead to any
95 "deterioration of economic or social standards 11 , 48 complained that immigration was "becoming something of a flood and that is not desirable. Industrial standards must be maintained, the amount of landing money must be investigated further and all professional men should be subject to exacting tests before being allowed to practice in Australia". 49 In May, Senator J.S. Collings,
Labor leader in the Senate declared that "if I had my way, not one foreign refugee, man or woman, would be admitted until every good Australian had been taken off the dole or relief work, and given a job under award conditions.50
In the State legislatures similar views were expressed.
In New South Wales, the Premier raised the additional complaint that
Jewish refugees were in danger of becoming a charge on the State51 and the
Sydney department store, David Jones, was reprimanded in State Parliament for allegedly dismissing six Australian employees to assist foreign refugees. 52
In the Victorian Parliament the opposition to the refugees was directed at their alleged readiness to accept employment in sweated industries and of themselves establishing backyard industries where industrial awards were not observed. The principal incident in this "anti-sweating controversy" was a speech by Sir Frank Clark, President of the Victorian Legislative Council to the Malvern Branch of the Australian Women's National League on 8 May 1939.
Clarke fulminated,
Hundreds of weedy F.ast Europeans ••• slinking, rat-faced men under five feet in height and with a chest development of about twenty inches ••• worked in backyard factories in Carl ton and other localities in the North of Melbourne sor two or three shillings a week pocket money and their keep.5
The leading Melbourne dailies gave prominence to the economic practices mentioned by Sir Frank and the Prime Minister promised to have them investigated. 54
Most commentators agreed that Clarke's economic accusations were far too general, as J.C. Dillon, the Member for Essendon in the Victorian Legislative
96 assembly explained, sweating existed "before there was one refugee in
Australia and it had not been greatly aggravated as a result of their arrival". 55 After an inquiry, the Federal Government reported that its investigations had not substantiated Clarke's allegations.56 The Victorian
Premier and the Assistant Minister for Labour issued a joint statement declaring that their investigations had found no evidence of sweating in backyard factories. 57 Clarke's response was that it was not worth his while
"engaging in a dog fight on the issue". 58 The dispute despite its groundlessness assisted in creating a generally hostile environment for the refugees.
The Melbourne Age sought to explain the sweating controversy on the basis of the confusion in the community between two separate categories of European migrant: the refugees from Hitler and the influx of migrants from Southern
Europe.59 Certainly the opponents of refugee immigration disinterred many of the arguments which they had employed against the Southern Europeans. An important difference between the two categories of immigrants were that the
Jewish refugees were predominantly middle-class and hence attracted a peti t bourgeois opposition which was largely absent in the case of the Southern
Europeans, who engendered the hos ti li ty of the labourers with whom they competed.60 Significant opponents of Jewish immigration were small business proprietors agitated at the prospect of a "flood" of competitors who would undercut them. 61
The most successful opponents of refugee immigration were practitioners in the so-called liberal profession of medicine who lobbied both State and
Federal Governments incessantly to protect their trade interests. 62 The
Governments of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania were induced to amend their Medical Acts to prevent the reception of refugee medical practitioners.63 The treatment of all foreign doctors became a national issue
97 due to the shortage of medical practitioners in country areas, but the medical
lobby remained implacably opposed to them.64
As with the Australian opposition to Southern European immigration the opposition to the Jewish refugees assumed a pronounced racist flavour. A
letter to the Medical Journal of Australia warned that the refugee medical practitioners were "possessed of what may be termed F.astern European standards of ethics". 65 The inability of Jews to observe Anglo-Saxon ethical standards was also a theme of Nazi rhetoric. Similarly, it was assumed, in line with
Nazi doctrine, that the arrival of the Jews would mean the monopolization of
the industries into which they moved. Allied to this were the expressed fears
that Jews would move into and take over various choice areas of the cities.
Smith's Weekly noted the "loss" to Jews of Double Bay, 66 the Sun, of Kings
Cross67 and A.E. Green observed with regret that St. Kilda "That classic suburb of Melbourne is almost entirely in the hands of the Jewish race". 68
The final racist argument was, paradoxically, that Jewish immigration would stimulate anti-Semitism. As the Hon. G. Pratten observed in a speech to the
New South Wales Legislative Assembly, "we all have many Jewish friends whose
friendship we value" but that without any intention of suggestion from that
section of the press which was counselling restraint in immigration "a real anti-Semi tic movement is already existent. If this movement is allowed to develop as has been the case in many parts of the world, a revulsion of
feeling will come about ••• directed at ••• Jewry as a whole". 69 On being
requested by the Hon. A.W. McNamara as to why he picked on the Jews70 Pratten
explained that "whilst there may be many good types of Jews among the
arrivals, a percentage of the wrong type have already come". 71 In adducing
further details he declared that "the type of Jew at present pouring into this
country has the markings of racial prejudice strongly upon him. If that was
not so, would the situation have grown to such alarming proportions in
98 European countries". 72 In an impassioned rebuttal of Pratten, the Hon. A.F.
Coates expressed the hope "that we shall never again hear the argument that because a person is a Jew, and for no other reason he should be debarred from entering Australia." 73
Enough has been said to indicate that there was a vociferous opposition to the rception of Jewish refugees. The difficult question to answer is whether this was representative of that amorphous concept, "public opinion".
Certainly there were advocates of more liberal Jewish immigration74 but these were few in number. Most sympathetic commentators agreed that some constraints should be imposed on Jewish immigration. Typical, was the reaction of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties which opposed discrimination in the selection of immigrants, but which was satisfied with the outside limita of 15,000 persons over three years.75 It is difficult to work out whether public opinion followed the Government initiative or whether the Government's immigration policy was an accurate reflection of popular consensus. If the Government is to be condemned, it is for adopting a too pusillanimous attitude at a time when it could have set an example of humanity and compassion.
99 Chapter 6 - Footnotes
1. Carrodus, Memorandum 12 December 1938, Department of the Interior (11), Correspondence Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-45, Refugees (Jewish and Others) General Policy 1938-44, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2146.
2. McEwen, Memorandum to Cabinet, 31 January 1939, Refugees General Policy File, n. 1 supra.
3. See Ch. 8 infra.
4. G. Berger, "Australia and the Refugees", Aust. Qtly. vol. 13, (Dec. 1941), P• 54.
5. G. Berger, "Australia and the Refugees", Aust. Qtly., vol. 13, (Sept., 1941), p. 40, n. 5.
6. See Statistical Returns, Department of the Interior (1), Corresp. Files, Annual Single Number Series, 1901-1931, Australian Jewish Welfare Society, Proposals re Control of Jewish Migration (1938-1939), Aust. Archives Office, CRS A434, Item 38/23138.
7. Sydney Morning Herald, 13 Nov., 1938.
B. Ibid., 19 February, 1939.
9. Bruce to Lyons, 2 Nov., 1938, Refugees General Policy File, n. 33 supra.
10. Bruce to Lyons, 8 Nov. , 19 38, Ibid.
11 • Garrett, Memorandum 25 Jan., 1939, Ibid.
12. Press Release 16 February 1939, Ibid.
13. Lyons to Duncan, Acting High Commissioner, 9 March 1939, Cable, Ibid.
14. Sydney Morning Herald 6 April, 1939.
15. McEwen, C.P.D., Vol. 158, P• 2535.
16. See A.J.w.s. Proposals, n. 38 supra.
17. See P.S. Cohen to Dept. Interior, 3 Nov., 1938, Ibid.
18. Argus, 6 Dec., 1938.
19. V.I.R.E.C., 1st Ann. Rept. Dec. 1938, Department of the Interior (11) Corresp. Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-1950, Victoria International Refugees Emergency Council, 1st Annual Report, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 40/3/3266.
20. Carrodus to Duncan, 2 Sept., 1940, Ibid.
100 21. s. Cohen to McEwen, 23 Sept., 1938, Refugee General Policy File, n. 1 supra.
22. McEwen, Memorandum to Cabinet 6 Oct., 1938, Ibid.
23. Approved 14 Oct., 1938, Ibid.
24. Carrodus, Memorandum, 12 Dec., 1938, Ibid.
25. Form 40 cases.
26. Form 47 cases.
27. Carrodus to A.J.w.s., 19 Dec., 1938; A.J.w.s. to carrodus, 22 Dec., 1938, Refugees General Policy File, n. 13 supra.
28. Department of the Interior, Press Release, 16 Feb., 1939, Ibid.
29. A.J.w.s. Minutes, 3 Feb., 1939, quoted in s.D. Rutland, The Jewish Community in New South Wales 1914-1939, M.A. (Hons.) Thesis, University of Sydney (1978), p. 187.
30. Department of Interior, Notes on Deputation from Jewish Welfare Society, Sydney 27 February, 1939, Refugees General Policy File, n. 1 supra.
31. Carrodus to Lesnie (A.J.w.s.), 16 March, 1939, Ibid.
32. Argus, 9 March 1939.
33. Sydney Morning Herald, 20 June 1939.
34. Berger, n. 4 supra, p. 55.
35. Department of the Interior, Memorandum 21 April 1939, Refugees General Policy File, n. 1 supra.
36. 27 April 1939, quoted in Rutland, n. 29 supra, P• 189.
37. 113 H.L. Deb. 55, P• 1036, 5 July 1939.
38. Ibid., P• 1046.
39. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 July 1939.
40. C.P.D., vol. 161, P• 530.
41. Ibid., P• 1015.
42. J. Parkes, Antisemitism (London, 1963), p. 96.
43. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 May 1933.
44. Ibid., 23 May 1933.
45. See Ch. 5 supra.
1 0 1 46. See c. Price, "Jewish Settlers in Australia 1788-1961", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl. vol. V (1964), Statistical Appendix 1.
47. See P.Y. Medding, From Assimilation to Group Survival (Melbourne, 1968) •
48. C.P.D., vol. 158, p. 2536, 1 December 1938.
49. Argus, 9 February 1939. so. c.P.o., vol. 159, p. 349, 16 May 1939.
51. Stevens to Menzies, 31 July 1939. Department of the Interior (11) 1938-1977, Corresp. Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-1950, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 39/2/2197.
52. N.s.w. Parliamentary Debates, vol. 158, p. 3954, 9 March 1939.
53. Age, 9 May 1939; Argus, 9 May 1939; Daily Telegraph, 9 May 1939.
54. For a detailed examination of the sweating controversy in Victoria, see u. Wiemann, German and Austrian Refugees in Melbourne 1933-1947, M.A., University of Melbourne, 1965, pp. 1868-193.
55. Age, 11 May 1939.
56. Argus, 27 June 1939.
57. Ibid., 30 June 1939.
58. Ibid., 27 June 1939.
59. Age, 12 May 1939.
60. See C.A. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia (Melbourne, 1963); W.D. Borrie, Italians and Germans in Australia (Melbourne, 1954).
61. E.g. Business Brokers Assoc. of N.S .w. to McEwen, 2 Nov., 1938, Department of the Interior ( 11), Corresp. Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-1950. European Refugees, Views of the Public re Admittance of., Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2/4588.
62. See "Migration to Australia of German-Jewish Medical Practitioners", Department of External Affairs (11), 1921-1970, Corresp. Files, Alphabetical Series 1927-1942, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A981; Department of the Interior (11), Corresp. Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-1950, Premier of New South Wales - Problem of Employment of Alien Refugees (including doctors), 1939-1940, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 39/2/2197.
63. See J. Barrett, "Medicine in Australia and Refugees", Aust. Qtly., vol. 12 (Jan, 1940), pp. 14-23.
64. See E. Kunz, The Intruders (Canberra, 1975).
65. Medical Journal of Australia, 16 December 1939.
102 66. Smiths Weekly, 24 June 1939.
67. Sun, 15 January 1939.
68. C.P.D., vol. 160, p. 1967, 15 June 1939.
69. N.s.w. Parliamentary Debates, vol. 156, p. 2511, 8 November 1938.
70. Ibid., P• 2512.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., P• 2513.
74. E.g. B. Fitzpatrick, Refugees - Hitler's Loss our Gain (Melbourne, 1944); L. Fox, Australia and the Jews (Sydney, 1943).
75. See D. Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick (Sydney, 1979), p. 124.
103 7. JEWISH RESETTLEMENT
(a) Introduction
The failure of the participants at the Evian Conference to provide any significant practical assistance for the 200,000 Jewish refugees in Austria demonstrated the inadequacy of attempts to solve the refugee problem within the confines of traditional emigration policies. A solution which was much discussed until the end of the Second World War was the resettlement of Jews in communities ranging in size from those involving hundreds, to new nation- states involving millions. Most of these settlements were proposed for sparsely-populated under-developed areas of the world and a number of schemes involved settlements to be established in Australia.
The term resettlement was extensively used both by the Allies and by Nazi
Germany. Indeed, until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 the Nazi authorities were seriously considering a number of resettlement options. As it turned out the Nazis used the promise of resettlement in the
East as a smoke screen to disguise the true meaning of their "final solution". Indeed, it has been suggested that the resettlement of Jews in
"reservations" was an integral part of the final solution. 1 Despite the abundance of resettlement proposals none of them came to fruition. However, until the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 a resettlement scheme for the Kimberleys district in North-West Australia was still being urged by its proponents • In this chapter the various non-Australian settlement proposals are briefly surveyed before the Kimberleys scheme is examined together with a number of other suggestions for Jewish resettlement in Australia.
104 (b) Madagascar
The idea of the elimination of Jews from Europe by their resettlement outside the continent had been suggested for the first time by Paul de Legarde in 1885 in his Die nachsten Pflichten deutscher Politik. De Legarde suggested the removal of the Jews to the island of Madagascar. In 1926 the idea was revived by Count Chlapowski, the Polish Ambassador to France, in a suggestion to the French Governor-General of Madagascar. 2 The unsuitability of the soil to support colonists was a reason for the discontinuance of this proposal but it was renewed by Poland in autumn 1936, in discussions between Foreign
Minister Beck and French Premier Leon Blum. The French approved the scheme in principle and in May 1937 consented to a three-man Polish commission of inquiry visiting the island. The chairman of the commission, Major Lepecky reported that 5,000 to 7,000 families could be settled in Madagascar, but the two Jewish members of the commission put the figure at 500 families or less.3
The Jewish press was hostile to the plan but Der Sturmer in January 1938 devoted an issue to approval of the Madagascar project.4 Across the Channel the British Foreign Secretary was requested to raise with his French counterpart the question whether France could do anything to permit Jewish emigration to the island.5 Bonnet promised to look into the matter.6
The resettlment of Jews on Madagascar was cryptically mentioned by various Nazis after the Evian Conference. In a speech to the Reichstag on 30
January 19 39, Hitler dee la red that not only had it be proved that none of those condemning him actually wanted to received Jews but that Germany had resolved on resettlement as a solution of its Jewish problem. 7 The following month Alfred Rosenberg proposed that 15 million Jews should be transported to a Jewish reservation in Madagascar or Guiana.8 After the German conquest of
France the Madagascar project became a practicable option for Germany. Also the vast increase in the number of Jews under German control following its
105 conquest of Poland recommended a territorial solution. The Foreign Office was instructed to prepare a detailed plan which when submitted proposed an island ghetto for the Jews of Europe. 9 A parallel plan prepared by Eichmann also suggested a mass deportation of Jews to the island, which he code-named "die
Endlosung. 1 O
The Madagascar plan was abandoned by Hitler following the attack on
Russia. Whether this was because of the availability of other territories for
Jewish resettlement or because the project had never been seriously considered, is difficult to ascertain. In any event the island could never have supported the entirety of Europe's essentially urban Jewish population and the scheme would thus have amounted to a "dry guillotine" analogous to that on Devil's Island to which Dreyfus was sentenced.
(c) Palestine and the British Colonies
(i) Palestine
The designation by the Balfour Declaration in 1917 of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews may be viewed as a British resettlement initiative. The
British were soon to regret their wartime promise when they received Palestine as a Mandate Territory in the peace settlement. Both the Nazi and Polish
Governments were enthusiastic proponents of a Palestinian solution to the
Jewish Problem. In August 1933 the German Government had negotiated the
Haavara (transfer) Agreement with the Jewish Agency for Palestine which enabled emigrants to transfer funds to Palestine by paying exporters in
Germany in marks for the export of merchandise to Palestine and then to obtain the equivalent amount in Palestine currency. 11 This Agreement continued until
November 1938. The Polish Government concluded a similar agreement with the
Jewish Agency in 1937 and, like the Nazi Government, actively supported the
106 Zionist movement. The Polish delegate to the League of Nations declared that
"Palestine is today the only outlet for the Jewish masses in Eastern
Europe ••• The Polish Government therefore supports the proposal to establish a Jewish State in Palestine provided that it is large enough to absorb a large and compact Jewish immigration. 1112
Considerable operational pressure was brought to bear on British to throw
Palestine open to unrestricted Jewish immigration as a means of alleviating the European refugee problem. The appointment of pro-Arab Earl Winterton to heed the British delegation at the Evian Conference was disappointing to
Zionists, who considered him anti-Semitic. 13 Winterton, himself, had little time for the "stubbornly unrealistic approach" of those who suggested that all
Jews who could escape from persectuion should go to Palestine. 14 In his principal speech at Evian, Winterton did not mention Palestine by name but referred generally to overseas territories under British jurisdiction where
"local political conditions hinder or prevent any considerable immigration.1115 This silence on Palestine attracted considerable press criticism, particularly in the United States, and in a speech of explanation, on the last day of the Conference, he explained that "the question of
Palestine stands on a footing of its own" because of the acute problems which had arisen there necessitating a temporary restriction on Jewish immigration to preserve "within reasonable limits the existing balance of the population". 16 Refugee emigration to Palestine had provoked a serious Arab rebellion which British forces had proved unable to contain.17
In May 1939 the British Government announced in a White Paper that between 1939 and 1944 75,000 Jews would be allowed to enter Palestine and that at the end of this period the continuation of immigration would be subject to
Arab consent. 1 8 This quota was to consist of 50,000 immigrants and 25,000 refugees "as a contribution towards the solution of the Jewish refugee
107 problem". 19 The quota of immigrants was to be held at 1 0, 000 per annum over the five years, whereas the 25,000 refugees were to be admitted "as soon as the High Commissioner is satisfied that adequate provision for their maintenance is ensured". 20 The White Paper policy attracted substantial criticism, even from Churchill, but it was maintained throughout the war with a complete insensi ti vi ty to the realities of the Jewish predicament. 21 As a means of diverting attention from the Palestine mandate the British Government explored the possibility of Jewish resettlement in various of its colonial possessions and, as we have seen, brought pressure to bear on its self- governing Dominions to accept more Jewish refugees. Before considering the resettlement proposals concerning the British colonies it is interesting to note Jewish attitudes towards resettlement in Palestine.
Until late 1938 the Jewish establishment was universally opposed to any resettlement proposals and Zionism had not attracted a mass Jewish following. Alfred Hirschenberg, the leader of the Central Verein, the largest
Jewish organisation in Germany, declared that "There is no need at all to enlarge upon the utopia of resettlement.1122 "Germany will remain Germany and no-one can rob us of our homeland and of our fatherland". He declared, "it is our aim to preserve within Germany a German-Jewish community, unbroken financially physically and spiritually". 23 Similarly, of Jabotinsky's warning that the normalization of the Jewish existence would only follow settlement in
Palestine, Sholem Asch declared "What Jabotinsky is now doing in Poland goes beyond all limits. One has to have a heart of stone to be devoid of any feeling for human suffering, to be so brazen as to come to Poland with such proposa 1 s a t sueh a terrl.. ble t1.· me." 24 It was not until after the Nuremberg laws that the Zionists were granted equal representation on the principal
Jewish governing bodies but even they adhered to the principle that the Jewish community be preserved in Germany as a cultural reservoir for emigrants to
108 . 25 Palestine. The Zionists were opposed to any suggestion of a mass resettlement of European Jews. Immigration to Palestine without prior training was considered "a Zionist crime". 26 Candidates to immigration as pioneers were carefully selected, were required to undergo professional and ideological training and to learn Hebrew. Very few persons above the age of
35 were selected. 27 Following the prohibition of the Nuremberg Laws, a
Zionist conference in Berlin proposed a plan for the emigration of 75,000
German Jews over the next five years but cautioned against advocating mass emigration which might have spelt the end of German Jewry. 28 Even after the
Auschluss the National Representation of German Jews (Reichsvertsetung des deutschen Juden) was not prepared to concede the liquidation of the German
Jewish Community and, in a petition submitted to the Evian Conference, the
Reichsvertretung recommended the departure of only "those qualified for emigration11 • 29 Kristallnacht left no doubts as to the ultimate prospects of a
Jewish community in Germany, but by then, to quote Chaim Weizmann' s 1936
Statement, "For six million Jews in Eastern and Central Europe the world is divided between states in which it is not possible for Jews to live and others which prevent them from entering their boundaries.1130
(ii) The African Colonies
At the Evian Conference Earl Winterton disclosed that the British
Government was considering the "admission of a limited number of refugees into certain East African territories". 31 He was authorized to indicate the possibility of small scale settlement in Kenya and that the matter had been raised. with ' the Legislative' ' Counci·1 o f North ern Rh o d esia.' 32 The generality of this statement was criticised by Bishop Bell of Chichester who tabled a motion in the House of Lords calling for a debate on the refugee problem. The
Bishop's view was that Northern Rhodesia could absorb "perhaps 50,000 or
1 09 100,000 settlers.1133 In response to a request from the Inter-Governmental committee established at Evian, the Colonial Office stated that the total number of refugees that could be settled in Kenya was only 150 and that there was little prospect for refugee settlement elsewhere in the Colonial
Empire. 34 In an explanation prompted by a remonstrance from Farl Winterton the Colonial Secretary explained that any resettlement proposals would have to wait until the results of the experimental settlement of 25 families per year in Kenya had been analysed and that the suggestion of refugee settlement in
Northern Rhodesia had aroused great hostility there.35
American pressure, following Kristallnacht, for Britain to take more positive action in assisting the Jews, prompted a Cabinet discussion at which the Colonial Secretary suggested that "Tanganyika might offer something" but that British Guiana was a more hopeful proposition. 36 These views were placed on the public record by a statement of the Prime Minister of 21 November 1938 in answer to a Parliamentary question on the British Government's refugee policy. 37 Following the Prime Minister's statement, the Colonial Office invited the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees, established by the British voluntary refugee organizations, to survey settlement possibilities in
Tanganyika and British Guiana. At this time, the Colonial Office reported that all first 25 settlers bound for Kenya had been imprisoned in German concentration camps and that the Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council had opposed even a proposal for a maximum of 150 refugee settlers.38 The Foreign
Office, concerned to take deflect criticism of British policy on resettlement in Palestine, brought pressure to bear on the Colonial Office to revise its pessimistic estimates for Jewish settlement in the African colonies. The
Colonial Office consequently appointed investigatory Commissions for Northern
Rhodesia and Kenya. Both Commissions discouraged Jewish settlement. The
Report of the Kenya Settlement Committee concluded "We are of the opinion that
1 1 0 the carefully regulated agricultural settlement of a comparatively small number of Jews of nordic type on individual holdings - the number to be governed by the absorptive capacity of the Colony - might be an advantage to
Kenya"• 39 On 20 April 1939 the Kenya Legislature passed a bill requiring refugees to pay a bond of 500 pounds40 and in late June the Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland Commissions Reports were laid before the Emigration Sub-
Committee of the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees. The Sub-Committee concluded from them that the capital cost of resettlement schemes in those countries precluded their implementation. 41 At this stage proposals for a
Jewish National Home in British Guiana diverted attention from depressing
African prospects.
As British enthusiasm burgeoned for resettlement schemes in the Western
Hemisphere, the United States became reciprocally enthusiastic about Jewish resettlement in Britain's African colonies. The most grandiose of these
American plans was the so-called "Big Idea" which proposed the raising of $300 million among Jewish contributors to establish a new republic which would be carved out of sections of Kenya, Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia. 42 In the new republic, which would be under British control, it was envisaged to settle
"ten million of the strongest and most courageous people" but the scheme was rejected out of hand by the Colonial Office.43
(iii) British Guiana
In Prime Minister Chamberlain's speech of 21 November 1938 the possibility of large-scale Jewish settlement in British Guiana was mentioned for the first time.44 The area had previously been investigated for settlement in a 1927 British survey, which had concluded that owing to the nearness of the equator, the lack of markets and means of communication "any money which was spent in this country for this purpose would be better spent
1 1 1 elsewhere". 45 A more recent scheme by the League of Nations to settle 20,000
Assyrians in that country had been a failure. The technical feasibility of
Jewish resettlement in British Guiana was the subject of correspondence in the
Times and a letter of 16 December 1938 raised the pertinent question "why think of British Guiana when there are millions of acres in Canada and
Australia crying out for settlers. 1146
The British Jewish organizations, appreciating that large investment would be required to develop the territory approached President Roosevelt's
Advisory Committee on Political Refugees for assistance. 4 7 The Americans sought confirmation that the British Government contemplated the settlement of refugees in British Guiana "in substantial numbers, as rapidly as the physical and financial difficulties can be overcome 11 • 48 A joint Anglo-American
Commission departed for British Guiana in February 1939 with a mandate to report to the President's Advisory Committee on the feasibility of large-scale colonisation in the territory. Th e Repor t o f t h e Comm1.ss1.on, . . 49 wh. 1.c h was published in May 19 39, dee la red that the Territory "would not be considered suitable for immediate large-scale settlement". It recommended an initial
"trial settlement" of 3,000 to 5,000 young persons to see whether Europeans could adjust to the climate of the Colony. The approximate cost of establishing the trial settlement was put at $3 million.
The Foreign Office approved of the Commission's report which it saw as offering an example to Britain to demonstrate its "sincerity" on the question of Jewish resettlement, but, more importantly, it saw the promise of settlement in British Guiana as a means to divert criticism from the forthcoming White Paper on Palestine. 50 On 12 May 1939 the Prime Minister announced the Government's approbation for the report, on the assumption that
the "experimental settlement will be financed from private sources" and that
if the prospects of development were good "and the capital forthcoming is
1 1 2 adequate for the purposes of large-scale settlement". He also promised that the Government would meet the cost of arterial communications from the coast to the interior.51 The Prime Minister expressed hope that arrangements could be made to begin settlement in the autumn of 1939.52 The Prime Minister's statement did not divert the very substantial criticism of the White Paper on
Palestine and the outrage of American Jews was not easy to transmute into enthusiasm at the substitution of "the wilds of British Guiana which at best, could accommodate 5,000 Jews in the next few years at considerable cost and sacrifice" for the haven of Palestine. 53 Discussions on the proposed experimental settlement dragged on until the outbreak of war.
At a meeting of the Inter Governmental Committee on Refugees of 13 June
1939 Earl Winterton lost his temper at the suggestion of "mass settlement" for
British Guiana and was reported by the American representative as declaring
that it was not the intention of the British Government to permit 'mass settlement' in Guiana or anything resembling the situation in Palestine. He said at most it would agree to the establishment of a group of 50 here and 50 there interspersed throughout the territory and not forming a homogeneous mass of Jews. He said that the idea which seemed to be held in American circles that something akin to a Jewish state could be set up anywhere in the world was Utopian in the extreme, impossible of fulfillment, and would be opposed by the British Government.54
(d) American Proposals
The failure of the Evian Conference, which had been convened on President
Roosevelt's initiative, to provide any practical suggestions for the solution of the refugee problem, led the President to seek alternative solutions. The
President's Evian invitation indicated a predisposition for resettlement as it assured participants that they would not be expected to consider altering their existing immigration laws. The President's Advisory Committee on
Political Refugees was instructed to collect files on the most promising
1 1 3 resettlement possibilities. By December 1938 it had screened 50 resettlement suggestions and was daily receiving more than its staff could handle.55 A special research project established in 1940 to research possible resettlement havens had produced 666 suggestions by 1945. 56 Among the more exotic suggestions were, the recent anti-Semitic, Henry Ford's offer to sell part of his Fordlandia plantation in Brazil to the Jews and the similarly disposed
William Randolph Hearst' s suggestion that the Belgian Congo be sold to the
Jews.
The American belief in the efficacy of resettlement was grounded in the history of "God's own Country" created from the seventeenth century resettlement of victims from religious persecution in Europe. The resettlement of Jews in the United States itself was considered impossible given the immigration laws, but Alaska and the Philippines presented real possibilities of circumventing this obstacle.
Alaska possessed 100,000 square miles of unused arable lands and was inhabited by only 30,000 white settlers. In 1935 the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration had resettled some 170 families from drought stricken areas in
Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in the Matanuska Valley. In February 1940, the Alaska Development Bill was introduced into Congress by Senator King and
Representative Havenner, proposing the development of the territory by
American and immigrant labour. The King-Havenner Bill was opposed by a broad range of conservative interests and Roosevelt sensing the political dangers in the proposal declined the Administration's support for the Bill, which was never reported out of committee.57
A more promising American resettlement proposal was that to establish a colony on Mindanao in the Philippines. In 1937 it was estimated that about
14,000 lived on the island and the Philippine authorities were concerned to establish a settlement of Caucasian refugees to counteract the Japanese
11 4 threat.58 In August 1938 the State Department inquired of the American commissioner of the Islands whether 200 refugee families could be settled in the Philippines. His reply was that ten times that number could be absorbed with a possible 5,000 more families. 59 The President's Advisory Committee organized a survey commission but its report in October 1939 was less optimistic. However, a resettlement site was selected on the Budekon plateau in Mindanao. After delays, the project commenced in spring 1941 in time for the Japanese occupation of the islands.
At the time of the Evian Conference, the Ad ministration's primary hopes for resettlement were that the Latin American Republic would be prepared to admit Jewish refugees. At Evian, the Republics were almost universally opposed to this immigration, a posture repeated at the Lima Conference in
December 1938. The only exception was Santa Domingo, where General Trujillo promised that 100,000 refugees could be admitted, "of any race or religious belief, provided they are of Caucasian races, namely white". 60 A survey commission reported favourably, selecting Sousa, part of Trujillo's personal estate. Although a party of 500 settlers arrived on the island, American enthusiasm for the Dominican scheme was muted by its concern for the political stability of the Carribbean republic61 and the scheme was abandoned.
The final major American resettlement proposal was for the establishment of a "Supplemental Jewish Homeland" in Portugese Angola. The American perception that Britain was totally hostile to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in its African colonies precipated a shift to the possibility of such a homeland being established in Angola.62 Myron c. Taylor, America's represen ta ti ve on the Inter-Governmental Committee undertook to explore with
Earl Winterton the possibility of Britain investigating the matter with its oldest ally. 63 Lord Halifax, Britain's Ambassador in Washington refused to take the matter up with Lisbon, primarily because of Britain's reluctance to
1 1 5 ask the Portugese to do more than Britain was prepared to do. 64 On 15 April
1939, Portugal announced that it was opposed to the cession of any part of
Angola for Jewish colonisation.65
(e) The Kimberleys Scheme
In 1905 Israel Zangwill established the Jewish Territorial Organization to found "an autonomous colony under British auspices for the persecuted Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe". 66 The Territorial movement was influential while the Ottomans still controlled Palestine but with the destruction of the
Ottoman Empire in the First World War and the Balfour Declaration, Zionism replaced Terri torialism in influence. In 1935, however, territorialism was sought to be revived by the creation of the Freeland League for Jewish
Territorial Organization to replace Zangwill 's organization. Following the
Evian Conference the Freeland League commenced a study of possible areas under the British flag for a large-scale settlement of Jewish refugees. 67 It decided that the East Kimberley region of North-West Australia offered the greatest possibilities.
The Freeland League proposed a Jewish refugee settlement of some 50,000 refugees on seven million acres of land in the East Kimberleys held by a grazing partnership which offered the land for sale at 180,000 pounds sterling. 68 It was proposed that some five to six hundred pioneers would construct roads, housing, irrigation works and a power station and the balance of the colonists would arrive to establish both primary and secondary
1.n. d ustr1.es.. 69 The League proposed to send its Secretary Dr. I. Steinberg to
Australia to investigate the area and to mobilise Australian support. 70 It approached s .M. Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner in London, who felt
that the project had possibilities.71 Despite the obvious economic advantages
1 1 6 in developing the Kimberleys, the Government declared that it did not desire an autonomous Jewish state within Australia and was disposed to refuse
Steinberg a visa.72 Steinberg's political antecedents seemed dubious. At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution he had been a prominent member of the Social
Revolutionary Party in Russia. From December 1917 until March 1918 he was
Minister for Justice when, according to John Curtin, "he signed more death warrants than any other man in Russia". 73 In 1919 Steinberg had been imprisoned when the Social Revolutionaries had been suppressed and he had found his way to London, birthplace of the Bolshevik Party. Bruce informed the Department of the Interior that Steinberg had been "politically quiet for some years and was regarded by the authorities as unexceptional" 7 4 and he was granted a visa for three months.
Within a few days of his arrival on 23 May 1939, Steinberg discussed the scheme with J.C. Willcock the Labor Premier of Western Australia, who encouraged him to proceed with an investigation.75 After visiting the
Kimberley region, Steinberg submitted an official proposal to Willcock. In a letter dated 25 August 1939 Willcock replied indicating how Steinberg should proceed with the proposal and suggested
Your next step appears to make possible your desire to approach the Commonwealth Government and ascertain their attitude to the project and to the introduction of refugees for the purpose of forming a settlement. To this end, therefore, we desire to advise that we have no objection to your making the necessary approach to the Commonwealth Government in Canberra.76
The Premier stipulated a number of conditions which the West Australian
Government would seek to impose, which included its representation at the recruitment office for the scheme and that all expenses including the construction of roads, schools, hospitals and other public utilities would be met by the Freeland League. 77
The west Australian commended the Government's favourable attitude,
1 1 7 claiming that the introduction of men and money under reasonable Government supervision could "produce nothing but economic benefit to the whole of
Australia". 78 The West Australian published a series of articles by noted state identities urging support for the scheme. Henrietta Drake-Brockman, novelist and playwright praised the humanitarian aspects of the project. 79
Professor Walter Murdoch declared that "Israel's extremity is Australia's opportunity" and stressed the economic advantages to the State.80 William
Hatfield indicated the strategic advantages of a populated North81 and R.H.
Underwood, former Legislative Assembly member for Pilbara, predicted the development of a great iron and steel industry in the North.82
A motion supporting the proposal was unanimously passed by the Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Perth on 17 August 1939. 83 It was supported by a resolution of the Chamber of Commerce of Perth and an appeal was published by
"a group of representative citizens of Perth 11 • 84 In the West Australian
Parliament, F.J. Wise, the Minister for Lands detailed the State Government's approbation for the project.85
After receiving a favourable response in Western Australia, Steinberg travelled to the Eastern States to mobilize support. In Melbourne and Sydney he organised appeals signed by the leading distinguished citizens urging the support of Australian Government and people for the Kimberleys settlement.
The Melbourne appeal declared,
The settlement of the empty north of Australia is both a necessity and a duty for our people. The Jewish communities in Europe, bereft of hope and prospects, are more likely to provide the determination and optimism required - and on a democratic basis - than perhaps any other section of the human race. For them, more than anyone, the need is combined with the desire to make of these unused areas a homeland which will form, politically and socially, a worthy and integral part of the Commonwealth. Sooner or later, the work of settling the north must be begun. We cannot think of a better time, more promising conditions, more intelligent or valuable settlers, or a greatS~ moral opportunity than is offered to Australia at this time.
1 1 8 The remoteness of the Kimberleys meant that labour interests would not be unfavourably disposed towards the scheme87 and following resolutions of the various State Trades and Labour Councils the Australian Council of Trade
Unions declared its approval, "provided the proposed settlers undertake that they will not spread themselves out of the settlement over Australia generally". 88 The Sydney Morning Herald was the most active supporter of the proposal in the F.a.stern States, declaring it to be an "excellent opportunity to develop the economic resources of the vast, untenanted lands of the north west", as well as strengthening "the strategical position of the country". 89
In addition to the distinguished persons prepared to put their names to his published appeal, Steinberg received considerable assistance from Sir Thomas
Bavin, a Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Bishop Pilcher,
Anglican Bishop Coadjutor, and Professor G.L. Wood, Associate Professor of
Commerce at the University of Melbourne.90
The leaders of the Australian Jewish population, however, showed as little enthusiasm for the Kimberleys proposal as they did for mass refugee immigration generally. The Australian Jewish Welfare Society had written to the Department of the Interior on 6 March 1939 declaring that it had "no interest in the promotion of large "block" settlements inhabited by large numbers of foreign settlers". 91 The Hebrew Standard had also declared "there
cannot be any group settlement of foreigners in Australia 11 • 92 Aside from Jews opposed to the scheme, because of their concerns with its possible encouragement of anti-Semitism, the Australian Zionists declared that a Jewish settlement in the Kimberleys was incompatible with Zionist aspirations. 93
Notwithstanding this opposition an Australian Jewish Kimberleys Society was formed and one of its members wrote a pamphlet A Jewish Settlement in
Australia94 to publicize the scheme among Jews. Dissatisfied with the lack of support the Kimberleys scheme was receiving from the local Jewish press,
11 9 Steinberg established a monthly Journal the Australian Jewish Forum which also sought to make Australian Jews aware of the Jewish culture of Central and
Eastern Europe. 95 The Forum expostulated that "the least to be expected from
Australian Jews is that they match the sincere and disinterested idealism of a
Murdoch with a show of active and sympathetic interest".96
A lively debate developed in the press on the possibilities and obstacles of Northern development and the opponents of all alien immigration declared their opposition to this scheme.97 The Sun declared that Italian settlement in QUeensland was "a warning, and an excellent one, against the entertaining of any project of Jewish colonization". 98
In August 1940 Steinberg considered it was propitious to submit a formal memorandum to the Commonwealth Government detailing the Freeland League's proposal. This memorandum which was submitted to Prime Minister R.G. Menzies proposed, among other things,
18. The process of upbuilding of the settlement is envisaged as developing in two distinct stages, of which the first is the pioneering stage. It would embrace the whole period necessary to lay down the foundations of the new economy and community, which it is hoped would not exceed five years. At the conclusion of this period and the full incorporation of the new region into the framework of the State and Commonwealth, the second stage of colonization on a large scale would commence.
19. The organization of the work connected with the pioneering stage would be concentrated in the hands of the Freeland League or a special Colonizing Body set up by it for this purpose and acting under the supervision of the Government. The Freeland League would be responsible for the selection, in co-operation with representatives of the Australian Government, of the pioneers, and for their transport to the area in view, for the elaboration of the economic, cultural and social plans, for the managing of the land and other public utilities.
20. The financing of the settlement in its pioneering stage will be provided by a special Jewish financial institution of the Freeland League with headquarters in London, so that there would be no charge on the Australian people. The financial ins ti tu tion bui 1 t up with the support of the Jewish people throughout the world would care for the settling of the pioneers, for their maintenance in the initial stage as well
120 as for the construction of the substantial public works necessary for opening up the country.
25. As the proposed settlement is not intended to become a political entity, the policy of the Freeland League would direct its economic and social development towards identification with the national life of Australia. English as the official language of the community, as well as Australian law and administration, would be introduced from the beginning. The settlers would, in due course, become Australian citizens, and their settlement be organically incorporated into the economic and political structure of Australia. It is, of course, understood that a Jewish community would be at liberty to preserve and develop its own religious and spiritual life in consonance with its heritage. Pioneers united by a common past and traditions, by common sufferings and hopes, develop courage and enthusiasm beyond their numerical strength.99
Also the Memorandum acknowledged that the governmental administration of the settlement would be organized within the framework of State and Federal laws that its economy would be planned to develop pastoral, agricultural and secondary production following the establishment of an economic infrastructure.100
In response to questions in Parliament on the possibility of a Jewish refugee settlement in the Kimberleys, Senator H.S. Foll, Minister for the
Interior, had twice stated that the Government's policy was that immigrants must assimilate into the general population and that it opposed the congregation of aliens in groups. 101 Five months following the submission of his Memorandum, Steinberg was informed by Senator Foll that "The Government felt ••• the present was not an appropriate time to give consideration to the matter. It was decided, therefore, to defer consideration of the
proposal 11 • 102 On 11 July 1941, another five months later the Premier of
Western Australia urged the Federal Government to make a decision on the project.103 No decision had been made by the time the Menzies Government fell in October 1941.
Following the election of the Labor Government of John Curtin, the acting
Secretary of the A.C.T.U. wrote to Curtin to convey to him "the A.C.T.U. 's
1 2 1 approval of the proposed Jewish settlement in the Kimberleys". 1 o4 This was followed by a supplementary memorandum from Steinberg to the new Government presented on 26 November 1941 • In December 1941, Japan declared war on the
Allies and Steinberg recognised that a decision from the Government would be unrea 11s. t'1c. 105
Interest in the Kimberleys project revived at the end of 1942 following revelation of the Nazi extermination programme. On 10 March the heads of the
Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches in Australia wrote to the Prime
Minister urging "a decision from the Government in answer to the request that a considerable area be set apart as soon as circumstances permit for refugee development." 1 06 The A.C.T.U. reaffirmed its support for the scheme107 and
Steinberg wrote to Curtin urging him to take a personal initiative in h asten1ng• h 1s• Go vernmen t I s d ec1s1on. • • 1 08 Curtin replied on 28 October 1943 that a committee was to be set up to examine the whole question of immigration into Australia "particularly having regard to the conditions that will exist
11 109 at the conclusion of hostilities • The subsequently appointed inter- departmental committee decided against the Kimberleys scheme110 and on 15 July
1944 Curtin wrote to Steinberg informing him that,
After mature consideration of all the circumstances which had to be taken into account, however, the Government is unable to see its way to depart from the long-established policy in regard to alien settlement in Australia, and therefore cannot entertain the proposal for a group settle~1yt of the exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League.
On 11 December 1944 the A.C.T.U. voted to ask the Government to withdraw its opposition to the project and church leaders affirmed their support for it.112 At the First United Nations conference in San Francisco in May 1945,
Steinberg raised the project with F.M. Forde, the Deputy Prime Minister, who led the Australian delegation. In a letter dated 31 May 1945 Forde assured
Steinberg "that I will discuss this matter fully and favourably with my colleague, the Prime Minister, as well as the Minister for the Interior in
122 Canberra as soon as I arrive in Australia". 113 Two months later CUrtin died and Forde succeeded him as Prime Minister for seven days. During that short time, Forde, on 10 July 1945, wrote to Steinberg that after "further careful consideration ••• it has been decided ••• to adhere to the decision previously conveyed to you". 114 Following J.B. Chifley's election as Prime Minister,
Steinberg wrote to him in April 1946 reiterating the Kimberley's proposal.
Chifley's reply of July 1946 reiterated the Government's unwillingness to vary its decision.115
Steinberg continued agitating for the Kimberleys scheme but with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 it became completely unrealistic. The pressure under which the Labor Government had been placed by the Kimberleys campaign was certainly eliminated by the creation of Israel. The prominent role played by the Party's former leader, H.V. Evatt, as Secretary General of the United Nations in 1948, has been attributed to the highest humanitarian motives and it would be small-minded of one to allude to the domestic
Australian implications of that event.
Chifley' s letter of rejection had been drafted with the assistance of
Arthur Calwell, the first Australian Minister for Immigration. Calwell later declared that "I think we should all be happy that the Freeland scheme never got off the ground", because of its alleged inferiority to the immigration programme he subsequently developed. 116 Calwell, in his autobiography published in 1978, concluded his criticism of the Kimberleys scheme and its supporters with the not irrelevant observation that it would have involved the displacement of the Aborigines in the area. This observation may well have been influenced by the Aboriginal land rights era in which the autobiography was written. Certainly neither Calwell nor any other opponent of the
Kimberleys scheme in the 1940s ever referred to the rights of Aborigines. It was only following a referendum in 1967 that Aborigines were extended full
123 civil rights, only two years after the year in which the words "White
Australia" were removed from the Labor Party platform. This removal did not deter Calwell' s famous remark in 1972 that "no red-blooded Australian wanted to see a chocolate-coloured Australia in the 1980s", 117 a view which he affirmed in his autobiography.118 A hint of the real reasons for Calwell and the Labor Party's opposition to the Kimberleys scheme is contained in
Calwell's repetition of the old anti-Semitic canard that the Russian
Revolution was a Jewish Revolution. "In the Russian Foreign Office", he explained, "all the posts vacated, right down to the charwoman, were taken by
Jewish men and women". 119 The assumption of the political unreliability of a people whose "loyalty was to Zion, which is Israel, and not the Australian
Kimberleys"120 may well have animated the bipartisan opposition to Jewish refugee immigration particularly from Eastern Europe. The selection of a former member of Lenin' s Cabinet as an emissary for the Kimberleys scheme would, in those circumstances, have been a fatal error.
(f) Other Australian Schemes
The first suggestion for a Jewish settlement in Northern Australia had been made by the Immigration League of Australia in 1906 consequent upon the
Russian pogroms of that year. 121 Zangwill's Jewish Territorial Organization did not consider the suggestion practicable.122 Following the appointment of
Hitler as Chancellor, with the attendant persecution of the Jews in Germany,
Sir George Pearce, the Australian Minister for Defence, was reported as being
favourable to a British suggestion that a large Jewish colony should be
established "in the underdeveloped territory of Northern Australia 11 • 123
Specific proposals for Northern settlements were made after the failure
of the Evian Conference. The member for the Northern Territory suggested a
124 settlement near the Katherine River124 and a prominent grazier, J.B. Cramsie, suggested a settlement of 25,000 Jewish families on Melville Island, north of . 125 Darwin. The Cramsie proposal attracted almost unanimous criticism. The
Minister for the Interior, J. McEwan, declared that it was dangerous "to give the impression that the Northern parts of Australia are capable of carrying a tremendous population". 1 26 Novelist, Xavier Herbert, claimed that Melville
Island was totally unsuitable for a settlement, being "almost a desert in the dry season and water-logged during the seasonal rains". 127 Professor Norman
Bentwich, the former Assistant to the League of Nations High Commissioner for
German Refugees, in a speech to the Millions Club, where Cramsie's suggestion had been made, declared that "You cannot have mass settlements in underdeveloped parts in an emergency ••• while these places have great possibilities, the real and urgent problem is that of finding homes now for the thousands of people who are being turned out of their country by this . .,128 ruthl ess persecu t ion. Hans Klein, a representative of the Jewish colonization organization, Encol, described the proposed site as "an island of mosquitoes and snakes" and declared his preference "to be in a Jewish cemetery in Vienna" • 1 29
Virtually all the resettlement schemes proposed for the Jews entailed settlements in the hostile tropics but two Australian proposals suggested settlements in the temperate latitudes. In late 1940, Steinberg had informal discussions with the Premier of Tasmania, R. Cosgrove, on the possibility of a
Jewish settlement in that State.13° Following a visit to Tasmania in January
1941, Steinberg proposed a colony for the unpopulated South-West of the State to be established along the same lines as the Freeland League's proposal for the Kimberleys. 131 The Premier, in a letter of 21 January 1941, recorded that
"my Government accepts in principle ••• the proposal that a settlement of Jewish migrants should be established in Tasmania". 132 Without Federal Government
125 support the scheme foundered and Steinberg, himself, was unwilling to divert public attention from the Kimberleys which "had become symbolic of the idea of
Jewish colonization in Australia generally11 • 133
Shortly after the Anschluss, R.L. Butler, the Premier of South Australia, was approached by representatives of a group of Austrian Jewish ex-soldiers who presented detailed plans for a colony of 500 Jewish refugees in that
State.134 In response to the Premier's enquiry as to the Commonwealth
Government's attitude towards the proposal, Prime Minister Lyons recited the familiar formula that "the Commonwealth Government does not favour the establishment of foreign group settlements in Australia".135 In August 1938,
Butler's administration was replaced by that of T. Playford, and in a letter of 24 November 1938 he announced that "In this State, the Government is faced with the problems of shifting certain farmers and their families from dry and marginal areas to assured rainfall areas and under these conditions it is regretted that the Government cannot make the land available for Jewish
refugees 11 • 136 The hostility of the Federal Government to any resettlement proposals made this declaration academic.
126 Chapter 7 - Footnotes
1. See P. Friedman, "The Lublin Reservation and the Madagascar Plan" YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science, vol. VIII (1953), pp. 151-177.
2. See E. Hevesi, "Hitler's Plan for Madagascar", Contemporary Jewish Record, vol. IV, (August, 1941), p. 392.
3. Ibid., 386.
4. See L. Yahil, "Madagascar - Phantom of a Solution for the Jewish QUestion" in B. Vago and G.L. Masse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (Jerusalem, 1974), p. 320.
5. Ibid., P• 321.
6. Ibid., P• 322.
7. Ibid., P• 323.
8. Volkischer Beobachter, 8 February 1939, quoted in G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London, 1968), P• 23.
9. See for details, C.R. Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office (London, 1978), pp. 35-43.
10. Yahil, n. 4 supra, p. 326.
11. See D. Yisraeli, "The Third Reich and the Transfer Agreement", Journal of Contemp. Hist., vol. VI (1971), pp. 129-131.
12. 23 September 1937 quoted in H.M. Rabinowitz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry. A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-War Years (New York, 1965), p. 189.
13. See Manchester Guardian 27 June 1938.
14. Earl Winterton, Orders of the Day (London, 1973), p. 238.
1 5. Proceedings of the In tergovernmen ta 1 Commit tee, Evian July 6th to 15th 1938, Verbatim Record of the Plenaray Meetings of the Committee. Resolutions and Reports (London, 1938), p. 15.
16. Ibid., P• 42.
17. See Royal Institute of International Affairs, Great Britain and Palestine 1915-1945 (London, 1946), pp. 109-123.
18. Palestine: A Statement of Policy, May 1939, Cmnd. 6019 (May, 1939).
19. Ibid., para. 14(1)(a).
20. Ibid.
127 21. See N. Katzburg, "British Policy on Immigration to Palestine During world War II", in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, Proceedings of the second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, April 1974, (Jerusalem, 1977), PP• 183-203.
22. Quoted in A. Margeliot, "The Problem of the Rescue of German Jewry During the Years 1933-1939", Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, n. 21 supra, p. 249.
23. Quoted in L.S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-45 (London, 1975), P• 220.
24. Quoted in Rabinowicz, n. 12 supra, p. 190.
25. See Dawidowicz, n. 23 supra, eh. 9.
26. See Margeliot, n. 22 supra, p. 249.
27. Ibid., 253-254.
28. See A. Margeliot, "The Reaction of the Jewish Public in Germany to the Nuremburg Laws", Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII, (1977), p. 93.
29. See s. Adler-Rudel, "The Evian Conference on the Refugee Question", Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. XIII (1968), App. I, pp. 262 ff.
30. See "Statement made before the Palestine Royal Commission in Jerusalem on 25 November 1936" in M.W. Weisgal, ed. Chaim Weizmann, Statesmanm, Scientist, Builder of the Jewish Commonwealth (New York, 1944), p. 304.
31. See A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge, Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich 1933-1939 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), p. 117.
32. Ibid., P• 118.
33. See H.L. Deb., vol. 110, pp. 1206-1249, 27 July 1938.
34. See Sherman, n. 31 supra, P• 135.
35. Ibid., P• 163.
36. Ibid., P• 174.
37. H.C. Deb., vol. 341, PP• 1313-1317.
38. See Sherman, n. 31 supra, P• 188.
39. Quoted ibid., p. 192.
40. See ibid., p. 253.
41. Ibid.
128 42. See H. Feingold, "Roosevelt and the Resettlement Question" in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, Proceedings of the Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, April 1974 (Jerusalem, 1977), p. 139.
43. Ibid., P• 140.
44. Seen. 36 supra.
45. Memorandum on British Immigration to British Guiana, 12 December 1938 quoted in Feingold, n. 42 supra, p. 157.
46. Times, 16 December 1938.
47. Rublee to Hull, 9 December 1938, Foreign Relations of the United States 1938, vol. I, P• 865.
48. Welles to Rublee, 14 December 1938, ibid., p. 870.
49. Report of the British Guiana Refugee Commission to the Advisory Committee on Political Refugees appointed by the President of the United States of America, Cmnd. 6014 (London, 1939).
SO. See Sherman, n. 31 supra, p. 233.
51. H.C. Deb., vol. 347, PP• 862-864.
52. Ibid., P• 864.
53. J. Tenenbaum, quoted in Feingold, n. 42 supra, P• 161.
54. Quoted Sherman, n. 31 supra, PP• 253-254.
55. See H. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue, The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938-1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970), P• 93. 56. See D.S. Wyman, ---"-'=------....._Paper Walls: America and the Refugee______Crisis 1938-_ 1941 (Amherst, 1968), p. 59.
57. See Feingold, n. 55 supra, PP• 94-97.
58. See Feingold, n. 42 supra, PP• 152-153.
59. Ibid., P• 153.
60. Quoted, ibid., P• 165.
61. See Hall to Rublee, 18 January 1939, Foreign Relations of the United States 1939, vol. II, PP• 70-71.
62. E.g. see Welles to Roosevelt, 12 January 1939, ibid., P• 65.
63. Taylor to Hull, 25 January 1939, ibid., P• 74.
64. See Sherman, n. 31 supra, PP• 206-207.
129 65. See Moffatt, Memorandum 15 April 1939, Foreign Relations of the United States 1939, vol. II, pp. 101-102.
66. Hebrew Standard, 21 September 1906.
67. See J. Steinberg, "A Jewish Settlement in the Kimberleys" Aust. -Qtly. vol. 12 (March 1940), p. 25. 68. See G.C. Bolton, A Survey of the Kimberley Pastoral Industry from 1885 to the Present, M.A. Thesis (University of Western Australia), 1953, p. 283.
69. See "Proposed Settlement, East Kimberley District", Settlement of Jews in Kimberley District 1939-1944, 23 May 1938, Department of the Interior ( 11 ) 1939-1972, Corresp. Files Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-1950, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 44/2/50 Pt. 1.
70. See S. Stedman, "Dr. Steinberg in Australia", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. 5 (1963), pp. 170-186.
71. Proposed Settlement, n. 69 supra.
72. Ibid., 16 March 1939.
73. Reported by A.A. Calwell, Be Just and Fear Not (Melbourne, 1978), p. 111 •
74. Bruce to Dept. Interior, 22 March 1939, Proposed Settlement, n. 69 supra.
75. See I.N. Steinberg, Australia - The Unpromised Land (London, 1948), p. 9.
76. Quoted, ibid., P• 1 o.
77. Ibid., P• 11.
78. West Australian, 30 August 1939.
79. H. Drake-Brockman, "A Happy Haven? Exiles for our Empty North", West Australian, 8 July 1939.
80. w. Murdoch, "OUr Opportunity, West Australian, 15 July 1939.
81. w. Hatfield, "Populating the North", West Australian, 27 July 1939.
82. R.H. Underwood, "Populating the North, Encourage Refugees and Harness Tides", West Australian, 5 August 1939.
83. See Steinberg, n. 75 supra, P• 146.
84. Ibid., P• 147.
85. Ibid., P• 148.
86. Argus, 1 December 1939, signed by 46 people.
130 87. See Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August 1939.
88. QUoted in Steinberg, n. 75 supra, p. 151.
89. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1939.
90. See Steinberg, n. 75 supra, pp. 36-69.
91. Davis to Carrodus, 6 March 1939, Department of the Interior (11), corresp. Files Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-1945, Refugees ( Jewish and Other) - General Policy File (1938-1944) Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2/46.
92. QUoted in B.J. Hooper, Australian Reactions to German Persecution of the Jews and Refugee Immigration 1933-1947, M.A. Thesis (A.N.U.), 1972, p. 203.
93. See ibid., PP• 204-205.
94. s. Stedman, A Jewish Settlement in Australia (Sydney, 1940).
95. See Stedman, n. 70 supra, pp. 177-178.
96. Australian Jewish Forum, August-September 1941.
97. See Hooper, n. 92 supra, pp. 205-210.
98. Sun, 14 December 1939.
99. QUoted in Steinberg, n. 75 supra, PP• 154-156.
100. Ibid., PP• 156-157.
101. c.P.D., vol. 161, p. 1921, 1 December 1939; C.P.D., vol. 163, p. 983, 17 May 1940.
102. QUoted in Steinberg, n. 75 supra, P• 158.
103. Ibid., PP• 158-159.
104. 24 October 1941, ibid., PP• 159-160.
105. Ibid., P• 160.
106. Ibid., PP• 161-162.
107. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1943.
108. Ibid., PP• 162-165.
109. Ibid., P• 165.
110. See Calwell, n. 73 supra, P• 114.
111. Steinberg, n. 75 supra, PP• 165-166.
1 3 1 112. Ibid., pp. 167-170.
113 • Ibid., pp. 170-171 •
114. Ibid., p. 171 •
115 • Ibid., pp. 171-172.
116. Calwell, n. 73 supra, p. 115.
117. Ibid., P• 126.
110. Ibid., P• 127.
119. Ibid., P• 116.
120. Ibid.
121. See Hooper, n. 92 supra, p. 189.
122. Ibid.
123. Daily Herald (London), 26 July 1933.
124. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1938.
125. Argus, 22 September 1938.
126. C.P.D., vol. 157, p. 107, 23 September 1938.
127. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 September, 1938.
128. Ibid., 30 September 19 38.
129. Argus, 28 October 1938.
130. See Steinberg, n. 75 supra, p. 135.
131. Ibid., P• 136.
132. Ibid., P• 137.
133. Ibid., P• 123.
134. Premier South Australia re Proposal for Jewish Settlement in Australia ( 1938), Department of the Interior I (1932-1939) Corresp. Files, Annual Single No. Series 1903-1938, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A1, Item 38/21559.
135. Lyons to Butler, 25 August 1938, ibid.
136. Playford to Lyons, 24 November 1938, ibid.
132 8. EVALUATION
(a) Statistical Record
Quite a heated debate has developed on the question of the number of
European Jews who found refuge in Australia between 1933 and 1939 and whether that figure represents a creditable achievement on the part of the Australian
Government of the day. Accuracy is difficult because, as we have seen, not all the landing permits granted could be taken up by the successful applicants, also not all migrants were willing to disclose their religion.
The total number of Jewish migrants registered with the A.J.w.s. in December
1941 was estimated at about 8,0001 but this figure may have involved duplication where refugees registered in more than one State.2 Bishop
Pilcher, Chairman of the Inter-Church Committee for the Aid to Refugees, estimated the total number of refugees in Australia, including non-Aryan
Christians, as 6,500.3 Berger estimated the total number of Jewish refugees admitted to Australia up to the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific as
8,500.4 This estimate is quoted by the authoritative study of Tarkatower and
Grossmann in 1944.5 They also comment that only 3,000 of the 15,000 permits made available in the Minister for the Interior's December 1938 speech were taken up.6 Wischnitzer's 1948 study gives the figure of 6,475 from 1938 to the end of the War.7 Krieger in 1955 estimated a total of 7,100 refugees from
Germany and Austria to September 1939.8 Krieger commented that only 1,000
Jews had arrived up to July 1938 but that one half of the quota of 15,000 had arrived in Australia by the outbreak of war.9
Benjamin took issue with these early studies and estimated that 11,245
Jewish refugees had arrived by 31 October 1940 but conceding that the 1947
Australian census disclosed only an increase of 9,000 Jews on 1933 figures
133 concluded "Perhaps 9,000 for the period 1 933 to October 1 940 is fair. This would allow for failure to disclose religion at the 1947 census and for
natural increase 11 • 10 He agrees with the estimate of only 3,000 arrivals fraom the 15,000 quota. 11 The most comprehensive statistical analysis of Jewish settlement in Australia is that of Price who estimates a total of 3,754 Non
British Jewish males arriving in Australia between 1933 and 1940.12 Bergman, relying on Price's estimate of the arrival between those years of 3,337 Jewish males from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary estimates that with the addition of their families a figure of at least 6,500 "seems to be justified" and that "the figure of 7,500 could certainly have been
reached 11 • 13 Australia's first Immigration Minister, Arthur A. Calwell, states that "the total number of refugees admitted to Australia between the end of
1938 and 1945 was 6,475" which he explains was "8,525 short of the figure of
15,000 in three years set by the Evian agreement" (sic.). 14 In the latest reference to Australian immigration figures, Strauss in 1980 maintained that
"By the end of 1938, 3,300 Central-European immigrants were reported for
Australia and a total of 7,000 Nazi victims (of all kinds) is reported to have arrived between 1935 and 1940". 15
Other statistics which may be of some interest on the subject of the fate of the European Jews: are the fact that individual German transports to
Auschwitz carried in excess of 5, 000 persons. This represents the annual quota of refugees announced in McEwen' s 1 December Speech and is in stark
contrast with the Jewish Welfare Society's request that no more than 6
refugees be sent on each ship, 16 extended in 1938 to 20.17 On the most
generous estimate, less than 12,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Australia in
the dozen years between the rise of Hitler and the end of the War. This may
be compared wth the 17,000 Jews who Prince Christopher Radziwill reported as
b eing· executed in · MaJ'd ane k in· a singe · 1 d ay. 18 The entire Jewish population in
134 Australian in 1947 was some 32,019 persons, 19 about 2,000 fewer than the number of Jews shot in Kiev on 29-30 September 1941.20
The Australian response to the plight of the European Jews was described by the Minister of the Interior, in his speech of 1 December 19 38, as
"humanitarian" and sympathetic, 21 an assessment which has been repeated by
Krieger. 22 On the other hand the Sydney Morning Herald felt that the quota of
15,000 "did not err on the side of generosity" and suggested that the number could have been doubled or trebled. 23 The Australian response may be compared with that of other countries. Between 1933 and October 1939 the United States received 136,000 refugees from the Reich and Spain. 24 However, its policy, despite rhetoric to the contrary, did not deviate from a rigid application of the national origins quota system and only in 1939 was its quota for German and Austrian immigrants fully subscribed. 25 In the same period 50,000 refugees from the Reich and 6,000 from Czechoslovakia entered Great
Bri't. ain. 26 Although the British Government's initial response to the refugees was "niggardly" and "sluggish", in the months following the Auschluss it became considerably more compassionate and even generous. 27 On the other hand much of this "generosity" may be attributed to Britain's embarrassment over its. restrictive ' ' immigration . . . po 1·icy in. Pa 1 es t'ine. 28 The pressure brought to bear on Britain in this way may also explain the pressure which it, in turn, brought to bear on Australia to accept more refugees. 29
Also in the pre-war period some 40,000 refugees from the Reich were admitted to France; 25,000 to Belgium; 23,000 to the Netherlands and 10,000 to
Switzerland. 30 These countries saw themselves as transit stations for the refugees rather than as their final destinations. The other Dominions adopted the same sort of policy as Australia toward the refugees. Until 1936 South
Africa admitted some 7,000 refugees, but anti-alien and anti-Jewish agitation caused a termination. . o f immigra . . t'ion. 31 Canada had raised immigration barriers
135 at the time of the Depression and like Australia admitted only wealthy refugees, estimated at 4,000 to the outbreak of war. 32 The restrictiveness of the Dominions stands in uneven contrast with the comparative generosity of the poorer South American nations. Argentina received 22,000 refugees and Brazil,
Columbia and Mexico each 20,000. 33 An important sanctuary for stateless refugees was the International Settlement in Shanghai, where entrants did not require visas; it received some 20,000 refugees by 1941. 34
In a comparative assessment of the international response to Jewish emigration from Germany, Strauss maintains that "Australia, secure in its global distance from the cosmopolitan culture that created and sustained it, failed in 1938 to follow the motherland in yielding to liberal impulses ••• the
November Kristallnacht had no repercussions 'down under 111 • 35 As we have seen,
Kristallnacht did, in fact, bring about some liberalization of Australian immigration policy but the allegation of illiberalism requires some closer analysis. Benjamin declared that the Australian response must be assessed not
"by the admission rates of other countries where problems differed, not even by the enormous number of people then clamouring for help", but by the
Australian standards of the time.36 His conclusion is that judged by those standards, Australia accepted "a very fair intake". Applying the same
touchstone, by the German standards of the time, the exodus from the Reich could be described as "a very fair exodus". An evaluation of the Australian
response to the plight of the European Jews requires some analysis of the quality of the response. Even applying a purely quantitative test it will be
recalled that immediately preceding the Depression the Australian Government
envisaged the reception of 450,000 assisted migrants over 10 years. 37 The
Jewish refugees represented a substitute for the British migrants who were now
leaving Australia at a greater rate than they were arriving.
136 (b) The Quality of the Government Attitude Toward the Refugees
The U.A.P. policy on refugee immigration has on a couple of occasions been attributed either to the anti-Semitism of the Government38 or of leading members of the Party. 39 Certainly, the Party did contain some noted bigots.
The Hon. A.S. Cameron, a senior Minister declared that "One of the best jobs
Adolf Hitler ever did for Germany was when he drove some of those people out of his country", "yet", he lamented "we welcome them here. We should not go to a great deal of expense over people who come here to save their own skins". 40 Similarly, H. Gullett, in a post-war retrospection, explained "The arrival of additional Jews is nothing less than the beginning of a national tragedy •••• They secured a stranglehold on Germany after the last war during the inflation period, and in very large part, brought upon themselves the persecution they subsequently suffered". 41 Anti-Semitism of this rabid type had bi-partaisan exponents in Federal Parliament and probably the most notorious Jew baiter was the veteran Labour Member for Kalgoor lie, A.G. Green who whilst protesting that "I have no anti-Jewish feeling, and no radical hatred" explained that "The Jews ••• are essentially a trading people" and not what a developing nation required. 42 He declared "I am not trying to excuse
Hitler in his persecution of the Jews, but it is only fair to point out that there may have been some reason for his wishing them to go elsewhere.1143
On the other hand the Minister for the Interior explained that the discriminatory application of the landing money requirement to Jews was precisely to prevent the growth of anti-Semitism in Australia.44 The sort of anti-Semitism to which Mr. McEwen referred was the overt virulence of Nazi
Germany and its Eastern Europe imitators. However, the identification of Jews as a separate race is of itself a f orm o f an t 1-. S em1't' ism 45 an d w h en t h e
Australian immigration authorities devised rules which would apply
specifically to them it was being anti-Semitic. In so far as the Australian
137 immigration policies went beyond the mere identification of Jews, they were predicated upon a number of anti-Semitic bases. In the Minister's speech of 1
December 1938 which announced the most liberal of policies that Australia was to adopt toward the Jewish refugees, McEwen mentioned the importance of assimilability eschewing aggregations of aliens and the desirability of maintaining the British predominance in the community. The only other argument which is adduced, is the necessity of not disturbing existing labour conditions and living standards. These arguments all represent an implicit acknowledgement of Nazi allegations against the Jews; the inability of the Jew to assimilate, their baneful influence on the economy as well as their adulterating influence as race polluters. As we have seen, the Australian policy on Jewish immigration predates the chancellorship of Hitler by a decade. The principles which were to animate the policy in the 1930s were settled at the time of the Ukrainian pogroms in the 1920s when the Department of the Interior assimilated the anti-Semitism of its British agents in
Poland.46
Even if Australian immigration policy was not unequisocally racist, its allegedly economic considerations were almost totally misconceived. The infiltration of a few thousand migrants into a stagnant economy was hardly
likely to add much stimulation. On the contrary it would have conduced to the deleterious effects feared by the economic planners, through intense competition for jobs and undercutting in business. An expansion of the market was only possible through more massive immigration. The selection of
immigrants solely on the basis of their capital assets did not mean that the
best immigrants, from the point of view of economic development were
selected. Skilled labourers, artisans, domestics, farmers, agricultural
workers and professionals such as engineers and scientists would not normally
h ave sat1.s. f'1.e d t h e f'1.nanc1.a . 1 cr1.. t er1.on.. 47 The persons who did satisfy this
138 criterion were not necessarily able to transfer enough capital to establish desired industries because of the restrictions placed upon them in their countries of origin. Also they were invariably older and preferred to invest their limited capital in short-run profit making activities, such as investment in realty, which guaranteed them an immediate return on which they could live. The selection of refugees whose asset backing was likely to obtain them entry to the United States when their preference numbers became current, meant that Australia was obtaining a short-term immigrant, who displaced someone more likely to be committed to their country of refuge.
Finally, as we have seen, the selection of wealthy refugees resulted in the sort of anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic reaction which the refugee policy sought to avoid, when Australians observed that, contrary to the news reports, their penury was greatly exaggerated.
Despite its miconception and the possible taint of anti-Semitism it has been suggested that the Australian policy on refugee immigration reflected publ 1.c. po 1·1.cy. 48 As we have seen, public opinion played little or no part in the Government's formulation of foreign policy, and, indeed, Cabinet took fairly active steps to suppress any public discussion of it. However, by late
1938 and early the following year there was plenty of evidence that the
Australian Community was beginning to share its Government's reluctance to receive large numbers of Jewish refugees.
(c) Australian Jews and the Refugees 1938-1939
The leaders of the Australian Jewish Community remained consistently
opposed to unrestricted refugee immigration throughout the pre-war period.
This attitude was particularly unfortunate since, as we have seen, the
Australian Government conceded considerable autonomy to the local Jewish
community in the administration of immigration policy. On the other hand, it
139 may have been prepared to concede this autonomy because of the declared attitude of the community, through its representatives on the Australian
Jewish Welfare Association.
The A.J .w .s. appeared to be opposed to any immigration of foreign Jews which would imperil the Australian community. Sir Samuel Cohen declared,
Our Council is in favour of even more rigorous hand-picking than the government - in its wisdom and kindness - has seen fit to impose.
The view of my Council and my personal view is that only young-migrants-who are likely to become true Australians should be admitted.49
Spokesman for the Society repeatedly maintained its opposition to any schemes for "block" immigrati· on.50 Thus in· 1 aunc h'ing the appea 1 f or the A •••• J w s t o collect funds to assist the expected influx of Jews following McEwen' s 1
December speech, Sir Isaac Isaacs maintained,
••• it is no part of the objects or purposes of the Jewish Welfare Society to procure the immigration of these unfortunates into Australia, or to suggest or support any mass immigration or51 group settlement of aliens for whatever cause they may come.
Apart from this rhetorical opposition to the Jewish refugees it has been alleged that "the A.J.w.s. Executive in Sydney actually attempted to reduce drastically the number of landing permits granted by Mr. McEwen in December
1938". 52 This they did by interpreting the "next three years" in his speech
to include 1938 which had already passed, thereby decreasing the total by the several thousand refugees that had arrived in that year.53
The hostility of the A.J.w.s. for the alien immigrants was manifested by
the injunctions of the Society to the immigrants to adopt Australian ways, and
in the reluctance of the A.J.w.s. to concern itself with the plight of German
Jews interned after the outbreak of war as enemy aliens• 54 Berger strongly
criticized the society for the exploitation of new immigrants, for
discouraging the formation of independent organizations of refugees, 55 but
140 more importantly for its pride in possessing "the full confidence of an administration that had practically barred the immigration of Jewish refugees". 56 Berger's animus against the A.J.w.s. led him to allege that it was "generally more favourably disposed towards backing the applications of
Polish applicants than those of others", because of the allegedly Polish descent of the majority of Australian-born Jewry. 57 These allegations were refuted by the Chairman of the Executive of the A.J.w.s.58 Although a fair proportion of Australian-born Jews were of Polish descent, Berger ignored the fact that they did not form part of the establishment which held the principal offices in the A.J.w.s. In fact the German Jewish Relief Fund, the predecessor of the A.J.w.s., declined to take any action to persuade the
Government to increase the numbers of visas for the victims of Polish anti
Semi tism, declaring it to be outside its jurisdiction.59
The Australian Jewish Community was particularly distinguished, boasting at its social apex the membership of Sir Isaac Isaacs, the Governor-General, as well as Sir John Monash, the former commander of Australia's imperial forces. Neither of these men brought their not inconsiderable influence to bear on the Government on behalf of their European co-religionaries. Even by
1942 the Sydney Jewish News had to expostulate
Is there no public conscience in Australia - Are there no personalities in the Jewish community to raise their voice in order to have the anomalous position of Jewish refugees rectified •••• Things are hushed up. Some are not interested and others express the opinion that there is a war on •••• 60
The habits of mind of the Australian Jewish establishment which led it to oppose a generous immigration policy was also revealed in its opposition to political Zionism. In October 1937 the Hebrew Standard had carried an article which disparaged Zionism as the child of anti-Semitism. 61 In reply, the
President of the Australian Zionist Federation had suggested that "even the
friendly Englishman considers it absurd for a Jew to pretend he is an
1 41 Englishman"• 62 This reply attracted strong criticism by Sir Isaac Isaacs and
Sir Samuel Cohen. Julius Stone in an open letter to Isaacs on this subject63 was later to castigate his "'exuberant and reckless dogmatism' and his
•exaggerated and misleading advocacy• 11 • 64 The endeavour of the Jewish establishment in the debate on Zionism to demonstrate its unquestioned loyalty, was to have more tragic consequences in the debate on the refugees, since it meant that the authoritative voices of the leaders of the community were not raised in urging the abandonment of Australia's conservative immigration policy.65
The behavioural patterns and attitudes of Australian Jews in the 1920s and 30s have been explained by Medding as the product of an "ideology of ethnic insecurity". 66 Manifestations of this ideology include an obsessive concern with Jewish conspicuousness together with a tendency to accept the values of the more privileged group in society. The Australian Jewish leaders in opposing refugee immigration accepted as correct the worst Gentile stereotypology and appeared to disavow membership of the despised group. This ideology is certainly an explanation of the Jewish community's attitude towards refugee immigration in the 1930s.
(d) Final Comment
In 1943 the Ministry of Post War Reconstruction administered a questionnaire which sought responses to the suggestion "that six million Jews now in Europe might be permitted to come to Australia". 67 Of those who
responded, 19 per cent were favourable; 6 per cent indifferent and 75 per cent
opposed. 68 All Jews who responded were opposed. 69 It is an interesting
speculation to ask what response would have been made by Australians if the
alternative plans for that six million had been known.
142 Chapter 8 - Footnotes
1. G. Berger, "Australia and the Refugees", Aust. Qtly., (Dec., 1941), P• 56.
2. Ibid.
3. Quoted Ibid.
4. Ibid., PP• 56-57.
5. A. Tarkatower and K.R. Grossman, The Jewish Refugees (New York, 1944), P• 326.
6. Ibid., P• 327.
7. M. Wischni tzer, To --:--=-:~-----::-::-:---.....:0.---~_,;;._~~_;;_~..,;;..;;;,.;.;.;;;...;..;,;;_;;.;;;;;.=.::;..:.::;..:=Dwell in Safety: The Story of Jewish Migration Since 1800 (Philadelphia, 1948), p. 294.
8. s.w. Krieger, "Resettlement in Australia" in w. Rosenstock, ed., Dispersion and Resettlement, The Story of the Jews from Central Europe (London, 1955), p. 27.
9. Ibid.
10. D.J. Benjamin, "Australia and the Evian Conference" Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. V (1961), pp. 230-231.
11. Ibid.
12. c. Price, "Jewish Settlers in Australia 1788-1961", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. V (1964), Statistical Appendix II.
13. G.F.J. Bergman, "Some Statistics Concerning Migration Following the Evian Conference", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. V (1964), P• 338.
14. A.A. Calwell, Be Just and Fear Not (Melbourne, 1978), p. 101.
15. H.A. Strauss, "Jewish Emigration from Germany, Nazi Police and Jewish Responses" (11) Leo Baeck Institute Year Book XXVI (1981), P• 389.
16. Minutes of the German Jewish Refugee Fund, 26 Nov., 1936.
17. McEwen, Memorandum to Cabinet, "Immigration of Jews to Australia", 8 March 1938, Department of External Affairs (11), Corresp. Files, Alphabetical Series: Inter-Governmental Committee (Incl. Evian Conference) 1938-1940, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A981, Item Refugees 4, Pt. 1.
18. Time, 14 July, 1947, quoted in G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution (London, 1971), p. 319.
19. Price, n. 12 supra, Statistical Appendix I.
143 20. D. Luck, "Use and Abuse of Holocaust Documents: Reitlinger and 'How Many?"', Jewish Soc. Studs., vol. 41 (1979), p. 98.
21 • E.P.D., vol. 158, p. 2535.
22. Krieger, n. 8 supra, p. 27.
23. Sydney Morning Herald, 20 June 1939.
24. See M.J. Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939-1952 (London, 1957), P• 27.
25. See H. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938-1945 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970), p. 313; see also, A.D. Morse, While Six Million Died (New York, 1967); D. Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938-1941 (Amherst, Mass., 1968); s.s. Friedman, No Haven for the Oppressed: United States Policy Toward Jewish Refugees, 1938-1945 (Detroit, 1973).
26. See Proudfoot, n. 24 supra, p. 27.
27. The assessment of A.J. Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973), pp. 264-267.
28. See E. Monroe, Britain's Moment in the Middle East 1914-1956 (London, 1965), M.J. Cohen, "The British White Paper on Palestine May 1939: Part II, The Testing of a Policy, 1942-1945", Hist. Jnl., vol. 19 (1976), pp. 727-758.
29. E.g. see B. Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford, 1979), PP• 46-47.
30. See Sir J. Hope Simpson, Refugees, Preliminary Report of a Survey (London, 1938), p. 52.
31. See Tarkatower and Grossman, n. 5 supra, P• 325.
32. See I. Arabe lla and H. Troper, "' The Line Must be Drawn Somewhere' • Canada and the Jewish Refugees", Can. Hist. Rev., vol. 60 (1979), P• 181.
33. See Tarkatower and Grossman, n. 5 supra, PP• 263-4; 318-327.
34. See D. Kanzler, "The Jewish Refugee Community at Shanghai 1938-1945", The Wiener Library Bulletin, vol. 26 (1972-73), PP• 28-37.
35. Strauss, n. 15 supra, P• 383.
36. Benjamin, n. 10 supra, P• 220.
36. Ibid.
37. See Ch. 2 supra, text at nn. 32-34.
38. E.g. D. Watson, Brian Fitzpatrick (Sydney, 1979), PP• 88-89.
39. E.g. J. Jupp, Arrivals and Departures (Melbourne, 1966), P• 6.
1 44 40. Argus, 4 July 1941.
41. Argus, 12 February 1947.
42. c.P.D., vol. 160, p. 1965, 15 June 1939.
43. Ibid., p. 1966.
44. Quoted in Watson, n. 38 supra, p. 38.
45. See H. Valentin, Anti semi tism Historically and Critically Examined (London, 1936), Ch. 1.
46. See Ch. 3.
47. See also, R. Lemberg, "The Problem of Refugee Immigration", Aust. Qtly., vol. 11 (Sept., 1939), P• 21.
48. Benjamin, n. 10 supra, p. 227.
49. Smith's Weekly, 1 July 1939.
50. E.g. Davis to Carrodus, 6 March 1939, Dept. of the Interior (11 ), Corresp. Files, Class 2 (Restricted Immigration) 1939-45, Refugees (Jewish and Others) General Policy 1938-44, Aust. Archives Office, CRS A433, Item 43/2146; Boas, Jewish Herald 21 April 1938.
51. Australian Jewish News 9 December 1938.
52. P.Y. Medding, From Assimilation to Group Survival, A Political and Sociological Study of an Australian Jewish Community (Melbourne, 1968), p. 160.
53. See Benjamin, n. 10 supra, p. 225.
54. See B. Patkin, The Dunera Internees (Melbourne, 1979), pp. 84, 97, 99, 157-59.
55. G. Berger, "Australia and the Refugees", Aust. Qtly., vol. 13 (Dec. 1941), P• 59.
56. G. Berger, "Australia and the Refugees", Aust. Qtly., vol. 13 (Sept., 1941 ) , p. 48.
57. Berger, n. 55 supra, p. 55.
58. s. Symonds, "'Australia and The Refugees' A Reply", Aust. Qtly.; vol. 14 (March, 1942), PP• 67-72.
59. See s. Rutland, "Jewish Immigration to New South Wales 1919-1939", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. VII, (1973), p. 343.
60. Sydney Jewish News, 3 July 1942.
61. Hebrew Standard, 21, 28 October 1937.
145 62. Ibid., 11 November 1937.
63. Ibid., 18 November, 1937.
64. J. Stone, Stand Up and Be Counted (Sydney, 1944).
65. See z. Cowen, Isaac Isaacs (Melbourne, 1967), p. 237.
66. Medding, n. 52 supra, pp. 165 ff.
67. c. Kelly, The European Refugee in New South Wales 1938-1943 (Canberra, 1943).
68. Ibid., P• 23.
69. Ibid.
146 APPENDIX 1
REPORT ON THE EVIAN CONFERENCE ON REFUGEES
(To accompany "Proceedings of the International Committee", Evian, 6th to 15th July, 1938)
1. At the invitation of the United States Government for co-operation on a Committee for facilitating the migration of German and Austrian political refugees, the Commonwealth Government agreed to be represented, and sent the following delegation:-
Delegate: Hon. T.W. White, D.F.C., V.D., M.P., Minister for Trade and Customs.
Advisers: Mr. Alfred Stirling, External Affairs Officer, London.
Mr. A.W. Stuart-Smith, O.B.E., Australia House, London.
Private Secretary to the Minister: Mrs. F.M. Grant.
2. The Conference ( which shortly after its inception adopted formally the name of "Inter-governmental Committee") met at Evian, France, on 6th July and sat until 15th July. Thirty-two (32) countries accepted the invitation, which was based on the initiative of the United States Government. The Hon. Myron c. Taylor, head of the United States delegation and Ambassador on special mission, was elected chairman.
3. No other Dominion, nor any other participating Government other than the United Kingdom (whose delegation was headed by Earl Winterton) was represented by a Cabinet Minister. Canada and Ireland sent full delegations, consisting of their permanent representatives at Geneva, assisted by experts; South Africa on the other hand was represented by an observer, and took no direct part in the proceedings.
4. The opening plenary sessions were devoteed to general speeches by delegates, setting out the position of their governments with regard to migration generally, and in particular with regard to the question of refugees from Germany and Austria.
I took the earliest opportunity of briefly stating the position from the point of view of Australia; my speech is set out in Appendix A.
These statements revealed that while each country viewed the appalling problem of refugees with great sympathy they were unable and unwilling to open their doors to anything like mass migration. The United States Government, the conveners of the conference, did not feel disposed, in this connection, to do more than affirm their already existing annual quota of 27,370 Germans, including Austrians, a figure which, it should be observed,
147 is, relatively, considerably smaller than that of Australia. s. The Committee, at an early stage, proceeded to set up two sub- committees, as follows:-
(a) Sub-Committee on the Reception of Those Concerned with the Relief of Political Refugees from Germany including Austria, with the following terms of reference:
"This Sub-Committee would hear in an executive session a representative of each organisation which is registered with the Secretariat General. It is understood that in each case the organisation will present a memorandum of its views through its reprsentative who may be permitted to speak for a limited time. The Sub-Committee would make a synopsis of the memoranda which it has received and report to the Conference".
I had the honour of presiding over this Sub-Committee, which sat on 8th and 9th July. At its opening session, which lasted for 5 hours, deputations from some 25 voluntary organisations dealing with refugees were heard. The leader of each deputation stated his case orally to the Committee, and handed in written memoranda. On the following day I presented the report of the Sub-Committee to the plenary session (Appendix B).
It will be seen that among the organisations received were the Council for German Jewry, the Refugee Survey of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the League of Nations Union, as well as the Swiss Catholic Committee for Relief to Emigres, and the Society of Friends. The organisations came from London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Prague, Geneva and other continental centres, and among the speakers (who addressed the committee in several languages) were Mrs. Mary Ormerod, Lord Marley, Sir Neill Malcolm, the Rev. Pere Odo, Professor Norman Bentwich, Rabbi Jona Wese and M. F.douard Oungre.
6. (b) The second, or "technical", Sub-Committee was set up under the chairmanship of Judge Michael Hansson (Norway), President of the Nansen International Office for Refugees, with Mr. Stirling as Australian representative, and Mr. Stuart Smith as observer. Its purpose was to hear, in confidence, statements of laws and practices with regard to migration, of the participating governments, and to consider the question of documentation. A copy of the Australian statement, which was the first to be handed in, is annexed. (Appendix C).
It appeared from the work of this Sub-Committee that all participating governments were prepared to co-operate to the extent permitted by their laws and individual situation. There seemed to be no legal restrictions in the countries represented, upon the admission of refugees as such. Since 1933 a large number of refugees had been admitted into the territories of the various countries, and large numbers were still being admitted. The statements in general held out prospects for increased reception of refugees qualifying for admission under the receiving country's immigration laws. Certain countries expressed a willingness to receive experienced agriculturalists. Others stated their willingness to accept selected classes of workers for whom suitable employment was available. Still others allowed immigrants to enter without occupational restriction, and
148 permitted those lawfully admitted to choose their employment. The quota system numerically limiting the admission of immigrants, which is in effect in certain countries, would permit the reception of an appreciable number of refugees. Some countries having no numerical limitations were prepared to adopt a liberal attitude in admitting refugees under their methods of control. Finally, certain countries indicated their desire to consider plans of settlement of refugees in their territories when such plans were presented by official or private organisations.
The question of documentation was also considered. The types of documents fall into two classes. First, documents required by the country to which the refugee desires to emigrate. Second, the document which may be issued to a refugee by the country of his foreign residence to serve the purpose of a passport.
With respect to the first category, the Sub-Committee suggested that the countries represented on the Committee might be invited to consider the adoption of the following provision:
In these individual immigration cases in which the usually required documents emanating from foreign official sources are found not to be available, there should be accepted such other documents serving the purpose of the requirements of law, as may be available to the immigrant.
With respect to the second ea tegory, the Sub-Committee took note of the various methods employed by the countries represented to meet the question in a manner permitted by existing law, and found it unnecessary therefore to make any recommendation on this matter.
7. Australia was also represented on a third Sub-Committee, for credentials.
8. Finally, the Inter-governmental Committee on 14th July, adopted unanimously, a resolution sponsored originally by the American delegation, in the form of recommendations to the governments concerned, as follows:-
Firstly, that the persons coming within the scope of the Inter governmental Committee should include not only persons who had already left Germany, including Austria, and not yet established themselves permanently elsewhere, but also persons who had not yet left Germany, including Austria, but "who must emigrate on account of their political opinions, religious beliefs, or racial origin".
Secondly, that the participating governments should continue to furnish the Committee, for its strictly confidential information, details regarding such immigrants as each government might be prepared to receive.
Thirdly, that the governments of the countries of refuge and settlement should not assume any obligations for the financing of involuntary emigration.
Fourthly, with regard to documents, governments should consider
149 the adoption of the provision cited in paragraph 6 above.
Fifthly, and most important, that there should meet at London an Inter-governmental Committee, consisting of such representatives as the governments participating in the Evian Meeting might desire to designate. This Committee should continue and develop the work of the Evian Meeting. There should be a Chairman and four Vice-Chairmen and a "Director of authority" appointed by the Inter-governmental Committee, who should be guided by it in his actions. He should "undertake negotiations to improve the present conditions of exodus, and to replace them by conditions of orderly emigration". The Inter governmental Committee should also co-operate fully with the League of Nations and the International Labour Office.
Finally, it was decided that the Inter-governmental Committee in its continued form should hold a first meeting at London on 3rd August, 1938.
9. In this connection I should like to quote the leading article which appeared in the "Times" the day after the Conference ended:
"The inter-governmental conference at Evian on refugees from Germany and Austria, which ended yesterday, has done its work admirably. It has methodically sifted the material of a problem that seemed chaotic and almost unmanageable, and has devised machinery which, if it is not blocked by the countries of origin, should transform the haphazard flight of destitute Jews into the orderly exodus of not wholly improverished emigrants. The two countries most directly concerned with the immediate problem - Germany, which is driving the Jews out, and the United States, which convened the conference - are outside the League of Nations. In the circumstances there was nothing else to do but to go ahead under other auspices. It is, however, explicitly laid down in the Evian resolution that all existing organisations dealing with refugees should be invited to co operate with the central committee in London."
While the effects of United States participation in the Evian Conference might easily be overstressed with resulting dangers, the fact remains that an opportunity has been created for an increased interest by the United States Government in the problems of Europe, and indeed of the world, which may possibly lead to direct contact with the German Government on general issues.
10. In conclusion, mention should be made of a complimentary reference by the Hon. Chairman (Senator Henry Berenger), at the closing session, to the active and valuable work of the Australian delegation in the proceedings of the Conference (page 45 of "Proceedings").
11. A further meeting of the Inter-governmental Committee was held in London on August 3rd and August 4th, and was attended by the representatives of 27 countries including Australia. It was decided unanimously to set up a Bureau of Committee with Lord Winterton (United Kingdom) as Chairman and representatives of United States, Brazil, France and Netherlands as Vice
150 Chairmen. It was decided also to appoint Mr. George Rublee, a leading international lawyer of Washington, who had been nominated by President Rossevelt, as Director of the Bureau. After some discussion it was decided to recommend to the Governments participating that the expenses of the new organisation should not exceed 50, 000 dollars per annum. Furthermore, the Chairman and four Vice Chairmen were authorised to prepare an estimate which, whilst not exceeding 50,000 dollars per annum, should be "if possible at a lower figure". This estimate would be communicated to the participating Governments as soon as possible. It was decided where necessary the High Commissioner for the Refugees (Sir Neill Malcolm) and Director of the International Labour Office should be brought into consultation. The Committee then adjourned sine die. On August 29th the United States delegate, Mr. Myron c. Taylor, wrote to Lord Winterton asking whether all the participating Governments would now offer a statement indicating the number of refugees from Germany whom they were prepared to receive, which request will come to the Commonwealth Government in due course through the High Commissioner.
12. I commend to the Government the humanitarian efforts of the Bureau of Committee as being deserving of every encouragement.
THOMAS W. WHITE
August 31st, 1938.
1 51 APPENDIX 2
SPEECH BY T.W. WHITE (AUSTRALIA)
The Government of the Commonwealth of Australia welcomes the ini tia ti ve of the President of the United States in calling this Conference for so humanitarian a motive. Believing the matter of urgent importance, as does the United Kingdom Government, Australia has sent a Minister of State as leader of the Delegation to support the principle of so worthy a cause.
Yesterday the leader of the British Delegation, the Rt. Hon. Earl Winterton, admirably stated the case on behalf of the United Kingdom and the Colonies. The Dominions, however, are in a different category to the Colonies, being free partners in the British Commonwealth and arbiters of their own economy and national destiny. Australia has her own particular difficulties, for, as Earl Winterton rightly said, "the question is not a simple one", and "economic and social factors as well as considerations of climate and political development have to be taken into account in each country".
M. Berenger has pointed out in his sympathetic statement on behalf of France ( to whom we are all grateful for arranging the preliminaries of this Conference) that the United States and Australia owe their development to migration from the old world. This is so, and in Australia's case such immigration has naturally been predominantly British, nor is it desired that this be largely departed from while British settlers are forthcoming.
Nevertheless the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia has had very much in mind the problem of foreign migration as well, and a proportion of new arrivals during recent years has been from foreign sources. Realising the unhappy plight of German and Austrian Jews, they have been included on a pro rata basis which we venture to think is comparable with that of any other country. To ensure that the new arrivals are suitable, they are very largely sponsored by the Australian Jewish Welfare Society.
Under the circumstances Australia cannot do more, for it will be appreciated that in a young country manpower from the source from which most of its citizens have sprung is preferred, while undue privileges cannot be given to one particular class of non-British subjects without injustice to others. It will no doubt be appreciated also that as we have no real racial problem we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.
Moreover, it will, I hope, be also realised that in the particular circumstances of our development we are confining migration principally to those who will engage in trades and occupations in which there is opportunity for work without detriment to the employment of our own people.
What the United Kingdom is doing, together with our own efforts and those of others already related, will, we trust, encourage members of the Intergovernmental Committee here assembled to formulate further plans for co operation toward the solution of a tragic world problem and thus bring hope to many unhappy people.
152 C.I.E./5. Evian, July 9th, 1938.
APPENDIX 3
INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMMITTEE
Evian - July 1938
REPORT OF THE SUB-COMMITTEE FOR THE RECEPTION OF
ORGANISATIONS CONCERNED WITH THE RELIEF OF POLITICAL
REFUGEES COMING FROM GERMANY
INCLUDING AUSTRIA
The Sub-Committee for the Reception of Organisations Concerned with the Relief of Political Refugees coming from Germany including Austria met on July 8th at 2 p.m. under the chairmanship of the Hon. T.W. White, D.F.C., V.D., M.P., Minister of Trade and Customs of the Federal Government of Australia.
The Sub-Committee was finally constituted as follows:-
Australia Belgium Costa Rica Cuba France United Kingdom Mexico Nicaragua Peru United States of America Venezuela
The Committee heard the following persons: Sir Neill Malcolm, Professor Norman Bentwich, Lord Marley, M. Edouard Oungre, Mrs. Ormerod, the Rev. Father Odo, Mr. Walter Adams, Dr. M. Goldmann, Dr. Ruppin, Dr. Steinberg, M. Georg Bernhard, M. Raoul Evrard, Rabbi Jona Wese, Mr. Eppstein, Mr. Goodman, Mr. Brotman, M. Leo Lambert, M. Gourevitch, M. Marcovici, M. Benjamin Akzin, Dr. Brutzkus, Dr. Oskar Grun, M. Forcht and Madame Irene Harand.
These persons represented many organisations among them the following:
International Christian Committee for Non-Aryans (London)
Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jewry (London)
Jewish Colonisation Association (Paris)
153 Committee for the Assistance of German Jews (London)
Society for the Protection of Science and Studies (London)
Committee for the Relief and Assistance of the Victims of Anti-semitism in Germany (Brussels)
Refugees Relief Committee (Paris)
Comite voor Bijzondere Joodsche Belangen (Amsterdam)
Swiss Centre for the Relief of Refugees (Basle)
Central Czechoslovak Committee for Refugees from Germany (Prague)
Central Association for German Emigration (Paris)
International Migration Service (Geneva)
International Committee for Finding Employment for Refugee Intellectuals (Geneva)
International University Service (Geneva)
The Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association (London)
Agudas Israel World Organisation (London)
American Joint Distribution Committee
Council for German Jewry (London)
Hicem (Emigrants Association - Rias Ica) (Paris)
Association of German Savants in Distress Abroad (London)
German Committee of the Society of Friends (Quakers) (London)
International Bureau for Respect of the Right of Asylum and
154 Assistance to Political Refugees (Paris)
Jewish World Congress (Paris)
New Zionist Organisation (London)
Emigration Advisory Committee (London)
World Jewish Alliance (Paris)
Committee for the Encouragement of large-scale Jewish Colonisation (Zurich)
Internationale ouvriere et socialiste
Swiss Catholic Committee for Relief to Emigres (St. Gall)
"Freeland" Association (London)
"O.R.T." Union (Paris)
Research Centre for Solutions of the Jewish Problem (Paris)
League of Nations Union (London)
Jewish Agency for Palestine
Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe (Paris)
Union of 11 0.s.E. 11 Societies (Paris)
Royal Institute of International Affairs (London)
Federation of Austrian Emigres (Paris)
The Sub-Committee entrusted the Secretariat with the task of drawing up a short analysis of the suggestions or observations made in the oral statements of the persons heard or in the memoranda which the associations represented by them have handed or will continue to hand in. This synopsis will be communicated to the Intergovernmental Committee as soon as it is ready.
In the event of some organisations not having been able to take advantage of yesterday's hearings to lay their views before the Sub-Committee, they can still do so by sending a written statement urgently to the Secretariat of the Conference.
The moving stories told disclose a great human tragedy which calls for early amelioration, and challenges the Conference to prompt co-operative action to that end.
155 APPENDIX 4
MEMORANDUM ON AUSTRALIAN IMMIGRATION LAWS AND PRACTICES
AND THE PRESENT POLICY OF HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT
REGARDING THE RECEPTION OF IMMIGRANTS
During the financial depression alien immigration was confined practically to close dependent relatives of persons already settled in Australia, and to persons who could introduce capital of their own to the extent of 500 pounds.
In March, 1936, in view of the improved economic position, Cabinet approved that landing permits could be issued to the following classes:-
(a) Dependent relatives of persons already settled in Australia, subject to satisfactory guarantees for maintenance being furnished. Dependent relatives include wives, minor children, adult single daughters and sisters, parents and fiancees;
(b) Persons outside the category of dependent relatives who
(i) are nominated by persons in Australia guaranteeing to the satisfaction of the Minister that the nominees will not be allowed to become a charge upon the State;
(ii) will engage in trade and occupations in which there is opportunity for absorption without detriment to Australian workers; and
(iii) are in possession of 50 pounds (Australian) landing money;
(c) Aliens without guarantors in Australia who will engage in trades and occupations in which there is opportunity for their absorption without detriment to Australian workers, provided also that they are in possession of 200 pounds (Australian) landing money.
The Commonwealth Government is not able to grant special facilities for the admission of groups of Jewish migrants, whether from Germany or Austria, but each case will be considered on its merits on application, the usual form being submitted to the Department of the Interior.
In addition to these individual applications, applications sponsored by the Australian Jewish Welfare Society by German and Austrian Jews will be considered, with certain special provisions in the case of migrants of the employee class.
Instead of requiring the Society to furnish the name of a prospective employer in each case, an undertaking will be accepted from the Society in respect of migrants of the employee classes -
(a) that on arrival of the migrants they will be definitely placed
156 in employment in their respective occupations;
(b) that they will be employed at award rates; and
(c) that no persons at present employed will be displaced to make way for the migrants.
A limited number of permits will also be issued to Jewish applicants who have no guarantors in Australia, selected from applications received from various countries; some preference will be given to political refugees from Austria and Germany.
The Commonwealth Government are ready to receive applications for permits from non-Jewish Austrians, these applications being subject to the present policy and rules regulating migration to Australia.
In all cases there will be the customary safeguard that admission will not be detrimental to Australian workers.
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Holborn, Louise w., "The League of Nations and the Refugee Problem" (1939) 203 Annals A.A.P.s.s. 124-135.
Holborn, Louise w., "The Legal Status of Political Refugees 1920-1938" (1938) 32 Am. J. Int. L. 680-703.
164 Lewish, Read and Schibsby, Marion, •status of the Refugee Under American Immigration Laws" (1939) 203 Annals A.A.P.s.s. 74-82.
Mann, Erika and Estorick, Eric, "Private and Governmental Aid of Refugees" (1939) 203 Annals A.A.P.s.s. 142-154.
Marks, P.J., "The Jew in Australian Life" Aust. Nat. Rev. vol. 4 (Sept., 1938), PP• 12-20.
Pyke, N.O.P., "Some Reflections on Italian Immigration into Australia" Aust.Qtly., vol. 18 (Dec., 1946), PP• 34-44.
Roucek, Josephs., "Minorities - A Basis of the Refugee Problem•, (1939) 203 Annals A.A.P.s.s. 1-17.
Steinberg J., "A Jewish Settlement in the Kimberleys", Aust.Qtly. vol. 12 (March, 1940), pp. 24-30.
Stephensen, P.R., ·A Reasoned case Against Semitism", Aust.Qtly. vol. 12 (March, 1940), pp. 52-62.
Symonds, Saul, •Australia and the Refugees. A Reply", Aust.Qtly. vol. 14 (March, 1942), PP• 67-72.
Wood, G.L., "Population Policy in the Light of the Depression", Aust. Qtly. vol. 12 (1930) pp. 41-49.
(g) Recent Books
Adler, Cyrus· M. and Margalith, With Firmness in the Right - American Diplomatic Action Affecting Jews, 1840-1945 (N.Y.: The American Jewish Committee, 1946).
Amos, K., The New Guard Movement 1931-1935 (Melbourne: M.U.P., 1976).
Andrews, E.M., Isolationism and Appeasement in Australia (canberra: A.N.U. Press, 1970).
Bennett, Marion T., American Immigration Policies: A History Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1963.
Borrie, w.o., Italians and Germans in Australia (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1954).
Browning, Christopher G., The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office. A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland 1940-43 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978.).
Campbell, Andrew A., The Australian League of Rights. A Study in Political Extremism and Subversion (Sydney: outback, 1978).
Cowen, Zelman, Isaac Isaacs (Melbourne: o.u.P., 1967).
165 Dawidowicz, Lucy, The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 (London: Penguin, 1975).
F.dwards, Cecil, Bruce of Melbourne: Man of TWo Worlds (London: Heinemann, 1965).
Esh, Shaul, "Between Discrimination and Extermination: the Fateful Year of 1938". In From Hatred to Extermination (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1959).
Feingold, Henry L., The Politics of Rescue. The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust 1938-1945 (New Brunswick, N.J.; Rutgers U.P., 1970).
Friedman, Saul s., No Haven For the Oppressed: United States Policy Toward Jewish Refugees 1938-1945 (Detroit, Wayne State U.P. 1973}.
George, Margaret, The Warped Vision: British Foreign Policy, 1933-1939 Pittsburgh: u. of Pittsburgh Press, 1965.
Gillman, Peter and Leni, "Collar the Lot!" How Britain Interned and Expelled its Wartime Refugees (London: Quartet, 1980}.
Gordon, Max, Sir Isaac Isaacs. A Life of Service (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1963).
Gott, K.D., Voices of Hate (Sydney: Dissent, 1965}.
Hasluck, Paul, The Government and the People 1939-1941 (Canberra: Aust. War Memorial 1952).
Hausner, Gideon, Justice in Jerusalem (New York, Harper & Row, 1966).
Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Quadrangle, 1961).
Jedrzejewicz, Waclaw, Diplomat in Berlin 1933-1939: Papers and Memoirs of Josef Lipski, Ambassador of Poland (New York: Columbia U.P., 1968).
Johanson, D., "History of the White Australia Policy" in K. Rivett, ed., Immigration: Control or Colour Bar? (Melbourne: M.U.P., 1960), pp. 1- 27.
Jupp, James, Arrivals and Departures (Melbourne: Cheshire, Lansdowne, 1966).
Katz, William, And the Ark Rested. The Story of a Jewish Community Born During the Holocaust in Europe (Killara, Syd: Katz, 1966).
Kirschheimer, Otto, Political Justice: the use of legal procedure for political ends (Prineton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961).
Kochan, Lionel, Pogrom, 10 November 1938 (London: Deutsch, 1957}.
166 Krieger, s.w., •Resettlement in Australia" in w. Rosenstock, ed., Dispersion and Resettlement. The Story of the Jews from Central Europe (London: Assoc. of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain, 1955).
Kunz, F.gon F., Blood and Gold, Hungarians in Australia (Australia: F.W. Cheshire, 1969).
Kunz, F.gon F., The Intruders: Refugee Doctors in Australia (Canberra: A.N.U. Press, 1975).
Lebzelter, Gisela c., Political Anti-Semitism in England 1918-1939 (Oxford, Macmillan, 1978).
Li tvinoff, Barnet, A Peculiar People, Inside the Jewish World Today (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969).
London, H.T., Non-White Immigration and the "White Australia" Policy (Sydney: s.u.P., 1970).
Lowenstein, Wendy and Loh, Morag, The Immigrants (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1977).
Hedding, P.Y., From Assimilation to Group Survival. A Political and Sociological Study of an Australian Jewish Community (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1968).
Mendelsohn, John, The Holocaust, vol. 5. Jewish Emigration from 1933 to the Evian Conference of 1938 (New York: Garland, 1982).
Mendelsohn, John, The Holocaust, vol. 6. Jewish Emigration 1938-1940 Rublj-e Negotiations and the Inter-Governmental Committee (New York: Garland, 1982).
Morse, Arthur D., While Six Million Died (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968).
Hosse, George L., Towards the Final Solution. A History of European Racism (London: Dent, 1978).
Muirden, Bruce, The Puzzled Patriots. The Story of the Australia First Movement (Melbourne: M.U.P., 1968).
Palfreeman, A.C., The Administration of the White Australia Policy (Melbourne: M.U.P., 1967).
Parkes, James, Antisemitism (London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1963).
Patkin, Benzion, The Dunera Internees (Sydney: Cassell, 1979).
Proudfoot, Malcolm J., European Refugees: 1939-1952 (London: Faber & Faber, 1957).
Rabinowicz, Harry M., The Legacy of Polish Jewry: A History of Polish Jews in the Inter-War Years 1919-1939 (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965).
167 Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (New York: A.s. Barnes, 1961).
Rothschild, Joseph, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1974).
Rutland, Suzanne, "Historical Background" in s. Encel and B. Buckley, The New South Wales Jewish Community. A Survey, 2nd ed., (Sydney: N.s.w. University Press, 1970).
Schedvin, c.B., Australia and the Great Depression (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1970).
Schleunes, Karl A., The Twisted Road to Auschwitz, Nazi Policy Toward German Jews 1933-1939 (Urbana, Chic. u. Chic. Press, 1970).
Seton-Watson, Hugh, Eastern Europe Between the Wars 1918-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946).
Sharf, Andrew, The British Press and Jews Under Nazi Rule (London: o.u.P. 1964).
Sherman, A.J., Island Refuge, Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich 1933-1939 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of california Press, 1973).
Shirer, William L., The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (London: Secker and Warburg, 1962).
Siniton, Derek and Weidenfeld, Arthur, The Goebbels Experiment: A Study of the Nazi Propaganda Machine (London: John Murray, 1942).
Stirling, Alfred, Lord Bruce: The London Years (Melbourne: Hawthorn, 1974).
Stoessinger, John G., The Refugees and the World Community (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1956).
Tenenbaum, Joseph, Race and Reich, The Story of an Epoch (New York: Twayne 1956).
Thalmann, Rita and Feinermann, Emmanuel, Crystal Night 9-10 November, 1938 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974).
Thomas, Gordon and Morgan, Max, Voyage of the Damned (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974).
Valentin, Hugo, Antisemitism: Historically and Critically Examined (New York: Viking, 1936).
Wasserstein, Bernard, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
Watson, Don, Brian Fitzpatrick. A Radical Life (Sydney: Hale & Ironmonger, 1969).
168 Wheeler-Bennett, J.w., The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945, 2nd ed., (London: Macmillan, 1964).
Willard, Myra, History of the White Australia Policy: 1920 (Melbourne: M.U.P., 1923).
Wischnitzer, Mark, To Dwell in Safety: The Story of Jewish Migration Since 1800 (Philadelphia: Jewish Public Soc., 1948).
Wyman, D.S., Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938-1941 (Amherst, Mass., u. Mass Press, 1965).
Yarwood, A., Asian Migration to Australia: The Background to Exclusion 1896-1913 (Melbourne: M.U.P., 1964).
(h) Recent Articles
Adler-Rudel, s., •The Evian Conference on the Refugee Question• Year Book XIII Leo Baeck Institute (1968) PP• 235-273.
Arbella, Irving and Harold Troper, • 1 The Line Must be Drawn Somewhere', Canada and Jewish Refugees 1933-1939", Can. Hist Rev., vol. 60 (June, 1979), PP• 179-209.
Barany, George, • 1 Magyer Jew of Jewish Magyer?' Reflections on the Question of Assimilation" in Bela Vago and George L. Mosse, eds., ~ and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945, (Jerusalem: Israel Uni•ersities Press, 1974), PP• 51-98.
Benjamin, David J., •Australia and the Evian Conference", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl. vol. V (1961), PP• 215-233.
Bergman, G.F.J., •some Statistics Concerning Migration Following the Evian Conference" Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. V, (1964), pp. 337- 338.
Berzins, Baiba, "Douglas Credit and the A.L.P.", Lab. Hist., No. 17, pp. : 148-60.
Castellan, Georges, "Remarks on the Structure of the Jewish Community in Poland between the Two World Wars" in Bele Vago and George L. Mosse, eds., Jews and Non-Jewish in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), pp. 187-202.
Feingold, Henry L., "Failure to Rescue European Jewry: Wartime Britain and America", Annals A.A.P.s.s., vol. 450 (July, 1980), pp. 113-121.
Feingold, Henry L., "Roosevelt and the Resettlement Question" in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, Proceedings of the Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, April 1974 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977), PP• 123-182.
169 Fischer-Galati, Stephen, "Fascism Communism and the Jewish Question in Romania" in Bele Vago and George L. Masse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (Jerusalem: Isreal Universities Press, 1974), PP• 157-176.
Friedman, Philip, "The Lublin Reservation and the Madagascar Plan: Two Aspects of Nazi Jewish Policy During the Second World War" Yi vo Annual of Jewish Social Science, vol. VII (1953), pp. 151-177.
Grossmann, Kurt R., "Zionists and Non-Zionists under Nazi Rule in the 1930s" Herzl Year Book, vol. 4 (1961-1962), PP• 329-344.
Hart, P.R., "Lyons: Labor Minister - Leader of the U.A.P.", Lab. Hist., no. 17 (1970), pp. 37-51.
Katz, Shlomo z., "Public Opinion in Western Europe and the Evian Conference of July 1938", Yad Vashem Studies, vol. IX (1973), pp. 105- 132.
Katzburg, Nathaniel, "The Jewish Question in Hungary during the Inter War Period - Jewish Attitudes" in Bela Vago and George L. Masse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), PP• 113-124.
Katzburg, Nathaniel, "British Policy on Immigration to Palestine During World War II" in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, Proceedings of the Second Yad Vashem Historical Conference, April 1974 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977), pp. 183-204.
Luck, David, "Use and Abuse of Holocaust Documents: Reithinger and 'How Many'?", Jewish Soc. Studs., vol. 41 (1979), pp. 95-122.
Macartney, C.A., "Hungarian Foreign Policy during the Inter-War Period, with Special Reference to the Jewish Question" in Bela Vago and George L. Masse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), pp. 125-136.
Margaliot, Abraham, "The Problem of Rescue of German Jewry During the Years 1933-1939", the Reasons for the Delay in their Emigration from the Third Reich" in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust, Proceedings of the ·second Yad Vashem Historical Conference, April 1974 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977), pp. 247-266.
Melzer, Emanuel, "Relations between Poland and Germany and Their Impact on the Jewish Problem in Poland (1935-1938) Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII (1977), PP• 193-230.
Mitchell, P., ~Australian Patriots: A Study of the New Guard",· Aust. Econ. Hist. Rev., vol. IX (2), (Sept.·i, 1969), pp. 156-178.
Masse, George L., "The Influence of the Volkisch Idea on German Jewry" Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute (New York, 1967), pp. 83-114.
Patkin, Benzion, "From Advisory Board to Board of Deputies in Victoria", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl. vol. 9 (1981), PP• 39-50.
170 Price, Charles, "Jewish Settlers in Australia 1788-1961", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl. vol. V (1964), PP• 357-412.
Rennie, Sandra, "The Factor of National Identity: An explanation of the differing reactions of Australia and the United States to Mass Immigration•, J.R.A.H.S. vol. 68 (1982), pp. 133-143.
Rosenstock, Werner, "Exodus 1933-1939: A Survey of Jewish Emigration from Germany•, Year Book I of the Leo Baeck Institute, (1956), pp. 373- 390.
Rutland, Susan, •Jewish Immigration to New South Wales 1919-1939" Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. VII, (1973), pp. 337-347.
Spear, Sheldon, "The United States and the Persecution of the Jews in Germany, 1933-1939", Jewish Soc. Studs., vol. 30 (1968), pp. 215-242.
Stedman, s., "Dr. Steinberg in Australia", Aust. Jewish Hist. Soc. Jnl., vol. 5 (1963), PP• 170-186.
Tenenbaum, Joseph, "The Crucial Year 1938", Yad Vashem Studies, vol. II (1958), PP• 49-77.
Warburg, G., "None to Comfort the Persecuted", vol. XV( 3) 1961 The Wiener Library Bull. 43-47.
Wilton, Janis and Bosworth, Richard, "Refugee Intellectuals of the 1930s" Australia 1938. A Bicentennial History Bulletin No. 4, (Nov., 1981), PP• 31-39 • • Wischnitzer, Mark, "Jewish Emmigration from Germany 1933-1938" Jewish Soc. Studies, vol. 2 (1940), pp. 23-44.
Wynot, :Edward D., "' A Necessary cruelty': The Emergence of Official Anti-Semitism in Poland, 1936-1939" Anti. Hist. Rev., LXXVI (October, 1971), 1035-1058.
Yahil, L., "Madagascar - Phantom of a Solution for the Jewish Question" in Bela Vag·o and George L. Hosse, eds., Jews and Non-Jews in F.astern Europe 1918-1945 (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1974), pp. 315- 334.
Yisraeli, David, "The Third Reich and the Transfer Agreement", Journal of Contemp. Hist., vol. VI (1971), PP• 129-131.
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