From July 6 to 15, 1938, an international conference convened in the spa town of Evian, France, bringing together representatives from 32 countries and numerous humanitarian organizations. Their objective was to find solutions for approximately half a million Jews escaping persecution in Nazi Germany and annexed Austria.

This conference occurred five and a half years after Adolf Hitler's rise to power and shortly after Austria's annexation. Although the Nazi regime had not yet initiated systematic mass murder, conditions for Jews had worsened steadily since 1935, marked by the enforcement of the racist Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jews of citizenship and excluded them from public life. Jews seeking to emigrate were forced to abandon their property, which the Nazis confiscated to both profit and discourage poorer refugees, as they were seen as a potential burden to host countries.

The League of Nations, precursor to the United Nations, had appointed American James McDonald as High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany as early as 1933.

Despite the urgency, the conference revealed widespread reluctance to accept Jewish refugees. On July 10, 1938, a New York Times correspondent described the scene: "It is heartbreaking to think of the queues of desperate human beings docking around our consulates in Vienna and other cities, waiting in suspense for what happens at Evian."

The phrase "Since we don't have a real race problem, we are not prepared to import one" encapsulated the prevailing attitude among many nations. While the German Reich's media celebrated the conference's outcome, democratic countries' press reported with a mix of sympathy and shame. The US magazine Time reflected this ambivalence.

Historian Jochen Thies, author of a 2017 book on the subject, stated that the Evian conference sent a clear signal to the Nazi regime: the world largely ignored the fate of the Jews, and democratic nations would not intervene to protect them.

The Evian conference thus stands as a stark example of international failure to respond to a humanitarian crisis, preceding the horrors that would soon engulf Europe.

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