Intergovernmental Committee for the refugees

The Intergovernmental Committee for the refugees (CIR), also called the Committee of Evian, was the result of the Conférence of Evian of 1938. The purpose of it was to find a durable solution with the Jewish refugees German S and Autrichien S fleeing the mode Nazi of Adolf Hitler.

Origin

Following the installation of the Third Reich, tens of thousands of German and Austrian Jews flee their country. Wanting to leave in majority the Europe, they decide to go to the the United States. For reasons of quotas (only 27.000 visas per annum for the Germans and the Austrians cannot be delivered by the immigration department of the United States), they are driven back at the border.

The President of the United States of America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then decides to organize a conference to find a durable solution with the lodging of the Jewish refugees. The July 14th 1938, only the creation of Intergovernmental Committee for the refugees is decided, no country not agreeing to receive the Jewish refugees.

History

The first meeting of the CIR will be held with London, the August 3rd 1938. Lord Earl Winterton is named president and George Rublee directing. The CIR starts then has to peel the files of the various possible candidates to the lodging of the refugees. But no government decides to accommodate them officially. The CIR only succeeds in placing some refugees semi-officially in some colony S in Africa, South America and in the countries of the the Commonwealth.

The case of the Dominican Republic

The August 12th 1938, Rafaël Leonidas Trujillo, president of the Dominican Republic sending a message with the CIR explaining that it is ready to receive from 50.000 to 100.000 refugees. Astonished, the CIR sending a delegate states-unien on the spot, Rafaël Leonidas Trujillo confirms the offer and even proposes to receive more than 100.000 refugees.

The real goal of Rafaël Leonidas Trujillo is to replace the local population, black, by Jews, white. In other words, it is a ethnic purification which it wishes to carry out, on a scale the Caribbean entire. Moreover, the Jewish community of New York proposes with the gouvements which will lodge the Jewish refugees to give them 5000 Dollar in Or by refugee.

The April 18th 1939, the members of the CIR return to the United States, but it would seem that for political reasons, the United States not wishing to guarantee an ethnic purification, the procedure trails until in at the end of 1939. Despite everything, the Dominican Republic and the CIR succeed more where less at this putting agreement and the first group of refugees arrives the May 10th 1940. On the whole a little less than 1000 Jewish refugees are accommodated in Dominican Republic.

See too

Office of the High Commission of the United Nations for the refugees

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