Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees
The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (ICR) - more rarely referred to as the Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees or Comité d'Évian , also abbreviated IGC, partly also IGCR - was formed in 1938 by the Évian conference to negotiate further entry quotas for Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria , as well as to coordinate an orderly departure with German authorities.
composition
The ICR was made up of government representatives sent from most of the 32 countries participating in the conference. Informally, a council of six members formed from this circle, of which Lord Winterton (Great Britain), Henri Bérenger (France) and Myro C. Taylor (USA) stood out in the lead. The actual negotiations were entrusted to a directorate headed by the two Americans George Rublee and Robert Pell.
Rublee, who had limited his participation to six months, was replaced by the former High Commissioner for Refugees at the League of Nations , the British Herbert Emerson .
First contacts
Four days before the ICR met for the first time on August 6, 1938, the British Ambassador Nevile Henderson officially asked State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker whether he would like to see the negotiators. The purpose of the intended meeting is to create "... an orderly basis for the transport of Jews abroad ...". Weizsäcker refused negotiations and referred to the failure of the Évian Conference, which had not created any significant admission quotas. Germany is unwilling and unable to give the refugees foreign currency . The requests of the ambassadors of the United States and France were equally unsuccessful.
After the November pogroms in 1938 , the willingness to talk on the German side changed. Hermann Göring wanted to promote “Jewish emigration” by all means and had Reinhard Heydrich set up a “ Reich headquarters for Jewish emigration ” in Berlin (January / February 1939). There were informal contacts through intermediaries that were treated confidentially. With Hitler's consent, Hjalmar Schacht traveled to London in December 1938, where he met Rublee “as a private person”.
German suggestions
In the SD-principal office you had come at that time to realize that probably 200,000 Jews because of age and illness were "not able to emigrate" even in favorable conditions. The support costs for the Jews remaining in the Reich should, if possible, be raised by co-religionists from abroad, alternatively through confiscated assets of the refugees.
Schacht presented Rublee with a more specific plan. All employable Jews were to leave Germany within the next five years. Their property was to be confiscated and the funds were to be used mainly for the maintenance of the older Jews who were still in Germany. A quarter of the proceeds should go to a trust fund, which, however, can only be transferred when the currency situation is good. Rublee was supposed to propose to the government representatives of the ICR to advance the foreign currency for the "showcase money" of 150,000 emigrants.
On January 20, 1939, Schacht was dismissed as President of the Reichsbank . However, Rublee already met with Hermann Göring the next day , who was well informed and entrusted the ministerial director Helmuth Wohlthat with continuing the talks.
Reactions
Joachim von Ribbentrop , who could feel left out by Schacht, was rather negative about the plan and wanted to keep the assets. Also Reinhard Heydrich , who headed the "Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration" since 24 January 1939 did not want to rely on this planning stage. He intended to create a " Reich Association of Jews in Germany " and to make this, like the international Jewish aid organizations, responsible for the procurement of foreign currency and immigration permits.
In fact, the government representatives of the ICR limited themselves at their meeting in mid-February 1939 to the non-binding statements to “promote the possibilities of permanent resettlement of 'involuntary resettlers' from Germany ...” and to “take note” of the financing plans. There were no concrete commitments. Country names like Madagascar were mentioned and four commissions were sent to possible host countries . But in April 1939 the ICR determined that only agricultural workers and a few specialists and investors were wanted; Under no circumstances should one's own labor market be burdened.
While the lengthy discussions with German authorities continued, Heydrich was able to point to his success in having removed almost 20,000 Jews from Germany within three months. A few months later, the beginning of the Second World War thwarted the immature plans of the ICR.
further activities
The search for places of refuge was unsuccessful and the ICR ceased its work in the first years of the war without disbanding the organization. At the Bermuda Conference , which was convened by the United States and Great Britain on April 19, 1943 and was supposed to solve problems of war refugees, it was decided to reactivate the ICR. At that time, however, she could hardly do anything to save Jewish refugees.
After the Second World War, the ICR took care of displaced persons . In June 1947 the ICR stopped this work and was dissolved.
See also
literature
- Magnus Brechtken : "Madagascar for the Jews". Anti-Semitic Idea and Political Practice 1885-1945. Munich 1997 ISBN 3-486-56240-1 .
- Hans Jansen: The Madagascar Plan . The intended deportation of European Jews to Madagascar. Munich 1997 ISBN 3-7844-2605-0 .
- Insa Meinen, Ahlrich Meyer : Persecuted from country to country: Jewish refugees in Western Europe 1938–1944 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2013 ISBN 978-3-506-77564-1 .
- Ralph Weingarten: The assistance of the western world in the final solution of the German Jewish question. The Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees (IGC) 1938-1939. Bern 1983 (not viewed)
- Encyclopedia of the Holocaust , ed. Israel Gutman et al., Munich ISBN 3-492-22700-7 (keyword in volume 2).
- Rolf Vogel (arrangement): A stamp was missing. Documents on the emigration of German Jews. Munich 1977, ISBN 3-426-05602-X ; therein: Wohlthat-Plan p. 247ff.
- Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro: Citizen of the world. Brazil and the refugees of National Socialism 1933-1948. Series: History, Research and Science, 43. Lit, Münster 2014 (available in Google books ; in detail about ICR)
Web links
- Study by the Foreign Office (Germany) from January 1939
- International Refugee Organization , Encyclopaedia Britannica