Who did best by Jews fleeing Nazis?

From 1933 until close to the start of World War II, France was the only significant democracy to provide any refuge for Germans fleeing from Nazi persecution.

In 1924, the US had introduced a quota system for refugees that effectively barred entry, and the UK limited its intake to a few wealthy refugees who would be guaranteed not to be a burden on the State. Some European democracies such as Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland, did open their doors to refugees, but they were small countries and usually lower priority refugee destinations, while Sweden and Switzerland operated restrictive entry policies.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in particular has been much maligned for allegedly obstructing the refugees’ entry to France and for its complicity in their distressing reception. But evidence from the French archives rejects that judgement and maintains that the French authorities behaved honourably, especially when compared with the US and UK during this period.

In the spring of 1933, the French government had to formulate a policy to contend with the arrival in France of the first refugees from Germany. Their flight to France, which continued for seven years from January 1933 until the defeat of France by Germany in June 1940, was provoked by the Nazi regime’s persecution of Jews and other alleged enemies of the State, mainly Socialists and Communists.

Of the estimated 80,000 refugees who emigrated to France, some 80% were Jewish. With the help of caritative organisations, about one-half were settled in third countries, and of the approximately 40,000 who remained in France, about 30,000 were Jewish.

The French authorities were not wholly consistent; they introduced changes in policy to manage the refugee problem during the years from 1933 to 1938. For instance, circumstances changed when Edouard Daladier became prime minister in April 1938. The number of refugees then increased substantially after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938, followed the same year by Kristallnacht, the pogrom throughout Germany in November against the Jewish population.

Provoked by these developments, and diverging from the disinterest of previous prime ministers, Daladier personally took over the responsibility for the formulation of refugee policy and removed it from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In fact, he reshaped it to be far more restrictive for the entry of refugees, while public opinion in both the US and Britain went in the opposite direction and prevailed on their respective governments to reverse their previous stances to start allowing the immigration of refugees.

The French foreign ministry had never actively encouraged the influx of refugees from Germany but, in most cases, it merely stood aside and allowed them to do so. Accordingly, France may not have been officially and positively welcoming and supportive, but nonetheless it was not as negatively doctrinaire as the US or the UK. The foreign ministry’s policies may not have been to the liking of its severe critics, but given the situation of those times, it was probably the most humanitarian course it could manage to take.

Moral duty

The League of Nations took five years to agree on the 1938 Convention concerning the Status of Refugees coming from Germany. While it was trying to find a solution to the problem by experimenting with the High Commission for Refugees and some provisional arrangements, the American and British governments firmly closed their doors to immigration.

The French government, on the other hand, was convinced that France had a moral duty to provide asylum to refugees. In the face of several constraints, due mainly to the prevailing economic depression, it nevertheless managed refugee affairs so that during 1933 to 1938, France gave refuge to a far greater number of needy persons than any other country. Only Belgium, another neighbour of Nazi Germany, was possibly more generous, but the numbers of its intake were obviously much smaller.

For all other countries, it was a case of being sympathetic and wanting the refugee problem solved, provided it was not on their territory. In contrast, the French, while conscious of protecting French sovereignty, were resolute in acknowledging the values of the French Revolution in extending refuge and ensured that it was not merely lip service.

Even in August 1938, when the French were busy appeasing Nazi Germany, the French authorities refused persistent requests of the German government for information about the German refugees in France.

This compassion was in stark contrast to the hostility of the US and the UK, democracies that proclaimed themselves as exemplars of the homes of liberty and justice, which nonetheless refused to provide any haven during those five years. This remains a truth that the Americans and British have airbrushed from their histories.

And the one country that has never discriminated against Jews? The answer is India.

(Dr Stephen Fein is a British historian and Krishnan Srinivasan a former Foreign Secretary)