Hitler's Refugees and the French Response, 1933–1938 1793622302, 9781793622303

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Circumstances
Chapter 2: The Quai d'Orsay
Chapter 3: The Refugees
Chapter 4: Definitions
Chapter 5: Debating Human Rights
Chapter 6: Minorities and Intervention
Chapter 7: Pressure Groups
Chapter 8: The High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany
Chapter 9: Resettlement and Transit
Chapter 10: International Agreements
Chapter 11: Evian
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Praise for Hitler's Refugees and the French Response, 1933-1938

“This book has excellent internal insight on how the French state reacted towards the influx of refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Fein shows us that the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs was an important actor not only in protecting refugees in France, but also in securing an international refugee regime—a regime which left us with concepts, such as country of first settle­ ment and non-refoulement, essential to contemporary refugee policy.” —Frank Caestecker, University of Ghent; author of Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States “Comprehensively researched and perceptively analyzed, this is an impressive new book on France’s response to the refugees from Nazi Germany. It high­ lights the role of the Foreign Ministry, which, caught between international rela­ tions, France’s republican traditions, and crises in domestic politics, struggled to find a compromise between hospitality and xenophobia. While bureaucrats worked assiduously in developing policy, foreign ministers and their govern­ ments disclosed their timidity in the face of one stark choice: could the refugees stay or be asked to leave? This dilemma, Fein argues, exposes fundamental weaknesses in the French polity of the 1930s.” —Greg Burgess, University of Melbourne; author of The League of Nations and the Refugeesfrom Nazi Germany: James G. McDonald and Hitler’s Victims

“My family immigrated to Argentina in 1893 as part of the colonization project financed by Baron Hirsch’s JCA. They left Russia, its pogroms, and precarious existence to go to a country interested in absorbing as many immigrants as pos­ sible. The saga described in detail by Julius Fein takes place some forty years later when Jews need to emigrate from Germany. Where will they go? There are plenty of discussions where many nations show goodwill. JCA is still a player, but this time there is no country ready to receive a massive inflow of immigrants.” —Daniel Furman, honorary fellow, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“I was delighted to be able to give Fein access to my great-grandfather Louis Oungre’s archives and to be able to contribute to this duty of remembrance which seems essential to me. Immigration is at the heart of Europe’s concerns today, proof that history is repeating itself and that it is important to be aware of it. Congratulations to Fein for his accomplished work.” —Virginie Tissinie, great-granddaughter of Louis Oungre

Hitler's Refugees and the French Response, 1933-1938 Julius Fein

LEXINGTON BOOKS

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Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SEI 1 5AL, United Kingdom

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For the grandchildren, Ishy, Josh, Cece, Marisia, Dulcie, Tatiana, Hal, Scarlett, Max, Celeste

Contents

Acknowledgements

¡x

Abbreviations

xi

Introduction: The Dilemma: Idealism versus Realism

1

1

The Circumstances

7

2

The Quai d’Orsay

31

3

The Refugees

53

4

Definitions

77

5

Debating Human Rights

89

6

Minorities and Intervention

123

7

Pressure Groups

145

8

The High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany

157

9

Resettlement and Transit

179

10

International Agreements

205

11

Evian

231

Conclusion

241

vii

viii

Contents

Bibliography

247

Index

287

About the Author

297

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tessa Blackstone and Anne Lapping for having vouched for me to return to academia after a gap of some fifty-five years, Alan Sked for his guidance during my MSc at LSE, and Julian Jackson at Queen Mary University of London and Anna-Louise Milne at the University of London Institute in Paris for their support and expert supervision of the PhD thesis on which this book is based. Thanks also to Krishnan Srinivasan, who has taken me under his wing, counselling and steering my postdoctorate activity.

ix

Abbreviations

ADI AIU AN BDIC BIR BIT BN CAAVF CAR CGT CGTU CLCSI CMG CNRS CNSRA

CSR CSSP EU FDR FO GISTI HCR

Académie Diplomatique Internationale Archives, Alliance Israelite universelle, Paris Archives Nationales, Paris Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, Nanterre Bureau international pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques Bureau international du travail, Geneva (ILO) Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Comité d’aide et acceuil aux victimes de fascisme Comité d’assistance aux réfugiés Confédération générale du travail Confédération générale du travail unitaire Centre de liaison des comités pour le statut des immigrés Comité mondial contre la guerre et le fascisme Centre national de la recherche scientifique Comité national de secours aux réfugiés allemands victimes de l’antisémitisme Convention of 28 July 1951, relating to the Status of Refugees Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons European Union Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY Foreign Office Groupe d’information et de soutien des immigrés High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and other) coming from Germany

xii

Abbreviations

acronym of HIAS, ICA, Emigdirect; formed with the merger of three Jewish migration associations, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Jewish Colonization Association and Emigdirect HMSO His Majesty’s Stationery Office IDI Institut de Droit International IGCR Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees ILO International Labour Organisation INSEE Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques JCA Jewish Colonial Association JDC American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. New York JO Journal Officiel: Lois et Décrets: Débats Parlementaires; Chambre des Députés: Débats Parlementaires Sénat KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands LDH Ligue des Droits de l’homme (League of the Rights of Man) LIDH Ligue internationale des droits de l’homme LICA International League against Anti-Semitism LON League of Nations MAE Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Quai d’Orsay NA National Archives, Kew OFII Office français de l’immigration et de l’intégration OFPRA Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides OIR Organización Internacional para los Refugiados (International Organization for Refugees) ONI Office national de 1’immigration (National Immigration Office) PCF Parti communiste français (French Communist Party) PF Front Populaire (Popular Front) PSF Parti socialiste français PSI Partita Socialista Italiana (Italian Socialist Party) SDN Société des Nations SFIO Section française de l’internationale ouvrière (French Section of the Worker International) SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) SR Secours Rouge UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights UN United Nations UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees UNOG United Nations Office at Geneva UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association

HICEM

Introduction The Dilemma: Idealism versus Realism

‘Faithful to its tradition of hospitality, France has a duty to come to the aid of these unhappy people and to grant them asylum in her territory as much as possible’.1 This preamble to the letter of 7 April 1933 was written in the name of Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Paul-Boncour (1873-1972),2 to André François-Poncet (1887-1973), French ambassador in Berlin,3 and signed by Alexis Léger (1887-1975), Secretary-general of the Quai d’Orsay4 (from now on referred to as the Quai). Paul-Boncour wrote the letter in response to the surge in visa applications precipitated by the new German government’s decrees that marked the beginning of the Nazi campaign to victimise Jews and opponents of the regime. The Germans proscribed the Communist and Socialist parties on 23 March 1933,5 and the law banning Jews from employ­ ment in the Civil Service was passed on 7 April 1933.6 Paul-Boncour’s instructions attempted a resolution.7 It recalled one of the fundamental ideo­ logical precepts of the Third Republic that France should be a haven for the persecuted.8 The letter, after highlighting the practical question of whether France could still afford this ideal, gave instructions on how to deal with the refugees leaving Germany for France: Still, accomplishing this duty must not conceal from us the inconvenience and even the danger from an economic and social point of view, as well as from the point of view of national security, that may exist in according, with no distinc­ tion whatsoever, authorisation to enter France in response to requests that may be made individually or collectively. Were this the case, there would in principle be serious drawbacks in taking in people entirely without resources, who, given the state of labour legislation as it exists at present in France and how crowded the labour market is for jobs of any kind, it would fall to the French community

1

2

Introduction

to assume responsibility for them. As well, we would be in danger of receiving persons known to be of a suspect nature in our territory. Given these conditions, it is agreed that our Consuls, while examining the requests for visas made by Jews holding German passports from the most liberal and broad-minded point of view, will exercise judicious discrimination for these requests: those concerned who appear to offer sufficient guarantees would ben­ efit from an immediate visa; as for those who cannot justify sufficient resources to allow them to live in France by their own means alone, as for those whose previous activities give reason to fear that their stay in our country might be prej­ udicial to the maintenance of public order, our Consuls would turn down their requests, or refer to me those cases that seem doubtful or particularly urgent. It is necessary then in each case to go no further than attributing an ordinary visa, without exceeding the two-month period beyond which foreigners living on our territory are required to demand an identity card.

The Republican ideology is enshrined in The Montagnard Constitution, which had been accepted by the National Convention on 24 June 1793 and ratified in a popular referendum, although its implementation at first was postponed and then never enacted. Article 120 animated the principle of the Third Republic that ‘it gives asylum to foreigners banished from their home­ land in the cause of freedom. It refuses it to tyrants’.9 In the 1920s, France had welcomed refugees because the Montagnard ideology and the economic and demographic needs of France coincided. Now, in 1933, unless refugees had enough means not to be a burden to the state, there was no economic justification for granting them asylum: the rationale had to be ideological and humanitarian.10 The constitution’s axiom that citizens of all countries had the right to free­ dom from oppression and to individual liberties such as freedom of assembly and of expression lay deeply embedded in the doctrine of the Third Republic. Edouard Herriot (1872-1957), Minister of State in the right-wing government of Pierre-Étienne Flandin (1889-1958), reaffirmed this in the Chamber of Deputies (Chambre des Députés) debate of 29 January 1935: I apply the French rule, the Republican rule of upholding the right to asylum for political refugees, provided that they have committed no crime against the law, in particular in French territory, and also provided that once brought to and accommodated on French territory, they respect the political independence of the country and the freedom of its citizens with all desirable discretion, and that they cause no unacceptable agitation.11

During the winter of 1934-1935 and in the summer of 1936, the unemployed in France were estimated to be about one million.12 Even though this was less

Introduction

3

than 5 per cent of the workforce and far below US or German levels, it inten­ sified French xenophobia. The law of 10 August 1932 permitting every sec­ tion of French employers to decide individually on the extent of restrictions to impose on foreigners was already in place when the threat to French jobs was aggravated by the arrival of the German refugees.13 Because Germany was France’s traditional enemy,14 and about 80 per cent of the refugees were Jewish,15 the refugees from Germany became the main target for xenophobia. The anti-Semitic, anti-Communist political right often merged with sentiment on the left caused by high unemployment. In addition, because most refugees were middle class and professional, they threatened the jobs of the French bourgeoisie. For example, doctors and lawyers restricted foreigners’ entry into their professions in 1933 and 1934.16 The German refugees presented a new menace to all sectors of employment. The broad lines of the Quai’s strategy to deal with this new situation were devised in the spring of 1933. There were changes of emphasis in the Quai’s policy during the five years (1933-1938), which reflected the fluctuations between the alleged liberal approach in the spring and summer of 1933, a few liberal measures under the Popular Front (PF) in 1936 and 1937 and the more restrictive applications under the conservative Flandin and Pierre Laval (1883-1945) governments in late 1934 and 1935. However, until May 1938, the overall policy concerning the German refugees varied little. The basic problem of finding a compromise between the Republican tradition of grant­ ing asylum to the persecuted and anti-immigrant public opinion did not alter.17 Although allowances had to be made for new instructions from govern­ ments that changed frequently, politicians tended to leave both the formula­ tion of refugee policy and its implementation to the bureaucrats. In the main, the Quai determined the country’s response to the refugees. In the chapters that follow, the Quai’s response to the German refugee problem is examined, the context in which it operated and the policies and practices it adopted to reconcile the Republican ideal that in France ‘the right to asylum has always been respected’ with the political and economic con­ straints of the years 1933-1938, and that compared with the other two large Western democracies, the Republic’s treatment of German refugees, if not exemplary, was considerably more accommodating than the United States and the United Kingdom.18 The Quai accepted that France had an ideological and humanitarian duty to provide a refuge to the Jews and political opponents of the Nazi regime who were persecuted in Germany. Its response also increased French prestige. The British newspaper the Manchester Guardian, perhaps tongue in cheek, declared: ‘No Frenchman, be he nationalist, reactionary, or even anti-Semite, would ever be indecent enough as to consider German refugees as undesir­ able foreigners’.19 The question was not so much whether France had a duty

4

Introduction

but rather the extent of its duty: what could France afford, and what should be the limits of its obligation? To what extent was French sovereignty com­ promised by French acceptance of the League of Nations (LON) resolutions? The authorities had to recognise the presence of the refugees from Germany in France, but were they welcome, or were they a nuisance? Were some desirable and others not? Was a refugee synonymous with someone who was a burdensome foreigner, or worse a Jew in the most disparaging sense of the word? What humanitarian measures should be invoked? What human rights should be recognised? Did refugees have a right of asylum? Should the refugees be encouraged to stay, or should France be a ‘way station for sorting’ (‘vote de triage'), for settlement elsewhere? Would a too generous policy encourage more refugees to come to France? These were some of the questions that confronted the Quai. A British Home Office memorandum in 1934 gave a pertinent summary of the French dilemma: [They] so often open their arms with impetuous generosity to refugees and after­ wards lament their decisions and complain that others should have shared their burden. It has been felt that the scheme to promote free movement of refugees from country to country may have been inspired and pressed by countries who would be only too glad to dispose of their refugees.20

The period covered is the five years from early 1933 to early 1938. The presentation is thematic and chronological. Chapters 1-7 and 9 discuss the themes of the background and policies employed by the Quai, the Quai itself, the history of refugees, human rights, minorities, intervention, pres­ sure groups and resettlement. Chapters 8, 10 and 11 look at the chronology: the establishment of the High Commission, the negotiations for the LON Arrangement of 1936 and Convention of 1938 concerning German refugees, and a brief chronology of what happened after the spring of 1938. The narra­ tive ends with the Conclusion.

NOTES 1. MAE Z 787, Justice, Questions Juridiques dossier général, pp. 26-29. Ministre des Affaires Étrangères à André François-Poncet, ambassadeur de la République de France à Berlin (Minister of Foreign Affairs to André François-Poncet, Ambassador of the Republic of France to Berlin) 7 avril 1933. 2. Minister of Foreign Affairs January 1933-January 1934. Dates of birth and death are given only for the personages whose roles were significant. 3. Ambassador in Berlin 1931-1938.

Introduction

5

4. Secretary-general 1932-1940. 5. Enabling Act, 23 March 1933. 6. Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, 7 April 1933. 7. See the discussion in Krishnan Srinivasan, James Mayall, Sanjay Pulipaka (eds) Values in Foreign Policy, Investigating Ideals and Interests (London: Rowman & Littlefield International 2019). 8. The constitution of the Third Republic, 1870-1940. 9. Constitution of 24 June 1793, Acte Constitutionnel, Des rapports de la République française avec les nations étrangères (Constitutional Act concerning the relationship between the French Republic and foreign states). 10. Article 1 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States famously defines ‘The state as a person in international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states’. 11. Pierre-Etienne Flandin, JO, Débats Parlementaires, Séance 29 janvier 1935, p. 257 (Official Journal, parliamentary debates, sitting of 29 January 1935) 12. Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur, ‘The Great Depression in France’, in D. Glasner (ed.), Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopaedia (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 39^42. 13. See Singer-Kerel Jeanne. ‘« Protection » de la main-d’œuvre en temps de crise.’ In: Revue européenne des migrations internationales, 5(2) (1989), pp. 7-27. 14. See Ralph Schor, ‘L’Image des allemands dans la France de 1’entre-deuxguerres’, Recherches Régionales, 185 (janvier-mars 2007), pp. 91-102. 15. Neither the Germans nor the French kept detailed statistics of the number of Jewish refugees coming to France. The accepted estimate is that about 80 per cent of all German refugees were Jews: Barbara Vormeier, ‘Etat et perspectives des recher­ ches relatives aux réfugiés en provenance d’Allemagne (1933-1945)’, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps, 44 (1996), pp. 24-26. Dorothea Bohenkamp gives the figures in 1933 a total of-53,000 persons left the Reich: 37,000 Jews and 16,000 political opponents of the regime, many of whom were Jewish. Quoted by Alya Aglan, L’heure des choix 1933-1945 (Paris Septentrion Presses Universitaires, 2019) from Dorothea Bohnekamp. De Weimar à Vichy. Les juifs d’Allemagne en république 1918-1940/1944 (Paris, Fayard, 2015). However, James McDonald gave the figures as at 5 December 1933, the total refugees leaving Germany as 53,900 in total of whom 94.7 per cent, 51,065 were Jewish. LON C 1616, Memorandum to Permanent Committee of the Commission High for Refugees from Germany, 7 December 1933. The Governing Board had a Permanent Committee. See chapter 8. 16. Doctors the decree of 21 April 1933. Lawyers the decree of 19 July 1934. 17. Schor has written extensively on public opinion. See L’Opinion Française et les Étrangers en France, 1919-1939, France XIXe-XXe siècles séries no. 22 (Paris: Publ. de la Sorbonne), 1985. 18. See Jean Garchery, JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambres des Députés, Séance 1 janvier 1935, p. 258 (JO Parliamentary debates - Chamber of Deputies, sitting of 1 January 1935). Garchery was expelled from the PCF in 1929 and then became a founder member of the Parti d’unité prolétarienne.

Introduction

19. Quoted in Laurence Prempain. ‘How the Welcoming of Jewish Refugees Fleeing Germany for France Evolved through Time (1933-1938)’ AEMI Journal 2017-2018 pp 75-88, p. 77. 20. NA HO 45 20528, Convention of the International Status of Refugees, 1934 Memorandum, 17 January 1934; NA HO 213 1631, Report by Roger Makins, the British foreign office representative at the LON, of his conversation with Kefvik Erim, the LON official in charge of measures relating to German refugees, 14 May 1936. 6

Chapter 1

The Circumstances

Regarding some of the fundamental principles of French foreign policy, the Quai employed various approaches to achieve its goals concerning the refugees. These principles included the primacy of French sovereignty, that French national law must trump international law, the fear of generalisations and of setting precedents, and the danger of commitments to open-ended obligations with the complications that might ensue in diplomatic relations with other countries.

THE POLICIES

The Quai accepted that France had to provide refuge to German refugees, at least temporarily, but it did not want to apply the same hospitality to refugees from other countries.1 It argued that refugees who held passports from the countries other than Germany, mainly from Eastern Europe such as Poland, Hungary and Romania, were excluded because their passports entitled the holders to their state’s protection in contrast to the Germans who became refugees because the Nazi state did not protect them.2 That exclusion was applied also to refugees coming from Germany with non-German passports, notwithstanding some had been resident in Germany for many years and had even been bom in Germany. About 50,000 Polish Jews had settled in Germany.3 Although the Montagnard Constitution called for asylum for the perse­ cuted, the Quai resisted persecution as the justification for asylum because questioning the rationale for persecution was interference in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states, as well as an open-ended commitment allowing unlimited numbers of refugees to come to France. Instead, it based 7

8

Chapter 1

the determinant on protection when the persecuted had crossed the border and become refugees seeking asylum. Article 1 of the United Nation’s 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (CSR) follows this distinction. It defines a refugee as a person: owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.4

The Quai rejected the argument of international jurists that all refugees had a human right to seek asylum and successfully resisted the demand from pres­ sure groups like the Ligue des Droits de L’Homme (LDH),5 the Quakers,6 as well as the insistence at the LON from countries like Norway that asy­ lum should be granted on humanitarian grounds.7 The Quai also withstood the appeal from the Secours Rouge (SR)8 to extend asylum to anti-Fascist refugees from all countries, not just from Germany, and from Jewish carita­ tive groups to do the same for persecuted Jews from all countries. The Quai insisted that only German refugees qualified for protection. Fundamental to the French plan for management of the refugee problem was the intention that the German refugees should not settle in France; they should move on to permanent settlement in other countries. Henry Bérenger (1867-1952), president of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was a vocal proponent of this policy. Citing the metaphor of a railway shunting yard, he iterated the formula: ‘France is willing to be a sorting track but cannot be a siding. . . . We should not keep the Germans who are refugees in our terri­ tory but divide them up and send them to the different countries willing to accept them.’9 The Quai and Bérenger maintained that the burden of granting asylum fell too heavily on France. At first, they hoped that the HCR, which had been set up by the LON but separate from it, would help to obtain a fairer distribution.10 When this turned out to be unachievable, the Quai directed its efforts bilaterally to other countries to take more refugees. The Quai also tried, somewhat half-heartedly because it did not want to exacerbate its rela­ tions with the Arabs in its own mandates, to persuade the British government to increase the quota for Jewish emigration to Palestine, and its attempt to shame the United States into allowing in more refugees was forlorn. The Quai canvassed South American, Canadian and British Dominion governments to take German refugees, and when that failed it sounded out the French colonial office to consent to refugee settlement in the French colonies. None

The Circumstances

9

of these initiatives was successful. Other countries sympathised with the Quai’s efforts, but not to the extent that they were willing to help France to accomplish them. The concept of country of first settlement that this implied, and of burden sharing, which was a French problem, had no international traction in the interwar years. Both became salient features of the refugee debates after the Second World War. Recital 4 of the preamble of the CSR states: ‘Considering that the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries, and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which the United Nations has recognised the international scope and nature cannot therefore be achieved without international cooperation’11. The Quai tried to encourage resettlement, which was voluntary, but the French authorities also contrived to make life difficult for the newcomers through the exercise of tough residence conditions that may have had a measure of success in per­ suading some refugees to leave France while driving others into a clandestine existence in France. However, caritative organisations rather than official channels helped many to resettle.12 Another basic tenet of the Quai’s position was the insistence that France had no funds to contribute for the international relief and settlement of refu­ gees. Responsibility for this lay with private organisations and the Quai took care to appease Anglo-Saxon philanthropic organisations so that they would continue to provide funds to assist the refugees. When ideology became pragmatic, the French authorities felt it necessary to distinguish between desirable and undesirable refugees. Refugees were deemed desirable if they could show they had enough means not to burden the state, or that they were sponsored by French political or intellectual groups. The Quai endorsed the expulsion of foreigners (mainly Italians) who were undesirable because they were convicted criminals, but the authorities tended to be accommodating towards the refugees who conducted their political fight against Soviet Russia or Mussolini or Hitler from French soil. However, an opinion on the politi­ cal right was that German Jews were undesirable because they were an alien race that could not be assimilated into French society. Another example of undesirable refugees were the Germans seeking refuge in France to escape sterilisation. They were considered a health risk and the Quai advised that they be refused entry.13 Most German refugees were middle class from urban backgrounds nevertheless; those willing to work in agriculture to repopulate the southwest of France, or after 1937, to serve in the army, were categorised as desirable and treated accordingly. Yet, the majority were neither desirable nor undesirable and the French authorities had to find a way to deal with them. The debate around refoulement (return) was central to this discussion and saw the genesis of the first international convention concerning non­ refoulement. A straightforward definition of the concept of non-refoulement

10

Chapter 1

is by Guy Goodwin-Gill, Professor of Public International Law, as: ‘which prohibits the return of a refugee to wherever he or she may run the risk of per­ secution’.14 A definition that expands on Goodwin-Gill’s is by legal adviser to the British Foreign and Colonial Office, Anthony Aust: non-refoulement: A state is not obliged to give refuge to a person even if he has established his refugee status. But, in addition to not returning him to his own State, he must not be sent to a third State if his life or freedom would there be threatened because of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group or political opinion.15 An indication of the problem of the meaning of refoulement is in a letter from H. McKinnon Wood, acting legal adviser to the Secretary-general of the LON, to E.N. Cooper of the British Home Office, dated 1 September 1936:

I have made careful enquiries and arrived at the sense of the word ‘refoule­ ment’. It is not really equivalent to refusal of admittance at a frontier but is a process by which a person who has come across the frontier, and who may have come across the frontier legitimately (e.g. with papers the validity of which has expired since he got into the country) is taken by the police and put back across the frontier. It differs from expulsion in being a pure policy measure of an auto­ matic character, e.g. if the police have instructions to do so, they automatically ‘refoulent’ any person not having his papers in order. In these circumstances the suggestion in your letter does not give the sense of the French and we propose to substitute for ‘reconducted’ the words ‘be sent back to the frontier’.16 Refoulement for civil contraventions such as not having the correct docu­ ments was exercised, sometimes heavy-handedly, while at other times, in particular under the PF, it was barely enforced. As discussed in chapter 5, its arbitrary imposition became the subject of complaints by left-wing politi­ cians who argued that it was a violation of the authority of the civil servants responsible for dealing with the refugees, of Republican values and of the refugees’ human rights. Although the Quai also set great store by the exercise of French national sovereignty over the right of refoulement, its criticism of the Ministry of the Interior for what it considered its excessive use of this right was apolitical.17 Chapter 6 shows that the Quai was well informed of the situation in Germany. Repatriation of refugees was a solution that the authorities exam­ ined. Indeed, voluntary repatriation was at first available and some of the Germans who had taken refuge in France in 1933 returned to Germany in the following year.18 However, from 28 January 1935, voluntary or other­ wise, repatriation was no longer an option because of the arrest of refugees

The Circumstances

11

returning to Germany by the Nazi police who put them in concentration or re-education camps. Another solution, the mass naturalisation of German refugees, was also rejected. Refugees hoping to return to Germany did not want to be natu­ ralised, while the French authorities created difficulties for those refugees who sought it. The naturalisation of foreign races, in this case the Jews, was considered a threat to the nation’s social balance and cohesion, as well as a burden on social services.19 Even the writer Heinrich Mann, an ardent Francophile refugee from Germany who was not Jewish, was refused French citizenship in 1934.20 During the period from June 1936 to the end of 1937, out of 31,700 naturalisations only 1,515 were German.21 Naturalisation to serve in the armed forces was considered by Joseph Paganon (1880-1937), Minister of the Interior under Laval, in 1935,22 but was not encouraged until 1937 when the army needed more recruits, restrictions were eased and the number of applications rose.23 Jacob Rubinstein, a Russian exile living in Paris, legal adviser to the Nansen Office,24 concluded that because the solutions of repatriation and naturalisation were impractical, the next best response was to assure refu­ gees a minimum of human rights by granting them a legal status (un statut juridique) that would define their civil rights and obligations, including the right to residence and work. Indeed, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793, Article 3, stated; 'All men are equal by nature and before the law’ ('Tous les hommes sont égaux par la nature et devant la loi'). In the case of the refugees this Republican precept was ignored because the state did not issue a statute that granted them the same civil rights which French citizens enjoyed.25 The Quai’s refusal to endorse the issue of a statute was based again on the principle that the state was sovereign, and that the imposi­ tion of a universal law of human rights and a statute with the grant of civil rights would compromise French sovereignty.26 The sociologist Jean-Claude Barbier suggests that the authorities preferred to examine each file on its own merits precisely to avoid the arbitrary blanket application that a statute would entail.27 The conflict between national sovereignty and the adoption of international agreements made at the LON into domestic legislation was a continuous problem that concerned the Quai during the interwar years. The Quai was wary not to encourage the immigration of refugees from Germany even during the brief period of the spring and summer of 1933, when Chautemps, the Minister of the Interior, perhaps to appease his critics in the Assemblée Nationale, was anxious that France be seen to be gener­ ous in protecting the persecuted. At the same time as Chautemps’s show of benevolence, the Quai issued guidelines to French consuls to screen German refugees to distinguish between genuine and false applicants needing pro­ tection, and to exclude criminals, and it negotiated with governments of

12

Chapter 1

countries bordering France to prevent the entry into France of undesirable German refugees via third countries. And as described in chapter 2, Jean Dobler, the French consul in Cologne, campaigned for a much more rigorous scrutiny of visa applications. For the Quai, there was an essential difference between encouragement and acceptance. It acknowledged the principle that France should not turn away the persecuted, but it was wary of measures that might induce the German government to dispose of its unwanted citizens to France, or of actions that might make France an attractive refugee destina­ tion. If France was seen to introduce measures that were accommodating to refugees, the Quai was concerned that they would encourage more refugees to come to France, and it did not know whether Germany would welcome the measures or consider them interference in its domestic affairs. If Germany assisted the exodus of refugees to seek asylum in France, the Quai might in its turn have to complain to Germany that this unburdening was interference in French domestic affairs, a demarche that it preferred to avoid. The Quai had to consider how its refugee policy would affect FrancoGerman relations. Not wanting to contravene the diplomatic norm of non­ intervention in the domestic affairs of another sovereign state and convinced in any case that it would do little or no good, the Quai was reluctant to put direct pressure on Germany to stop the persecution of Jews and opponents of the regime. The Quai’s opinion was that such appeals were best left to private, non-governmental organisations. The Quai rejected the argument that humanitarian obligation should super­ sede the rule of non-intervention. The rule was overridden just once when there was a legal justification. In 1933, the Quai encouraged other members of the LON to join in censuring Germany for the violation of the undertaking it had signed under the auspices of the LON to protect the minorities in Upper Silesia, in this case the Jews. The answers to the circular sent to members requesting their suggestion how best to handle the refugee problem resulted in the LON becoming the responsible international body. The Quai needed to adapt to the new system of multilateral and transparent diplomacy at the LON. Because LON resolu­ tions could compromise French sovereignty, the Quai used its influence and skill to draft the LON’s refugee agreements and conventions to accommodate French concerns. For example, it successfully resisted pressure especially from Scandinavian countries that the LON should protect refugees of all origins. But, despite its authority, France was unable to persuade other countries to accept what it considered an equitable international distribution of refugees and relieve it of what it considered the unfair burden of taking in so many. The Quai was meticulous that France should honour the international obligations in agreements it had signed and, consequently urged the French

The Circumstances

13

Assembly to ratify them.28 Moreover, it was concerned that France’s reputa­ tion as a humanitarian liberal democracy should not be tarnished and that the image of France as a founder member of the LON and upholder of its values be maintained. This led to friction with the Ministry of the Interior which was responsible for domestic security and stability, especially between the Quai and the police.29 That Ministry frequently used the adjective ‘ruthless’ (impitoyable) in instructions to prefects, the police and border guards to emphasise the severity with which they should exercise their directives while the Quai was critical of what it saw as the Ministry of the Interior’s heavy-handed use of refoulement. A domestic factor which influenced the Quai’s conduct was that it felt threatened by other ministries. Jealous of its jurisdiction, it defended itself in the domain wars between ministries by insisting that it was the only one with the expertise and competence to execute the country’s refugee policy.30 The Quai successfully opposed the establishment of a Ministry of Immigration, which would have included refugees in its remit. The biggest threat was in January 1938 when Chautemps appointed Philippe Serre (1901-1991) to the position of Under-secretary of State in charge of immigration and foreigners. It was disbanded by the new Prime Minister Edouard Daladier (1884-1970) three months later. A ten-page letter from Yvon Delbos (1885-1956), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Serre gave the reasons for the Quai’s objections to losing control of refugee policy.31 The letter is a revealing summary of the Quai’s attitude and policies. In unusually blunt language, Delbos explained why the Quai’s management of refugee affairs was successful. He pointed out that the Quai’s flexible policy had produced satisfactory results and should be continued. The policy, he said, was inspired by the noble liberal tradition of which France seemed the last practitioner. Indeed, this tradition formed a part of Republican values so long as it did not impose too heavy demands on the country’s resources. However, there would be serious ramifications if the definition of political refugee were too charitable: a generous policy would encourage a new wave of refugees. Delbos reminded Serre that the Quai recommended avoiding a statute because it would define the state’s commitments towards refugees in the present and in the future. Instead, because the refugee problem was temporary, it was dealt with on an ad hoc basis. The Quai also considered that a statute would inhibit its freedom to carry out its duty to protect French interests abroad - without explaining why - and that this concern had been managed by LON conventions that granted rights like those enjoyed by French citizens to White Russian, Armenian, Assyro-Chaldean and German refugees. He noted that France had always resisted defining a political refugee. Furthermore, the Quai took care to avoid obligations that bound France’s hands in the future.

14

Chapter 1

The Quai’s official policy was that the refugees should not be allowed to take part in political activity that might be considered offensive or threatening to the German government. It was anxious to avoid the accusation of interfer­ ing in German politics and reprisals to the French citizens living in Germany, hence the condition applied to all refugees officially precluding them from political activity when on French soil.32 This policy was applied by Socialist politicians as well as the political right. Paul Marchandeau (1882-1968), the Radical Socialist Interior Minister, said that it was intolerable that foreign­ ers should come to France and continue their political activity. ‘During the whole of their stay in our territory, they will be required, on pain of immedi­ ate expulsion, to abide by the laws dealing with public order and to abstain from all political activity’.33 In fact, this requirement was not enforced for the German refugees until 1938, probably because it suited the Quai that the German refugees tried to interfere in German politics, an activity that the Quai was careful to avoid.34 Although allowance had to be made for differing instructions from the often-changing ministries, the politicians tended to leave both the formulation of refugee policy and its implementation to the bureaucrats. In the main, the Quai’s bureaucrats determined France’s response to the refugees. This was unusual: in other countries the Minister of the Interior, not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with the President of the government or its equiva­ lent, decided the policy and the bureaucrats executed it.

THE BACKGROUND

In the 1920s, refugees, in the main Russian and Armenian, had been wel­ come.35 They arrived at a time when France encouraged immigration to make up for the loss of about 1.5 million of its workforce through death and injury in the First World War. In the 1930s, France experienced economic depres­ sion and unemployment, decreasing public revenues, devaluations, political and social instability. About 500,000 immigrants whose labour and skills were no longer needed were sent back to their countries of origin.36 JeanCharles Bonnet, who wrote the seminal book on how the authorities dealt with interwar immigration, describes the policy of the period, 1919-1930, as ‘an empirical, liberal attitude’,37 while he calls the years 1931-1939 ‘a time of vague ambitions and constraints’.38 Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, political scientist specialising in migration, divides the two decades as ‘the opening and closing of France to foreigners’.39 There were times in the 1930s, during the riots of February 1934 and the Spanish Civil War in 1937, when France seemed on the brink of civil war. Among the most pessimistic commentators, Jean-Louis Cremieux-Brilhac,

The Circumstances

15

historian of the Second World War, noted that ‘France had been a divided nation during the 1930s, its diplomatic responses conditioned by a domestic context of political struggles, social tensions, a barely functioning institu­ tional structure, economic stagnation, anxiety and self-doubt’.40 All the same, to many contemporaries abroad France was still the paramount power on the European continent.41 It had been a victor in the Great War, had the largest standing army and the size of its empire was second only to that of the British. German refugees came to France because they saw it as the great continental power. And because it was the largest Western democracy that did not refuse them sanctuary, even if it adopted measures which attempted to restrict the number of refugee entries and tried to arrange for them to settle elsewhere.42 Moreover, refugees had ‘a vision of France as democratic, secular and egali­ tarian’.43 Not only was Republican France a democracy but it was also the heir to the ideals of the Revolution, of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of progressive beliefs. It was also a cosmopolitan hub: the German the­ atre critic Alfred Kerr said that each person has two countries: his own and France.44 And there was the practical advantage that France was an opportune clandestine destination because it shared a 418-kilometre poorly policed con­ tiguous border with Germany. Despite nuanced shifts in policy and even after 1938 when the immigration policy changed and became much more restrictive, France continued to be a country of refuge. The refugees had to abide by French law, but the authori­ ties tended to overlook the stricture that the refugees should not interfere in politics and should refrain from continuing the conflicts of their country of origin on French soil.45 In France, the German refugees, in contrast to the situation in Germany, were free to express their opinions, a theme that is explored in chapter 3. The Quai found it impossible to agree on a joint policy with the other two large Western democracies, the United States and the United Kingdom, both closed to all but a few refugees during this period. In 1924, the US JohnstonReed Act had introduced a quota system for refugees that effectively barred entry,46 and the UK’s instructions to customs officials at the borders had the same effect. Both countries limited their intake to wealthy refugees who would not be a burden on the state.47 Other European democracies, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Finland did open their doors to refugees, but they were small countries and often considered less desirable. Nevertheless, the German Socialist Party (SOPADE) preferred Prague over Paris as the new home for its head office when exiled from Germany in 1933.48 In contrast, Sweden and Switzerland operated restrictive entry policies. The French authorities applied the term immigrant both to foreigners who came to France to work, who could return, or be returned, to their countries

16

Chapter 1

of origin when they were no longer needed, and to refugees, who were exiles unable to return. For example, the census of 1936 did not distinguish between the immigrants, calling all of them foreigners. The authorities’ classification also was often loose, categorising all German refugees as Hebrews (Israe­ lites') whereas about 20 per cent were refugees because of their politics, not because they were Jewish.49 However, the proportion of political refugees who were Jewish was quite high, maybe as many as half, which would bring the total Jewish refugees to about 90 per cent. The number of refugees who came to France from Germany was small compared with the Russians. According to Sir John Hope Simpson, an authority on refugees, between 1933 and 1938, about 80,000 Germans sought refuge in France and about half of them moved on to settle elsewhere. About three-quarters of the 40,000 German refugees in France in 1940 who became the prisoners of the German victors were Jews.50 This compared with about 250,000 Russian refugees in the 1920s who remained in France and by June 1940 most had been absorbed into French society.51 The historian Greg Burgess comments: The true history of the refugees from Germany, however, is not one of their numbers. Indeed, the numbers were comparatively minor in comparison to the refugees in Europe in the 1920s when there were in some estimations between one and two million refugees from the Russian empire after the 1917 Revolution, and upwards of 320,000 Armenian and other refugees from Turkey. Rather, the true history of the refugees from Nazism lies in the response to them.52

THE YEARS 1933-1938 The period during which Germans sought refuge in France spanned the seven years from Adolf Hitler’s accession to power in January 1933 to the French defeat in June 1940. However, the years this study covers are the five that start with the arrival of the refugees in the spring of 1933 and end in 1938 with the fall of the PF, marked by the collapse of Camille Chautemps’s (1885-1963) ministry in March 1938 and the inability of Léon Blum (1872-1950) to form a second ministry in April 1938. This coincided with the German Anschluss with Austria on 12 March 1938 causing a new wave of Austrian Jewish and political left-wing refugees to come to France.53 In addition, there were the Spanish Republican refugees who had started to seek refuge in France: 15,000 in 1936, 50,000-60,000 in 1937, 150,000 in 1938 before the huge wave of 500,000 in 1939.54 To explain the period covered by this book it is worthwhile briefly to summarise the policy changes in the two years after April 1938. Daladier’s

The Circumstances

17

decrees of 2 and 14 May 1938 introduced a refugee policy, which differed significantly from the previous French position.55 The alleged reason for the change was the danger of fifth-columnist infiltration among the refugees. France no longer accepted the LON remit to manage the crisis. The May decrees incorporated the principle of universality and together with the decrees of 12 November 1938 and 12 April 1939 the government also intro­ duced a statute for refugees.56 In practice these concessions, the introduction of universality and a statute, were cosmetic. As the number of refugees enter­ ing France increased so the administration of refugee policy became much more severe.57 And while French policy toward refugees was markedly less friendly, the situation reversed in both the USA and the UK where public opinion forced their governments to adopt a more liberal stance. French hostility to the refugees may have originated in the conservative Laval and Flandin regimes of 1935; however, Daladier was a Radical Socialist and if he was forced to adopt restrictive right-wing policies it was probably because he was genuinely fearful of the number of refugees seeking asylum in France. The Republican ideal of aiding the persecuted to which the Quai had given considerable weight by protecting German refugees was set aside. Under Daladier, practical considerations, which included the appeasement of Germany, overrode the Montagnard principle. Together with Albert Sarraut (1872-1962), the Minister of the Interior, and Georges Bonnet (1889-1973), the Foreign Minister in Daladier’s government, they introduced a heavyhanded regime to regulate the inflow of refugees.58 For the first time, a French government formally defined refugees, determined their status and adopted the expedient that had been suggested by the Quai as early as 1934 but not approved of lodging refugees who could not be settled in other countries in special camps in France.59 Compared with the previous five years ministers assumed a much greater role in directing refugee policy. The change of policy under Daladier presents a clear break in the narrative of France’s reception of the refugees from Germany.

HISTORIOGRAPHY

Much has been written about the way the French authorities treated the refu­ gees, told from the refugees’ point of view by the refugees themselves and by historians. German refugees wrote autobiographies, novels and articles that produced an appreciable body of work, the school of Exilliteratur {exile writing), sometimes called Emigrantenliteratur {emigrants’ literature) to describe their reception and life in France. The authors comprised a wide range of refugees: politically non-aligned Jews, Catholics and Protestants, who had to escape for religious reasons, and Communists, Socialists and

18

Chapter 1

others who had to leave because of their political affiliations. As seen in chap­ ter 3 the German refugees were especially articulate because they comprised many intellectuals and journalists.60 There is no doubt that refugee life was difficult and challenging, but several writers somewhat unfairly blamed the French for their misfortunes: they included, for example, Hermann Kesten,61 Bodo Uhse,62 and Claude Vernier.63 They may have influenced the school of Germanist historians who claimed to have been the first to have researched the German emigration. Directed by the Communist Gilbert Badia, this group included Pierre Guillen, Rita Thalmann, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Jacques Omnes, Hélène Roussel and Lutz Winckler. Their narrative is overcritical of the French behaviour towards the refugees, censuring French society as well as the police and prefects.64 Historians who give more objective as well as comprehensive pictures of the refugees and accounts of their lives are Jean-Michel Palmier in his book, Weimar in Exile: The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America,65 Julia Franke’s Paris - eine neue Heimat?,66 Menschen in Gurs by Hanna Schramm, and Barbara Vormeier,67 and the many essays in the International Yearbooks of the German Society for Exile Studies, which deal with all aspects of the German exile.68 Albrecht Betz’s Exil und Engagement: Deutsche Schriftsteller in Frankreich der dreißiger Jahre,69 and Ralph Schor’s Ecrire en exil: Les écrivains étrangers en France 1919-1939 portray German writers’ lives in France, in particular the communities in Paris and Sanary-sur-mer.70 Although the German refugees were at one in their opposition to the Nazi regime, politics within the German refugee community prevented the forma­ tion of a united front. Ursula Langkau-Alex, whose three-volume examina­ tion of the Deutsche Volksfront in Deutsche Volksfront: 1932-1939 and the reasons for its collapse is the definitive work. It describes the dissension in meticulous detail.71 Chapters 3 and 5 show that there was much criticism of the behaviour of the French bureaucracy. An indispensable book on the conduct of the civil servants that dealt with immigration in the interwar years is Bonnet’s Les Pouvoirs Publics Français. In addition to its wealth of detail, the book is critical, not so much of the bureaucrats’ behaviour, but of the politicians for not having an overall immigration strategy which, he says, they would have had if there had been a Ministry of Immigration that would have ensured a unified approach by all the ministries involved. He maintains that from 1931 the public authorities were on the defensive, which he describes in quoting the comment of William Oualid, a distinguished jurist who campaigned for a regulated immigration policy:72 ‘We have often said it: France has immigra­ tion police; it does not have an immigration policy.’73 Bonnet also is critical of what he calls The timidity of the Popular Front' (Tes timidités du Front Populaire') concerning the refugees, although he does recognise that the PF

The Circumstances

19

arranged the amnesty for clandestine refugees. Even though his book is about immigration rather than refugees, it is relevant because most of the govern­ mental decrees concerned immigrants, and it is a record of how the authori­ ties dealt with them once they were in France without distinguishing between workers who could return to their country of origin and refugees who could not. Thalmann74 and Michael Marrus75 are also critical of the Front for not having introduced a statute for immigrants, whereas Mary Dewhurst Lewis thinks that the PF did make a difference by improving the general atmosphere for the refugees.76 As seen in chapters 8 and 9, there were French Jews who did not welcome their co-religionist refugees. This is described in another essential book, Vicky Caron’s Uneasy Asylum: France and the Refugee Crisis, 1933-1942, in which she explains in depth the politics and divisions within the French Jewish community in their attitude and reception of these refugees. She argues that ministerial instability and a weak executive rendered the govern­ ment susceptible to pressure from lobby groups and public opinion, which led to the restrictive measures against the German refugees. While the focus of Caron’s book is the Jewish community, it has a chapter on the Quai’s refu­ gee policy, which Caron judges was driven not by political or foreign policy considerations, but by domestic factors, especially the government’s desire to placate middle-class grievances that had become highly agitated with the onset of the economic depression.77 Gérard Noiriel’s pioneering and polemical work places immigration in France in its historical and social context and shows that immigrants have been a crucial element in the fabric of French society.78 He challenges the ideas of the commentators in the 1930s who maintained that Jewish refugees could not assimilate into French society. Refugees in Europe edited by Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch is a set of useful essays written by distinguished scholars, which link the 1930s to the post 1945 refugee problems.79 Because the United States and the United Kingdom were closed to German refugees until they relaxed their entry poli­ cies in late 1938, France was the only large democracy that was a viable des­ tination for German refugees in the 1930s. This is one of the main points Greg Burgess makes in his book about the history of refugees coming to France and is discussed in chapter 9.80 The debate about whether, and if so, how weak France was, is germane to this study because France was seen by many refugees as a strong power and a haven as the only large democracy accessible for refuge. It is relevant also in discussing whether ministerial instability affected refugee policy. Christian Delporte in La Hie République 1919-1940 argues that the Republic should not be judged solely by the instability of its administrations. The Republic was not as fragile as it seemed. It was sustained by the permanence of its

20

Chapter 1

civil servants, a view confirmed when looking at the Quai. He also main­ tains that the Republic’s great merit was to have nourished French identity in Republican values, which had helped it to overcome the constitutional crisis of 16 May 1877, of the putschist Boulanger and anti-Semitic trial of Dreyfus.81 Delporte, like Caron, contends that it was the economic dislocation of the 1930s, especially as it affected the middle classes, that weakened the Republic, and that France was not able to accept and adjust to the loss of its status of a great power.82 Philippe Nord argues, as does Delporte, that a vast participating public underpinned the regime and its values. He does not men­ tion the Stavisky scandal, clientelism and corruption as poisoning the polity.83 Another set of opinions is in Une contre-histoire de la Ille République, edited by Marion Fontaine, Frédéric Monier and Christophe Prochasson.84 According to them, Delporte’s narrative is a stereotypical continuity: the golden age of the Republic up to 1914, followed by the decadence of the 1930s. Their essays suggest that the system was of contradictions, not conti­ nuities. Instead of an overriding determinism, there was the tension between the efforts to build the Republic and the criticism and questioning by its enemies. Richard Carswell describes how politicians used the fall of France for political purposes and he outlines four distinctions to describe historians’ explanations for the fall: decadence, constraint, failure and contingency. The decadence of French society, its inability to deal with the crises of the interwar years made the defeat of 1940 inevitable. Constraint: the plethora of problems that overwhelmed the ministries. Failure: the poor political, foreign policy, economic and military decisions taken. Contingency: the argument that France was ready to fight, and its defeat was due to contingent military factors.85 The Republican model is explored in more essays in The French Republic, edited by Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert and Christophe Prochasson.86 They question the orthodox view that the Republic was liberal, arguing that it was deficient because it did not serve well immigrants, women, indigenous populations (indigènes), Muslims and other minorities: immigrants included refugees. The refugee problem was an element in Franco-German relations. However, the analyses of the diplomatic activity in the 1930s by dis­ tinguished historians such as Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Maurice Vaïsse, Georges-Henri Soutou and René Rémond, as well as in the biographies and autobiographies of diplomats and politicians, do not mention the German refugees. The autobiographies of Herriot,87 Paul-Boncour,88 Pierre Mendes France (1907-1982),89 Paul Reynaud (1878-1976),90 François-Poncet,91 and Emile Khan ( 1876-195 8)92 do not refer to them, nor do the biogra­ phies of Blum,93 Léger,94 and Jean Longuet (1876-1938).95 For example,

The Circumstances

21

even Raphaële Ulrich-Pier’s two-volume biography of René Massigli (1888—1988)96 ignores the refugees and the démarche concerning minorities that Massigli orchestrated at the LON in 1933.97 Léger’s and Chautemps’s private papers have the same lacunae, though both were involved with the German refugees, especially Chautemps as Minister of the Interior in 1933, and Prime Minister for Serre’s proposal in 1938. The private papers of Bérenger, Jacques Helbronner (1873—1943)98 and Jacques Fouques-Duparc (1897-1996)," all of whom were important in refugee affairs, have not been found, maybe because they were destroyed or lost during the war. The exception is the memoirs of Marcel Livian (1901-1988), the lawyer in charge of the immigration department of the Socialist Party in the 1930s, which is a vital source.100 In contrast to the lack of French material, the diaries of James McDonald (1886-1964)101 and the autobiography of his deputy at the HCR, Norman Bentwich,102 contain much information on the authors’ relations with the Quai and French authorities that dealt with the German refugees during the years 1933-1935. On the other hand, Viscount Cecil’s autobiography gives short shrift to his time as Chairman of the HCR Governing Board.103 They are discussed in chapters 8 and 9. Research in France has been in the archives of the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de la Courneuve et de Nantes; les Archives Nationales de Pierrefitte-sur-Seine; the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC), Nanterre; the Préfecture de Police, Le Pré-SaintGervais, Paris; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris; the Archives et Documentation, Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris; and the Archives départementales de la Seine, St Denis. In Switzerland, the LQN Archives, Geneva, were consulted. In England research was carried out at the National Archives (NA), Kew; the British Library, London; the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London and the Wiener Library, London; and in the United States, the archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. There are gaps in the Quai’s archives because it destroyed a part in 1940. The documents left intact, together with the archives of several other ministries, government departments, including the Police Générale, politi­ cal parties like the Parti Communiste Français {French Communist Party} (PCF), Jewish organisations and private persons, were seized in 1940 as war booty by the Germans and removed to Berlin. In 1945, the Russians took them to Moscow where the KGB stored them until Presidents Yeltsin and Chirac arranged that about 80 per cent returned to France between 1994 and 2000.104

22

Chapter 1

NOTES 1. See chapter 3 for Nansen passports. Russians, Armenians and Assimilated refugees, Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldeans, Syrians, Kurds, a small number of Turks and from 1935 Saarlanders were entitled to Nansen passports. 2. Under the law of 14 Julyl933: Gesetz über Widerruf von Einbürgerungen und die Aberkennung der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit. (Law on revocation of naturalisation and withdrawal of German citizenship.) 3. As a response to expulsion to Poland by Germany of Jews living in Germany with Polish passports, on 31 March 1938, Poland suspended the validity of all Polish passports whose holders had been abroad for more than five years. 4. See Matthew James Frank and Jessica Reinisch, Refugees in Europe, 19191959: A Forty Years’ Crisis? (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). 5. Founded in 1898 during the Dreyfus affair. See chapter 7. 6. Official title the Religious Society of Friends. A Christian caritative society founded in England in the seventeenth century. See chapter 7. 7. See chapter 5. 8. A Comintern front organisation. See chapter 7. 9. LON C 1616 513. Minutes of the High Commission Governing Board, 6 December 1933. For explanation of the LON archives, see Guide to the Archives of the League of Nations 1919-1946 (Geneva: United Nations, 1999). 10. The HCR did not report to the LON, whereas the Nansen Office did. 11. The Dublin regulation, adopted in 2003, determines that normally the state where the asylum seeker first enters the European Union (EU) is responsible for examining an asylum application. 12. The JDC, World Jewish Relief, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, HICEM (the 1927 merger of three Jewish emigration organisations, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the Jewish Colonial Association (ICA) and Emigdirect), to form HICEM (an acronym of the three) and the Quakers. 13. For a discussion of undesirable, see Emmanuel Blanchard. Les ‘indésirables’. Passé et présent d’une catégorie d’action publique. GISTI. Figures de l’étranger. Quelles représentations pour quelles politiques ? GISTI, pp. 16-26, 2013. 14. The 28 October 1933 LON Convention relating to the International Status of Refugees. Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, ‘International Refugee Law - Yesterday, Today, but Tomorrow?’, Working Paper no. 16, Refugee Law Initiative, pp. 4-19, Edition of special papers from the Annual Conference, ‘The Future of Refugee Law’, Senate House, London, 29 June-1 July 2016 (London: School of Advanced Study, University of London). 15. Anthony Aust, Handbook of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 170. 16. LON R 5718 75. 17. Noiriel points out that this friction existed before the arrival of the German refugees. Gerard Noiriel, Immigration, antisémitisme et racisme en France, XlXeXXe siècle: discours publics, humiliations privées (Paris: Belin, 2007), p. 367.

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18. Several thousand, according to the JDC Monthly Bulletin, March and April 1935. 19. MAE SDN 1806, Réponse au Président de la Commission des Affaires Étrangères de la Chambre des Députés (Response to the President of the Commission for Foreign Affairs in the Chambre des Députés) no date but probably November 1935, p. 210. 20. (1871-1950) He was granted Czech citizenship in 1936. 21. Barbara Vormeier, Frankreich, Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945 (Darmstadt: Primus, 1998), p. 221. 22. MAE SDN 1806, Réponse au Président de la Commission des Affaires Étrangères de la Chambre des Députés. (Response to the President of the Commission for Foreign Affairs in the Chambre des Députés), no date but probably November 1935, p. 205. 23. AN 577 AP 5. Georges Mauco’s report in 1947 recorded naturalisations from all countries: 1937, pp 25,353; 1938, 39,129; 1939, 76,913. See Paul Lawrence, 'Naturalisations in France, 1927-1939, the example of the Alpes de Haute Provence’ (School of Advanced Study, University of London, Institute of Historical Research, 1997). 24. (? -1963); Russian émigré lawyer, ex-Menshevik, legal adviser to the Governing Board of the International Nansen Office and council member of the International Federation of the Human Rights League, set up in Paris in 1922 to defend ‘democracy and peace beyond the borders’. See Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 25 mai 1922, p. 255; and NA FO 371, Note Makins 18 May 1936, pp. 125-26. For Nansen, see chapter 3. 25. See Gérard Noiriel, ‘Le “modèle français” d’immigration: intervention à l’Assemblée Nationale 25 March 2011’, at http://noiriel.over-blog.com/article-lemodele-français-d-immigration-intervention-a-l-assemblee-nationale-70370129.html (accessed 18 September 2017). 26. David Runciman calls sovereignty an attractive concept for states: see Forum for European Philosophy, Event 29, November 2017. For the concept of modem sovereignty, see Jean Bodin, Les Six Livres de la République (1576) and Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651). Of the many definitions of modem sovereignty, the ones that serve this discussion best are the ‘internal’ by John Ruggie: ‘The institutionalisa­ tion of public authority within mutually exclusive jurisdictional domains’, in John Ruggie, ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: towards a neoreal­ ist synthesis’, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 143, and the ‘external’ by J. Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, ‘The rules of sovereignty are defined as a set of principles, by which the international community recognises the legitimacy of authoritative control over a specific population and territory’, in J. Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, ‘The State and the Nation: changing norms and the rules of sovereignty in international rela­ tions’, International Organisation, 48(1) (December 1994), p. 108. Articles 1 and 3 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States defined sov­ ereignty as internal, not subject to external recognition (LON Treaty Series, vol. 165, pp. 20-43). See also the definitions of the international lawyers in chapters 4 and 5.

24

Chapter 1

27. Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Jean-Claude Barbier, ‘L’accueil des réfugiés d’Allemagne en Alsace (1933-34): arbitraire de l’administration et marges de l’action individuelle et collec­ tive’, 2014, p. 4, at https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01003938 (accessed 15 January 2015). 28. See chapter 7. 29. Gérard Noiriel, Réfugiés et sans-papiers: la République face au droit d’asile, XIXe-XXe siècle (Paris: Pluriel, 2012), pp. 222-26. 30. See chapter 2. 31. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, letter from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Under­ secretary of State in Charge of Immigration and Foreigners, 5 mars 1938. 32. Le Journal, 5 novembre 1934. 33. AN F7 16079, 2 août 1933. 34. See chapters 3, 6, and 11. 35. By all the governments: The Bloc National, 1919-24, the Cartel des Gauches, 1924-26, and the Union Nationale, 1926-29. 36. Ilsen About. Enregistrer et identifier les étrangers en France, 1880-1940. www.histoire-immigration.fr Accessed 19.03.2018 37. Jean-Charles Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français et l’immigration dans L’entre-deux-guerres, Centre d’histoire économique et sociale de la région Lyonnaise (Lyon: Centre d’histoire économique et sociale de la région lyonnaise, 1976), p. 1. 38. Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français, p. 18. 39. Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, ‘Ouverture et fermeture de la France aux étrangers’, Vingtième Siècle 1(73) (2002), pp. 27-38. 40. Quoted in Public Opinion and Twentieth-Century Diplomacy by Daniel Hucker, (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), p 49. 41. See ‘Third Republic’ by Philip Nord in Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert and Christophe Prochasson, The French Republic: History, Values, Debates (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), pp. 44-55. He argues that the Republic was not so weak, especially compared with other democracies, none of which could cope adequately with the crises of the 1930s. He blames poor leadership for the defeat of 1940. See also Philip Nord, France 1940: Defending the Republic (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 42. A point emphasised by Robert Boyce in The Great Interwar Crisis and the Collapse of Globalization (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 43. Ethan Katz, Lisa Leff and Maud Mandel, Colonialism and the Jews (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017), p. 131. 44. Heinrich Mann and Adolf Wild (eds), Propos d’Exil: articles publiés dans ‘La Dépêche’ par les émigrés du III Reich (Toulouse: La Dépêche du Midi, 1983), p. 15. See also Mary McAuliffe, When Paris Sizzled (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), p. 133. 45. See Greg Burgess, Refuge in the Land of Liberty: France and Its Refugees, from the Revolution to the End of Asylum, 1787-1939 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

The Circumstances

25

46. ‘As the refugee crisis began in 1938, growing competition for a finite num­ ber of visas, affidavits, and travel options made immigration even more difficult. In June 1938, 139,163 people were on the waiting list for the German quota. One year later, in June 1939, the waiting list length had jumped to 309,782. About 90 per cent were Jewish. By 1940, only 90,000 German Jews had been granted visas and allowed to settle in the United States. A potential immigrant from Hungary applying in 1939 faced a nearly forty-year wait to immigrate to the United States’. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Immigration to the United States 1933-1941. See also Bat-Ami Zucker. Frances Perkins and the German-Jewish Refugees, 1933-1940. American Jewish History. March 2001. Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry 1933-1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews were Expendable (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988). See Herbert A. Strauss. Jewish Emigration from Germany Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses (II) at https://academi c.oup.com/leobaeck/article-absract/26/1/343/939841. Accessed on 28 July 2019. He says that by 1940, some 100,000 German Jews also moved to Western European countries, especially France, Belgium and the Netherlands. However, these countries would later be occupied by Germany, and most of the refugees in these countries would fall victim to the Holocaust. Another 48,000 emigrated to the United Kingdom and other European countries. 47. See Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews 1933-1948: British immigration policy, Jewish refugees and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 48. It moved to Paris in the autumn of 1938 when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. 49. In the thirties, the term israélites was considered noble while the term juif was pejorative. See Dominique Schnapper, Juifs et israélites (Paris: Gallimard, 1980). 50. Gilbert Martin, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust (Oxford: Routledge, 2009), map 15, p. 10. 51. John Hope Simpson and Royal Institute of International Affairs, The refugee problem. Report of a survey. By Sir John Hope Simpson (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 321-24. 52. Greg Burgess, The League of Nations and the Refugees from Nazi Germany: James G. McDonald and Hitler’s Victims (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), p. 22. Between 1933 and 1939, about eighty thousand Germans sought refuge in France from the Nazi government. See also John Hope Simpson page 16. 53. At the time of Anschluss the Jewish population in Austria was estimated at 200,000. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/austria-virtual-jewish-history-tour. Accessed 15 November 2018. By contrast the Jewish population in Germany accord­ ing to the census of June 16, 1933, the Jewish population of Germany, including the Saar region (which at that time was still under the administration of the League of Nations), was approximately 505,000 people. Eighty per cent of the Jews in Germany (about 400,000 people) held German citizenship. The remainder were mostly Jews of Polish citizenship, many of whom were bom in Germany and who had permanent

26

Chapter 1

resident status in Germany, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/germa ny-jewish-population-in-1933. Accessed 15 November 2018. 54. See Jean-François Berdah. ‘The Devil in France. The Tragedy of Spanish Republicans and French Policy after the Civil War (1936-1945)’, Gudmundur Halfdanarson and Ann Katherine Isaacs (eds.), Discrimination and Tolerance in Historical Perspective (Pisa: Plus Pisa University Press, 2009), pp. 142-154. See also Vicki Caron, Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 288. 55. JO, Lois et Décrets, 2, 14 mai 12 novembre 1938. 12 avril 1939. 56. Using Article 2 of the aborted Serre project. See chapter 2. See also André Ulmann, ‘Sous la protection de la loi’, Esprit 7(82) (juillet 1939), pp. 496-512. 57. See Chapter 11. 58. See for asylum chapters 5 and 9. 59. AN F7 16079, Procès-verbal de la réunion interministérielle. (Minutes of the Interministerial Meeting). 13 juin 1934. 60. The Schriftleitergesetz of 4 October 1933 forced many liberal papers to close and Jewish journalists to lose their jobs: Reichgesetzblatt, 7 October 1933, Teil 1, p. 713. 61. See Hermann Kesten, Deutsche Literatur im Exil. Briefe europäischer Autoren 1933-1949 (Berlin: Fischer, 1973). 62. Communist writer and activist (1904-63). See Anne Saint Sauveur-Henn, Fluchtziel Paris: Die Deutschsprachige Emigration 1933-1940, ed. Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Dokumente, Texte, Materialien (Berlin: Metropol, 2002). 63. Real name Karl Werner Prasuhn, actor and writer (1913-1996). See Claude Vernier, Tendre Exil: Souvenirs d’un réfugié anti-Nazi en France (Paris: Broché, 2015). 64. Gilbert Badia, L’émigration en France, ses conditions et ses problèmes, les barbelés de l’exil (Vincennes: PUV, 1984), pp. 11-19; Gilbert Badia, Jean-Baptiste Joly and Rita Thalmann, ‘L’immigration allemande et l’opinion publique en France de 1933 à 1936’, in La France et l’Allemagne 1932-1936. Communications présentées au Colloque franco-allemand tenu à Paris du 10 au 12 mars 1977 (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1980), pp. 149-72; L’Emigration allemande et l’opinion française de 1936 à 1939: perspectiva.net Beihefte der Francia Band 10, 1981; Gilbert Badia, ‘Le Comité Thaelmann’, in Gilbert Badia, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Jean-Philippe Mathieu, Jacques Omnes, Jean-Michel Palmier and Hélène Roussel, Les bannis de Hitler: accueil et lutte des exilés allemands en France 1933-1939 (Vincennes: PUV, 1984), pp. 199— 260; Gilbert Badia, ‘Heures et malheurs d’une exposition sur le lile Reich (1938)’, in Badia et al. (eds), Les bannis de Hitler, pp. 261-86; Gilbert Badia, Jean-Baptiste Joly and Jacques Omnes, ‘Avant-propos’, in Badia et al., Les bannis de Hitler, (Vincennes: PUV, 1984), pp. 7-10; Gilbert Badia, Jean-Baptiste Joly and Jacques Omnes, ‘Défense de la culture allemande’, in Les bannis de Hitler, (Vincennes: PUV, 1984), pp. 365-78; Gilbert Badia, Jean-Baptiste Joly and Jacques Omnes, ‘Du Livre Brun à la tentative de Volksfront’ in Les bannis de Hitler, (Vincennes: PUV, 1984), pp. 357-64; Gilbert Badia, Françoise Joly, Jean-Baptiste Joly, Claude Laharie, Ingrid Lederer, Jean-Philippe Mathieu, Hélène Roussel, Joseph Rovan and Barbara

The Circumstances

27

Vormeier, Les Barbelés de l’exil: études sur l’émigration allemande et autrichienne, 1938-1940 (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1979). 65. Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar en exil: Le destin de l’émigration intellectuelle allemande antinazie en Europe et aux États-Unis (Paris: Payot, 1990). 66. Julia Franke, Paris, eine neue Heimat? Jüdische Emigranten aus Deutschland 1933-1939 (Munich: Dunker & Humblot, 2000). 67. Hanna Schramm and Barbara Vormeier, Menschen in Gurs: Erinnerungen an ein französisches Internierungslager, 1940-1941, mit einem dokumentarischen Beitrage zur französischen Emigrantenpolitik 1933-1944 (Worms: Georg Heintz, 1977). 68. Gesellschaft für Exilforschung, Verlag Edition (Munich: Text + Kritik). 69. Albrecht Betz, Exil und Engagement, Deutsche Schriftsteller in Frankreich der dreißiger Jahre (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1986). 70. Ralph Schor, Ecrire en exil: Les écrivains étrangers en France 1919-1939 (Paris: CNRS, 2013). 71. Ursula Langkau-Alex, Deutsche Volksfront 1932-1939: zwischen Berlin, Paris, Prag und Moskau, vol. 1 Vorgeschichte Und Gründung des Ausschusses Zur Vorbereitung Einer Deutschen Volksfront, vol. 2 Geschichte des Ausschusses Zur Vorbereitung Einer Deutschen Volksfront, vol. 3 Dokumente Zur Geschichte des Ausschusses Zur Vorbereitung Einer Deutschen Volksfront, Chronik Und Verzeichnisse (Berlin: Akademie, 2004/05). 72. Professor of law at the University of Paris, Secretary-general of HICEM, Vice-president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Director of the Consistoire de Paris, he promoted the cause of the colonised. 73. Bonnet, Les pouvoirs publics français, p. 373; quoted from the journal Esprit (juillet 1939), p. 547. 74. Rita Thalmann, ‘Comité international d’histoire de la Deuxième guerre mondiale’, in La France et L’allemagne, 1932-1936 Communications, Colloque franco-allemand (Paris: CNRS, 1980); L’Emigration allemande et l’opinion française de 1936 à 1939. Beihefte der Francia, Band 10 198, Max Weber Stiftung at www .perspectivia.net (accessed 3 February 2016). 75. Michael Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War Through the Cold War (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002). 76. Mary Dewhurst Lewis, The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007). 77. See Caron, Uneasy Asylum, Chapter V. 78. Gérard Noiriel, Le Creuset français. Histoire de l’immigration (XIXe-XXe siècle), coll. L’Univers Historique (Paris: Seuil, 1988); La Tyrannie du national. Le droit d’asile en Europe (1793-1993) (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1991); Population, immigration et identité nationale en France (XIX-XXe siècle) (Paris: Hachette, 1992); La République et le droit d’asile, XIX-XXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1998); Les origi­ nes républicaines de Vichy (Paris: Hachette littératures, 1999); Les fils maudits de la République: l’avenir des intellectuels en France (Paris: Fayard, 2005); Réfugiés et sans-papiers', Immigration, antisémitisme et racisme en France.

28

Chapter 1

79. Frank and Reinisch (eds), Refugees in Europe 1919-1959. 80. Burgess, Refuge in the Land of Liberty. 81. The crisis of 26 May 1877 resulted in the Republicans prevailing over the monarchists. 82. Christian Delporte, La Hie République 1919-1940, de Poincaré à Paul Reynaud (Paris: Pygmalion, 1998). 83. Philip Nord, France 1940: Defending the Republic (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2015). 84. Marion Fontaine, Frédéric Monier and Christophe Prochasson (eds), Une contre-histoire de la Ille République (Paris: La Découverte, 2013). 85. Richard Carswell, The Fall of France in the Second World War (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp. 6-7. 86. Edward Berenson, The French Republic: history, values, debates (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 87. Edouard Herriot, Jadis, d’une guerre à l’autre 1914-1936 (Paris: Flammarion, 1952). 88. Joseph Paul-Boncour, Entre deux Guerres, Souvenirs de la Ille République. Vol. 3, Sur les chemins de la défaite 1935-1940 (Paris: Plon, 1946). 89. Pierre Mendès France, S’engager: 1922-1943 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 90. Paul Reynaud, Au Cœur de la Mêlée 1930-1945 (Paris: Flammarion, 1951). 91. André François-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une Ambassade à Berlin, 1931-1938 (Paris: Perrin, 2016). 92. Emile Kahn, Au Temps de la République, propos d’un républicain (Paris, Ligue des droits de l’homme: Dole-du-Jura Presses jurassiennes, 1966); Kahn was Secretary-general of the LDH 1932-53. 93. Serge Berstein, Léon Blum (Paris: Broché, 2006). 94. Renaud Meltz, Alexis Léger dit Saint-Jean Perse (Paris: Flammarion, 2008). 95. Gilles Candar and Maurice Agulhon, Jean Longuet, la conscience et l’action: journées Longuet, 26 et 27 avril 1985 (Paris: Revue politique et parlementaire, 1988). Longuet, Karl Marx’s grandson, was a lawyer and socialist politician. 96. Raphaële Ulrich-Pier, René Massigli: une vie de diplomate (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006). 97. See chapter 6. 98. Councillor of state (Conseiller d’Etat) and vice-president of the Consistoire central israélite de France. He was also on the committee of the Comité National de Secours aux Réfugiés Allemands Victimes de l’Antisémitisme, established on 1 July 1933 to combine into one the various associations dealing with refugees. See chapter 8. 99. Diplomat; responsible for formulating most of the Quai’s refugee policies. See chapter 2. 100. Marcel Livian, Le Parti Socialiste et l’immigration: le gouvernement Léon Blum, la main-d’œuvre immigrée et les réfugiés politiques (1920-1940): russes, géor­ giens, arméniens, italiens, espagnols, allemands, sarrois, autrichiens, allemands des Sudètes (Paris: Anthropos, 1982).

The Circumstances

29

101. James G. McDonald, and Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart and Severin Hochberg (eds), Advocate for the Doomed: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1932-1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); James G. McDonald, and Richard Breitman, Barbara McDonald Stewart and Severin Hochberg (eds), Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 19351945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2009). 102. Norman Bentwich, Wanderer between Two Worlds: An Autobiography (London: Kegan Paul, 1941). He was a British Jewish barrister, much involved in Palestine. 103. Viscount Cecil (Lord Robert Cecil), A Great Experiment. An Autobiography (London: Cape, 1941). Cecil devotes only two pages to the HCR in his autobiography. 104. See MAE, ‘Fonds russes restitués France Diplomatie’, at www.diplom atie.gouv.fr/fr/les-minsitres-et-le-ministere/archives-et-patrimoine/dossiers-en-cours /spoliations-1939-1945/articles/fonds-russes (accessed 15 September 2017); Sophie Cœuré, La Mémoire spoliée. Les archives des français, butin de guerre nazi puis soviétique (Paris: Payot, 2006); Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, F. J. Hoogewoud and Eric Ketelaar (eds), Returned from Russia: Nazi Archival Plunder in Western Europe and Recent Restitution Issues - With Afterword 2013 (Builth Wells, UK: Institute of Art & Law, 2013).

Chapter 2

The Quai d'Orsay

A seasoned diplomat explains that when there is ministerial instability, the measure of diplomats directing policy is its consistency; evidence of politicians directing affairs is when policy changes.1 The continuity of ten­ ure of the Quai civil servants, which contrasted with the instability of Third Republic ministries, meant that in the main refugee policy was formulated and executed by the Quai in conjunction with the Ministries of the Interior, Defence, Agriculture, Justice and so on. Ministries tended to be in power for too short a time to intervene in the shaping of refugee policy, which allowed the bureaucrats discretion in forging it as well as its implementation. In any case, most Ministers of Foreign Affairs (MAE) did not take much interest in refugee affairs.2 During the PF, there was a change in emphasis, but the basic policy was consistent during the five-year period of this study. Turf war was an important determinant of the system. Responsibility for managing refugee matters was split between several ministries and coordi­ nated by special commissions and ad hoc committees. The Quai, concerned with threats to its jurisdiction, assertively endorsed the established system, and ministerial instability helped it in departmental disputes. The Quai resisted attempts to create a new department that would coordinate and exe­ cute immigration policy for both foreign workers and refugees, arguing that only its personnel had the experience and skill to deal with the international aspects of the refugee problem. Apart from the vain attempts by Chautemps to set up a separate department responsible for immigration,3 the few ministers who did take an interest in refugee affairs did not try to change the system.4 This chapter examines the arrangements the Quai made to deal with the German refugees, the officials, diplomats and consuls responsible for policy, the regulations that applied and their application. It then looks at how the

31

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Chapter 2

Quai managed its business within the governmental system and its relations with politicians.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF REFUGEE AFFAIRS AT THE QUAI Between January 1933 and April 1938, there were six MAE.5 The longest serving were Laval, for eighteen months from November 1934 to June 1936 and Delbos, for fifteen months from June 1936 to March 1938. Paul-Boncour served for thirteen months, which meant that the rest were in office for an average each of some six months. Nevertheless, this could be seen as a form of stability considering that the six foreign ministers served under twelve dif­ ferent governments.6 There were four secretaries of state for foreign affairs (François de Tessan served twice7), of whom the longest serving, for just one year, from June 1936 was Pierre Viénot (1897-1944). Louis Barthou (1862-1934), Laval and Flandin did not appoint one. As already shown, these short spells contrasted with the stability at the Quai. For example, Léger was the Secrétaire Général (Secretary-general) during the entire period under discussion. From 1933 to 1937, Paul Bargeton held the post of Directeur des Affaires politiques et commerciales (Political and Commercial Affairs'), ranked the third most senior official in the Quai below the Minister and the Secretary-general. Under Bargeton, Emile Charvériat was director of the Sous-direction d’Europe (Deputy Directorate for Europe) from 1934 to 1937, and he was succeeded by Charles Rochat, who had served as Chef du cabinet (Head of the Minister’s Office) for five ministers. Fouques-Duparc, who had served as deputy to René Massigli at the LON,8 although also seconded to ministers’ cabinets, was concerned with refugee affairs throughout the period.9 Diplomats from the Quai were seconded to most of the ministers’ cabinets. The appointment of the same diplomats to a succession of cabinets helped ensure through their official role as advisers of the Quai’s control of policy,10 thus making the MAE’s cabinet influential and important.11 However, there is a lack of documentary evidence of cabinet discussions: apart from some of Delbos’s cabinet meetings, minutes of MAE cabinets were not recorded.12 Another contrast to ministerial instability was Bérenger’s long presidency of the Senate Foreign Affairs Commission from 1931 to 1939. He also held the position of délégué titulaire (titular delegate) of France to the LON from 1932 until 1940. In contrast with the lack of ministerial direction, he took an interest in refugee affairs and was influential in their formulation and con­ duct. As we shall see in later chapters, in addition to pronouncing at home and in the LON, the Sarraut government appointed him French representative to the Governing Board of the HCR.13

The Quai d’Orsay

33

Interestingly, Etienne de Crouy-Chanel, Léger’s private Secretary, describ­ ing Léger’s discussions about policies with each of the foreign ministers as a Herculean task, does not mention refugees.14 Other than Viénot, who took an active interest in the refugee problem, and Chautemps, who was interested in the system for managing policy decisions, it seems that ministers left the con­ duct of refugee policy to the Quai. While this lack of interest may have been what happened in practice, officially the Quai’s job was to execute policies as instructed by the minister. The diplomats’ role was to advise the minister and suggest options, whereas the policy adopted was the responsibility of the minister, which the diplomats were expected to carry out.15 A diplomat would never independently pursue a policy that was not sanctioned by the minister.16 The minister’s cabinet might, however, interpret the minister’s wishes and give appropriate directions to the Quai. Fouques-Duparc’s briefing notes for the French representatives attending the LON assemblies, council meetings and commissions in Geneva are evidence of the policy followed, but there is hardly anything to show who made the policy decisions.17 In any case, it seems that ministers took little note of the Quai’s suggestions and left diplo­ mats on their own to carry out what they interpreted as the desired policy.18 This is confirmed by Duroselle, who says that the Quai ‘was of little interest to the members of parliament’,19 and concludes that, despite the frequent lack of detailed direction by ministers,20 diplomats ‘acted as servants of the state and applied the policies of the government in power’.21 During this period, the refugee problem took second place to more impor­ tant foreign policy matters. Ministers and senior diplomats were concerned with German resurgence and French isolation and although the refugees came from Germany, they were a small consideration in the overall scheme of foreign policy. According to historian Georges-Henri Soutou, the main preoccupation of French diplomacy in the interwar years was collective security.22 The United States had withdrawn from the European theatre into isolation, the British were inclined to appease Germany, leaving France to pursue a policy of collective security to offset French isolation and counter German revanchism. Consequently, the Franco-Soviet rapprochement, efforts to achieve pacts with Eastern European countries and Italy and, all the while, keeping close cooperation with the British preoccupied senior French diplo­ mats, leaving middle ranking diplomats to make refugee policy. Almost the only documentary evidence of a politician directing the Quai’s refugee policy was during the year from June 1936 to June 1937 when Viénot held the office of sous-secrétaire d’État au ministère des affaires étrangères (Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs'), during the PF.23 He was instrumental in the appointment of the prominent Socialist Jean Longuet to represent France in Geneva at the LON,24 and also a prime mover in cooperation with Roger Salengro (1890-1936) the Minister of the

34

Chapter 2

Interior,25 for the introduction of the amnesty for clandestine refugees in France in September 1936. Barthou restructured the Quai’s administration in 1934 into three services, généraux, spécialisés and annexes {general, specialised and annex).26 The hierarchy of the directorates concerned with the refugees was:27 Services généraux (General Services): Cabinet du ministre (Minister’s Office) Secrétariat général (General Secretariat) Direction des affaires politiques et commerciales (Directorate for Political and Commercial Affairs), under which were: Sous-direction d’Europe (Deputy Directorate for Europe) Sous-direction des relations commerciales (Deputy Directorate for Commercial Relations) Sous-direction de la Société des Nations™ (SDN) (Deputy Directorate for League of Nations (LON)) Sous-direction des Affaires administratives et des Unions internationales (Deputy Directorate for Administrative Affairs and International Associations) Sous-direction des Chancelleries et de Contentieux (Deputy Directorate for Chancelleries and Litigation) Contrôle des étrangers (Supervision of Foreigners) Section juridique (Legal Department)

There was no section solely responsible for refugee affairs. Instead, responsi­ bility was spread between several sections and personnel. The Direction des affaires politiques et commerciales was mainly in charge of overseeing the Quai’s policy for refugees, under which were the Sous-direction d’Europe, the Contrôle des étrangers that was responsible for the consulates and the issue of visas, and importantly, the Sous-direction de la SDN, whose office was in a building in the Invalides, separated from the Head Office on the Quai d’Orsay. This physical separation is said to have given the section a freer hand in LON policy decisions. The Quai, unique among the LON members of the large countries, did not have an office in Geneva. Judging by the initials at the top of the documents and the signatures on letters and telegrams, Léger was not much involved in the conduct of refugee policy even though he signed some circular instructions to ambassadors. This operation was delegated to Bargeton, who divided the responsibility between different sections, the main one being the Sous-direction de la SDN. Massigli was the head from 1928 to 1935, Ernest Lagarde from November 1935 to October 1936 and Pierre Amal from 1936 until 1940. The key role in Geneva to sit as the French representative on the refugee committees was given to the head of the Sous-direction des Chancelleries et de Contentieux, first to

The Quai d’Orsay

35

Edouard de Navailles-Labatut, whose main concern was the Nansen refugees and when he retired in 1935 was replaced by Paul Verchére de Reffye. Fouques-Duparc, the Quai specialist in refugee matters, wrote most of the notes concerning refugees and formulated a good part of the refugee policy. From 1931, he was first deputy in the SDN section to Massigli, then served under Massigli’s successors, Lagarde and Arnal, although he spent most of these years seconded to the foreign ministers’ private office. He was well qualified: married to a Russian refugee, his doctoral law thesis was on the protection of minorities, a study of the rights of man with a foreword by the distinguished liberal jurist Albert de La Pradelle.29 Livian describes FouquesDuparc as respected, competent and favourably disposed towards refugees.30 In their memoirs fellow diplomats Crouy-Chanel31 and Armand Bérard32 are complimentary about Fouques-Duparc’s ability, intelligence and judge­ ment, but none of them says anything about his work with refugees whereas McDonald, referring to Fouques-Duparc as the Quai’s man at the LON who dealt with refugee affairs, describes him ‘as good to work with’.33 There are no biographies of Fouques-Duparc. Diplomats looked down on the consular service and distanced themselves from it. Tn France, the job of consul was long considered by diplomats as less noble, since not relating to the regal dimensions of foreign policy’.34 Louis Blanchet was head of the office of Contróle des étrangers (Supervision of Foreigners') from 1933 to 1936 - no one was appointed to succeed him in 1937. The minutes of meetings of the Commission interministerielle permanente de Vimmigration (The Permanent Interministerial Immigration Commission) show the ministries’ different priorities concerning the issue of visas. The Minister of the Interior, responsible for public security, wanted to restrict entry to France; the Minister of Labour wanted to protect French jobs; and the Minister of Commerce did not want to inhibit trade and discourage tourists.35 Although politicians sometimes intervened on behalf of eminent persons to override decisions made by consuls, these conflicting requirements left the consuls considerable discretion in the granting of visas.36 The lack of direction from Paris was intentional with instructions to con­ suls that were deliberately vague. The Quai was adept at cloaking directives in abstruse, guarded language when it wanted to avoid being pinned down. This was the case when acknowledging questions about the plight of the first wave of German refugees raised in the Assemblée Nationale as a matter of urgency by the left-wing deputies Gabriel Peri, Paul Malingre and Jules Moch at the end of March 1933.37 Blanchet gave Paul-Boncour his recom­ mendations for the instructions to consuls.38 Over the last few days, through the applications made to it, the department has already noted that the requests (from Dresden and Berlin) for short-term visas

36

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have no purpose other than to make them appear more acceptable but in real­ ity conceal the intention of the interested parties to seek to settle definitively in France.

The abnormal situation noted in our offices at present and the new measures of reprisal announced in Germany, give reason to fear that from one day to the next, large groups of Jews fleeing the persecution of which they are victims may unexpectedly present themselves at our border posts demanding asylum in our territory. Until now, the Special Commissioners of the Eastern Region (Commissaires Spéciaux de la région de 1’Est) have had no instructions for such an eventuality. As to Jews who do not have a German passport but who have a certificate of identity as Russian refugees, or a proof of identity and travel authorisation, and who, after the decision made by the Council of Ministers (Conseil des Ministres), are both the object of the special regulations set forth on 27 May 1932, our Agents must limit themselves to general instructions, that is, to address themselves to the Department for decisions on visa requests formulated by the interested parties. In addition, in the case of a group of Jews at our border seeking refuge in our territory, it would not be appropriate to refuse asylum if it appears obvious that they are running immediate risks. It would at that point be the responsibility of the Minister of the Interior (M. le Ministre de l’intérieur) to take the security measures necessary: in this respect, from the point of view of the Department, there would be drawbacks in keeping these refugees in our eastern region. If the Minister approves of the preceding proposals, appropriate instructions, addressed to the Ambassador of the Republic (Ambassadeur de la République) in Berlin, can be telegraphed, and the Minister of the Interior (M. le Ministre de l’intérieur) can be informed of the Department’s view. No mention was made of non-Jewish refugees from Germany whose lives were in danger, nor of Germans who applied for visas at the French consul­ ates in other countries. Paul-Boncour agreed the draft, and it formed the basis of Léger’s letter to François-Poncet of 7 April 1933 (see Introduction).39 The tone was tough compared with the accommodating instruction that Chautemps, as Minister of the Interior, issued to the prefects in April in which he directed them to order their frontier posts to issue a safe conduct to refugees from Germany upon a simple declaration of the refugees’ situation.40 Historians have attributed significance to this as evidence of the humanitar­ ian stance of the French in the first months following the Nazi decrees.41 However, Chautemps’s instruction while seemingly more friendly than the Quai’s was probably issued for public consumption in France and intended also to placate the deputies’ concerns, whereas he was doubtless aware that the Quai’s policy and practice were less considerate. Indeed, by the summer of 1933, the Quai assessed the situation had become critical.

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The Berlin embassy reported that during the period from 1 March to 1 June 1933, 10,432 visas were issued to German citizens, 108 to persons with Nansen passports and 312 to stateless persons with international passports.42 On 8 September, the Quai wrote to Roger Cambon, French chargé d’affaires in London, that there were 40,000 Jewish refugees in France.43 It had already on 12 August rectified the gaps in its previous instruction of 7 April, by speci­ fying that consuls must not issue visas to German passport holders who were residents in countries other than Germany nor to passportless refugees from Germany who had been granted residence in other countries.44 The Ministry of the Interior, which in July was still being generous to refugees when it instructed that persons born in Germany (indigènes') should not be charged for their identity card (carte d’identité),^ started to reverse Chautemps’s lib­ eral policy in August when it reminded officials at border posts, in no uncer­ tain terms, to instruct refugees on pain of immediate expulsion to abide by the French laws dealing with public order and to abstain from all political activ­ ity.46 In October, the Quai officially cancelled Chautemps’s April order. The MAE informed the Minister of the Interior in his circular of 19 October 1933 that in accordance with the decision of the German Refugees’ Interministerial Commission (Commission interministérielle sur les réfugiés allemands), he had instructed his consuls to revert to the general rule, which was to be vigi­ lant in the issue of visas.47 In fact, they had never really diverged from the instruction and the policy did not greatly vary over the following five years until Daladier’s government introduced the decrees of May 1938.48 An example of the discretion exercised by consuls was the case of Jean Dobler, Consul-general in Cologne.49 He wrote to the department on 27 April 1933 that he was instituting much stricter checks on Jews applying for visas, to weed out applicants whose means were insufficient to maintain themselves in France. He had formulated a questionnaire for all applicants and made him­ self responsible for issuing visas only to manual workers who were needed in France and to professionals who were wealthy. Dobler maintained that the policy of liberal issue of visas would only lead to many refoulements and expulsions, which would give France a bad name.50 He travelled to Paris in July 1933 to see Blanchet and then, without informing him in advance, went to call on the Minister of the Interior, who refused to see him. Instead, Dobler put his case to the Head of the Office (chef du cabinet) of the Sûreté Générale, who gave him a frosty reception, probably because Dobler was bypassing the chain of command rather than that Dobler’s views were inimical to the department. His reception at the Ministry of the Interior did not put him off and he continued to campaign for a much tougher line throughout his time in Cologne.51 The Quai censured him once, in May 1933, with instructions to take a softer line when issuing visas,52 but there is no record of further criticism; maybe it preferred to ignore him because he worked in the con­ sular section or that his views were shared by some members of the Quai,

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and tolerated by his superiors.53 Hélène Hoppenot,54 the wife of the diplomat Henri Hoppenot, mentions Dobler in her diary as a difficult character,55 who fell out with the French ambassador when posted to Buenos Aires,56 and wanted to challenge him to a duel, which she considered a breach of accept­ able behaviour in la Carrière (Diplomatic Career: La Carrière was the term the Quai diplomats used to identify themselves as a clan). The historian Timothy Maga maintains that there was an anti-Semitic bias in the Quai’s reaction to the crisis.57 It is true that there were anti-Semitic pol­ iticians, possibly including Daladier, and an influential movement within the French Jewish community that tried to influence the Quai that refugee Jews in general, and from Eastern Europe in particular, could not be assimilated into French society and should not be given asylum in France.58 However, while there may have been anti-Semites in the Quai, there is no evidence that these views influenced the Quai’s behaviour. Dobler’s objections to the policy were objective. It happened that the applicants for visas were mostly Jewish. Had they been of another religion his attitude probably would have been the same.

REGULATIONS

During the interwar years, the French authorities required German citizens to have a visa to enter France, while citizens of other European countries near or bordering France - Austrians, Italians, Dutch, Czechs, Danish, Belgians, Swiss and Spanish - did not need one.59 This prompted some German refugees to buy forged Dutch and Belgian passports to enter France. When applying for visas for France, most German refugees requested either tourist or transit visas, which were valid for two months.60 According to the consul in Nuremberg, Jewish organisations often helped them with these applica­ tions.61 Foreigners wanting to stay in France for longer had to register with the local authorities, either the police or the prefecture, within eight days of their arrival and apply for an identity card (carte d'identité), valid for two years.62 While their application was being considered, they were issued with a récipissé (receipt) that served as an identity card until the decision, which could sometimes take a year or more, was made. Provided that the decision was favourable, an identity card was issued valid for two years. In cases where their application was declined, foreigners had to leave France and if they refused the police conducted them to a frontier. If they then came back to France as clandestine refugees and were apprehended, they were expelled. In many cases, politicians, caritative organisations or the LDH intervened with the authorities on the refugees’ behalf to request a suspension of orders to leave France and eventually many orders were rescinded.

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The Quai complained that the problem of clandestine refugees was not caused by the waiver of visa requirements from certain countries but from lack of fron­ tier control. In the case of Germany, from which visas were required, consuls were not trained in policing and could only make a summary judgement about the suitability of applicants.63 Illegal entry was facilitated because the FrancoGerman frontier was porous and poorly policed. For example, in May 1938 Sarraut said he had only 320 men to patrol the French borders.64 German refu­ gees frequently crossed in the area around the frontier town of Forbach in the Saar where both the Socialist and Communist parties had offices. For instance, Willi Münzenberg, a key figure in the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) in charge of Agitprop, continued his work in France for the Comintern until he fell out with them in 1938, crossed the border at Saarbrucken/Forbach on 28 February 1933 without papers and arranged for their regularisation once he had arrived in Paris.65 The Socialists also set up a bureau in Strasbourg to help their members cross the frontier. Refugees who did not have any papers, or the right ones, became clandestine because without them they could not apply for identity cards. Other reasons for a clandestine existence were the refugees who stayed in France after they were refused an identity card or were working without a permit. Lion Feuchtwanger described their predicament: They were not allowed to work, barely even to breathe. They were required to have papers, identity cards. They did not have them, or what they had was not enough. Many had fled without being able to bring their papers, the passports of most of them had expired and not been renewed by the authorities of the Third Reich. Thus, these exiles had a hard time attesting to the fact that they were indeed themselves.66

Unfortunately, much detail about the regulations has been lost. On 16 May 1940, as the German army was approaching Paris, the Quai destroyed 1,200 cartons of archives of the office of Contróle des étrangers. The destroyed documents included the nominative German applications for visas to French consulates as well as to internal French authorities and reports on applicants that the police and prefects referred to Paris.

INTERMINISTERIAL COMMISSIONS OR A DEPARTMENT OF IMMIGRATION? The arrangement that the French Foreign Ministry was responsible for for­ mulating refugee policy was unique among Western regimes. The Quai man­ aged international negotiations concerning refugees’ status and arrangements and the issue of visas by French consulates. In other countries, the authority

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tended to be the ministry in charge of public order. For example, in the UK it was the Home Office. Indeed, an important argument the Quai used in its dis­ putes with ministers who wanted a new ministry to take over refugee affairs was the Quai’s expertise in handling refugee and labour matters that affected France’s relations with foreign governments. Once the immigrants had crossed the border into France the responsibil­ ity and onus were spread among several ministries: the Ministries of the Interior, Justice, Labour, Agriculture, Health and Defence each took over their part. This system was an example of the way the bureaucracy found an acceptable solution to accommodate departmental wars. The coordination of policy between these ministries was carried out through interministerial commissions.67 The system was criticised for being muddled and lacking a 'chef d’orchestre’ ('conductor’) to oversee the coordination.68 Politicians, especially on the left, agitated for a department of immigration whose remit would comprise all immigrants including foreign workers and refugees.69 It was resisted by the Quai, which went to great lengths to protect its jurisdic­ tion opposing any changes it determined were designed to weaken its control by arguing that immigration was intimately tied to international relations. Noiriel says that the friction between the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Labour was extreme.70 Such interministerial disputes were hardly unique, but in France were an example, according to Bonnet, of what Stanley Hoffmann called the ‘stalemate society’.71 However, it was the conservative government of Raymond Poincaré (1850-1934) that first put a proposal to establish an office of immigra­ tion before the Assembly as early as 1922. The office was to be attached to the Quai because oversight and maintenance of relations with foreign governments and organisations was considered a fundamental requirement. Infighting between the Ministries of Labour and Agriculture, budgetary con­ straints imposed by the Ministry of Finance and objections from the private sector which urgently needed immigrant labour ensured the rejection of the project. The Quai, sensitive to any encroachments to its authority, objected because an autonomous office was being imposed on it. Instead, the private sector set up the Société genérale de I’immigration (General Immigration Society). Edouard de Warren, a member of the Union républicaine démocratique, the parliamentary group of the right-wing Fédération républicaine, had initiated the project.72 As its President he was instrumental in setting up the company in 1924, which negotiated bloc bilateral agreements with foreign governments to allow immigrant labour to come to France. In 1926, another attempt to establish a department of immigration, this time by Herriot, lasted only the four days of his ministry. The plan bypassed the Quai; his list of ministers included Charles Lambert (1883-1972) as High Commissioner for Immigration and Naturalisation to work under Chautemps,

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who was to be Minister of the Interior. Poincaré,73 Herriot’s successor, this time did not pursue the idea. Then, in January 1938, Chautemps established the Office of Under-secretariat of State for Immigration and Foreigners, with Serre as its head.74 It survived just three months, until early April 1938, when it was abandoned by Daladier, Chautemps’s successor. Apart from these short-lived attempts, there was no independent government department to coordinate refugee policy. The frequent changes of government were another reason the system of commissions was not changed. Prime ministers who might have wanted to organise a department of immigration were not in office long enough to accomplish it. In the absence of firm leadership, the commissions’ drawback was that they were rudderless, decisions were either fudged or nothing was resolved. This suited the Quai because one of the reasons for objecting to a ministry of immigration was that the loose system of interministerial commissions allowed the Quai to pursue its policies without much outside direction. Nevertheless, during the period 1920-1930, described by Bonnet as the years during which political and bureaucratic attitudes towards immigration were laissez-faire, liberal and pragmatic, the system was not seriously tested and worked reasonably well.75 Policy tended to be in the hands of the senior bureaucrats who represented their ministries on the commissions and as some argued, this was as it should be with immigration policy being conducted by bureaucrats rather than politicians.76 Claire Zalc emphasises both the discre­ tion of the bureaucrats as well as their continuity in office. The principal actors in this narrative exist in the three types of system. On the one hand, continuity is at a premium: the careers of magistrates, [and] of the men in the offices of regional administrations and town halls managing the various functions of the central administrative bureaucracy, that of Justice in particular, unfolded over these twenty or so years without ever encountering, or with only a few exceptions, any change.77

The first interministerial commission dealing with immigration, The Permanent Interministerial Immigration Commission (Commission intermin­ istérielle permanente de l’immigration), was set up within the Quai in July 1920.78 Its terms of reference were: To prepare for drawing up and overseeing the general application of the trea­ ties and conventions concerning immigration; to establish, in accordance with the opinions of The National Manpower Council (Conseil National de la Main d’Œuvre), the coordination of actions in the departments of the various Ministries that deal with foreign workers.

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The Commission’s members were representatives drawn from the interior, agriculture, labour, health and social security, and liberated departments79 plus a representative of the International Labour Office (ILO) and a Professor of law designated by the Quai. Interestingly, the Ministry of Justice, responsible for naturalisations, was not included. The Quai supplied the Commission’s President and its Secretary. In 1928, the government authorised the establish­ ment of a permanent secretariat and staff with its office in the Quai’s build­ ing.80 It was to be funded from the private sector by companies that benefited from immigrant labour. The Commission met at irregular intervals. One of the remits of the Commission was to arrange for the immigrants to be issued with identity cards {cartes d’identité) and work permits (permis de travail). Refugees as a category were not mentioned in the original 1920 decree; hence refugees who came to France with Nansen passports were treated as immigrant foreign workers.81 In 1926, out of the official census of some 2.5 million foreigners who were immigrants, the main categories of refugees were estimated at 67,000 Russians and 26,000 Armenians. In an aide-mémoire of 15 November 1935 for the French delegation at the LON, the MAE said that there were some 300,000 refugees in France, 263,500363,500 with Nansen passports (200,000-250,000 Russian, 60,000 Armenian, 500 Assyrians, 3,000-4,000 from the Saar, 8,000-12,000 Germans and about 700 others, Georgians, etc.). This enormous discrepancy, even though the figures are nine years apart, is probably explained by the categorisation in 1925 of the vast majority of Russian and Armenian refugees as foreigners.82 In contrast to the system of the decade 1920-1930, the terminology in the following decade changed to single out refugees as a category separate from foreigners and immigrants. Conditions had changed dramatically when the German refugees started arriving in 1933. As Bonnet describes it: ‘The great crisis was underway! In a few years, the situation was changed in a radical manner and the Republic entered the era of leagues and barricades, of wars and revolutions’.83 Now bureaucrats were criticised for exceeding their authority for their harsh treat­ ment of refugees and for their administrative inefficiency. An example of the former is in the study by Barbier of the behaviour of officials in Alsace,84 while for the latter Oualid fulminated against the deficiencies of the admin­ istration, the quality of the functionaries Monsieur Lebureau (Mister Office) as he derisively called them, the lack of coordination and the particularism of the services.85 Chautemps judged the Immigration Commission (Commission de l’immigration), which had overseen immigration to date of workers as well as the refugees with Nansen passports no longer suitable to deal with the new situation. So he set up the German Refugees’ Interministerial Commission (Commission interministérielle sur les réfugiés allemands), in May 1933

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and whereas the Immigration Commission met under the aegis of the Quai, he arranged that the new Commission was presided over by the Ministry of Justice and its meetings held at their premises in the Place Vendôme.86 The initiative for the new Serre ministry in 1938 came also from Chautemps. No evidence has been found to indicate antipathy between Chautemps and the Quai, but it is significant that on the three occasions when its control of the refugee management was threatened, Chautemps was in office, as Minister of the Interior in 1926 and 1933, and Prime Minister in 1938. This suggests that Chautemps concurred with the politicians who advocated the need for an immigration department even if it involved prosecution of the war between ministries. While Chautemps tried to set up a separate department to deal with immigration and refugees, other politicians left the system and the Quai’s jurisdiction alone. Both Blum and Daladier, when they were President of the Council in 1936 and 1938, respectively, did take an interest in refugee affairs but did not change the practice. Established soon after Hitler’s accession to power and revealing evidence of the authorities’ immediate concern, the Refugee Commission’s stated pur­ pose was to examine the various questions raised by the arrival of German refugees. Its first meeting, called by the Prime Minister’s (Daladier) office, was held on 27 May 1933, under the presidency of the Minister of Justice, Eugène Penancier (1873-1955).87 It was high-powered, attended by the Ministers of the Interior, Labour and Health, with the Prime Minister’s office, the Ministries of War, Agriculture, Education and Colonies, represented by their directors. However, perhaps to show its annoyance at being slighted that the Commission was not under the Quai’s aegis, neither the MAE, Paul-Boncour, nor his Secretary-general Léger attended, the Quai being rep­ resented by Bargeton. Apart from the second meeting at which Chautemps as Minister of the Interior again was present the politicians stayed away.88 Blanchet, lower in rank than Bargeton, was the Quai’s representative. The minutes of the first meetings are available. They show that despite the criticisms the Commission arrived at some important decisions. The main resolution at the first meeting was that refugees who came from Germany but were not German citizens should be repatriated to their country of origin and that the Quai should negotiate this with their respective governments.89 Blanchet told the second meeting, held six months later, that the previous magnanimous policy of granting German refugees liberal entry to France that had been announced by Chautemps in April90 was no longer necessary because the LON had resolved to set up a high commission (this was the HCR) to deal with the problem and furthermore, Jews and opponents of the Nazi regime were no longer in immediate danger.91 Another resolution was that an official be appointed to coordinate the Commission’s work, which suggests that the attendees were aware of one of the system’s shortcomings.

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In addition to the permanent interministerial commissions, the Quai used ad hoc interministerial meetings to deal with a specific question. For example, Viénot, when he was Under-secretary of foreign affairs in Blum’s first government, sent invitations to attend an interministerial meeting to establish the Refugee Consultative Commission {Commission consultative des réfugiés) which held its first meeting at the Quai on 3 August 1936.92 The Commission’s remit was to arrange the process for the amnesty for clandes­ tine refugees to regularise their papers.93 Although this was a domestic matter and therefore the prime responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior, Viénot’s initiative ensured a leading role for the Quai. Fouques-Duparc was appointed the Quai’s representative. Furthermore, the documentary evidence indicates that the idea of the amnesty, which was introduced in September 1936, came from the Quai as a way of accommodating the concern of the new PF govern­ ment that refugees should be treated more sympathetically than previously. It also suited the Quai as a tactical manoeuvre to keep the initiative in the war between the ministries.94 Another example of the system of ad hoc interministerial meetings was the briefing on 19 November 1935 which the Quai called, maybe to bypass the refugee Commission, to agree on the policy to be adopted by PierreRené Roland-Marcel (1883-1939), ex-Prefect of the Bas-Rhin,95 who was to represent France at the forthcoming LON Refugee Commission due to meet in Geneva on 25 November.96 In addition to Roland-Marcel, five diplomats from the Quai plus representatives of the Sûreté Nationale and the Jewish community attended.97 Perhaps the Quai was just going through the motions of inviting opinions from the others but not taking much notice of them since the Quai had already given Roland-Marcel a fifteen-page aide-mémoire with instructions on 15 November.98 According to the historian Stanislas Jeannesson, the Quai felt increasingly vulnerable in the interwar years to threats to its jurisdiction from other min­ istries.99 The Quai’s sensitivity was exposed when it had to defend its hold over the Permanent Interministerial Immigration Commission {Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration). In 1930, even before the depression began seriously to have an impact in France, the Commission’s budget was fragile.100 By 1931, when the economic crisis was starting to bite, its entire existence was threatened because the private sector no longer wanted to pay for the secretariat.101 To retain control of the Commission, which cost 60,000 francs102 a year to run, the Quai proposed that in future the expense should be integrated into an increase in its overall budget. But the Senate’s rapporteur of the Quai’s budget, Bérenger, stated that the govern­ ment would not allocate the funds and this was confirmed by the Minister of the Budget.103 The problem was addressed again in December 1934 when the Minister of Finance, Louis Germain-Martin (1872-1948), wrote to the Quai

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saying that the Commission should be absorbed by the Ministry of Labour as the logical and economical solution.104 There was a flurry of notes within the Quai about how to fend off the attack and the matter seems to have gone quiet for a further sixteen months. It resurfaced again in April 1936 when the Quai came up with the answer that the Commission’s work had so expanded and its relations with foreign governments had become so complex that, effectively, the Commission had become an affiliate of the Quai. The solution therefore was that the Commission should be incorporated into the Quai as a departmental subsection.105 It would be financed by a fee of 4 francs charged on the regularisation of the papers of workers and on the renewal of work permits. The Quai calculated that based on 1935 figures this could be levied on 400,000 foreign workers in France plus 100,000 workers who crossed into France every day.106 There is a note from Daniel Tetreau, head of the Sousdirection des Affaires administratives et des unions internationales {Deputy Directorate for Administrative Affairs and International Associations') direct­ ing that should the Minister of Finance not approve this proposal it could be dropped but that the Quai must insist on the Commission’s secretariat con­ tinuing under the Quai’s control.107 In the end, the Ministry of Finance put off a decision and the matter was shelved. The Commission continued to func­ tion as before at the Quai with its secretariat under the Quai’s Gérard Japy,108 until February 1938 when it was again threatened, this time by Chautemps following his appointment of Serre to the position of Under-secretary of State in charge of Immigration and Foreigners. The Quai managed to fend off implementation of the Chautemps decree of 16 February 1938, which removed the Commission from its authority and attached it to the new Sous-secrétaire d’Etat chargé des services de l’immigration et des‘étrangers {Undersecretary of State responsible for Immigration and Foreigners Services').109 The Quai objected to the new department’s terms of reference and that they had been published without prior consultation.110 In a note for Delbos dated 9 February 1938, Bargeton questioned whether under the proposed arrangement there could be continuity of the Interministerial Commission’s work given that Japy was retiring and that the Commission’s office was to be removed from the Quai. He ques­ tioned the competence of a new department to do work that previously was the Quai’s domain.111 Pierre Bressy,112 for the Quai, attended the first meeting of the new department on 14 February at which the delegates were presented with the proposed terms of reference and asked to report their ministries’ opinions at the next meeting. But immediately after the meeting Serre’s Permanent Secretary telephoned Bressy to inform him that, contrary to what had been agreed, Serre had decided to publish the Commission’s terms of ref­ erence on 16 February and they were indeed published in the Journal Officiel {Official Gazette) that day.113 In addition, but never officially published, was

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Serre’s proposal recognising that immigration now concerned only refugees and the Commission’s structure should consist of two committees, one for refugees and one to oversee frontiers. Serre seems to have used the words foreigners and refugees as synonyms: his intention also was to draw up a statute for foreigners.114 Bressy then wrote a note to Delbos listing the Quai’s additional concerns, chief of which was that the terms would risk the influx of masses of refugees.115 Drafted by Bargeton, Delbos’s letter to Serre of 5 March summarised the department’s notes and detailed the position that the Quai’s representatives would be instructed to take when attending the meet­ ings of Serre’s department.116 Delbos signed the letter, which anticipated the tough line that Daladier’s government would take two months later.117 Bargeton had persuaded Delbos to show that the Quai was well capable of imposing a harsh regime. The letter explained that an influx of refugees, or so-called refugees, would cause social and economic danger and that over the past fifteen years the Quai’s consuls and services had been reporting the extraordinary ingenuity and lack of scruple of Central Europeans coming to France, which included forging documents. Their presence caused hardship to the most vulnerable categories of the French population such as small traders, artisans and intellectuals, quite apart from the burden on hospitals. France should not risk this invasion while at the same time it was trying to get rid of undesirable refugees. Furthermore, because other countries such as Switzerland that had previously welcomed refugees had now closed their doors, a generous policy on France’s part would encourage a new wave of refugees. Delbos added that he could not agree to the decree instituting a Consultative Commission for refugees. Not only did he insist that the condi­ tions in the proposed decree should be amended, he concluded his letter by saying that these were his preliminary comments and that he reserved the right to make further comments and that other ministries should be consulted. Interestingly, both René Martial and Georges Mauco, France’s foremost demographers (both served under the Vichy regime), recognised that France needed selective immigration. They proposed that a Ministry of Immigration be established, which should select immigrants with skills that were economi­ cally useful, who could be assimilated and that the ministry should direct them to regions of the country where they were needed.118 There is no archival evidence to explain why Daladier quashed Serre’s ministry on assuming office on 10 April. Maybe he heeded the Quai’s objec­ tions. A year later Léger wrote to Daladier to affirm the continuing role played by the Interministerial Commission on immigration, which had met at the Quai as recently as March that year.119 In any case, Daladier and Sarraut, his Minister of the Interior, implemented new decrees to stop the entry of clandestine and undesirable foreigners without having a department of immi­ gration, and they were effective.120

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NOTES 1. Discussion with Krishnan Srinivasan, retired head of the Indian Diplomatic Service, 13 June 2016. 2. In contrast, when they were Président du Conseil, Blum in 1936 and Daladier in 1938 did take an interest. See chapters 10 and 11. 3. In 1926 and 1938. 4. They were Viénot when he was Undersecretary of State in the PF in 1936, Moutet, Socialist deputy and Minister of Colonies in the PF, and Daladier when he became Prime Minister in April 1938. Politicians such as Bérenger, head of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee throughout this period, and Longuet, the French delegate at the LON July 1936 conference on German refugees, also went along with the system. 5. They were Paul-Boncour, Daladier, Barthou, Laval, Flandin, Delbos. 6. Jean Baillou, Charles Lucet and Jacques Vimont, Les Affaires étrangères et le corps diplomatique français, vol. II (Paris: CNRS, 1984), p. 376. 7. De Tessan, Paul-Boncour, Viénot. 8. Chef de section of the Service français de la SDN. 9. Until he was posted to Madrid in 1938 as adviser to François-Poncet, who had been moved there from Berlin in October that year. 10. For example, Fouques-Duparc served in the Foreign Ministerial cabinets for almost the entire period. He was seconded to the cabinet of Paul-Boncour in 1933, Barthou in 1934 and Delbos in 1936-38. Rochat served in the cabinets of Daladier and Barthou in 1934, Laval in 1934-1935, Flandin in 1936 and Delbos in 1936-1937. Rochat’s ability to serve under ministers with such diverse politics is said to explain why he also served Vichy. 11. See Les Affaires étrangères et le corps diplomatique français, vol. II, pp. 378-81. See also Christian Lequesne, Ethnographie du Quai d’Orsay (Paris: CNRS, 2017). For a general assessment of the Quai, see Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1933-1939 (New York, Enigma, 2004), pp. 269-89. 12. The systematic recording started in 1940. 13. See chapters 7, 8, 9. 14. Etienne de Crouy-Chanel, Alexis Léger, ou l’autre visage de Saint-Jean Perse (Paris: Jean Picollec, 1989), pp. 135-53. 15. Interview with Ricardo Duqué, French diplomat, 14 October 2015. 16. See the summary of the relationship between the civil servant and the minis­ ter in Crouy-Chanel, Alexis Léger, pp. 287-91. 17. For examples, see MAE Service français de la SDN: organisation 1933-1938, 99-104: Conseil 1933-1938, 148-155. 18. See Maurice Vaïsse, ‘L’adaption du Quai d’Orsay aux nouvelles conditions diplomatiques, 1918-1939’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine. Tome 32. No. 1 (janvier-mars 1985), pp. 145-62. 19. Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, p. 214. 20. Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, p. 277.

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21. Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat, p. 231. 22. Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘Le deuil de la puissance’ in Jean-Claude Allain, Pierre Guillen, Georges-Henri Soutou, Laurent Theis, Maurice Vaïsse, Histoire de la diplomatie française II De 1815 à nos jours, pp. 287-426. (Paris: Tempus, 2005) 23. Livian, Le Parti Socialiste, pp. 109-12. See also chapter 9. 24. At the LON International Conference for Refugees in Geneva in July 1936, which led to the Provisional Arrangement. LON, Provisional Arrangement concern­ ing the Status of Refugees Coming from Germany, 4 July 1936, LON Treaty Series, vol. CLXXI, no. 3952. 25. See chapter 10. 26. JO, Lois et Décrets, Cinq décrets. (Five decrees). 21 juin 1934. 27. See Bâillon et al., Les Affaires étrangères, vol. II, pp. 371-412. 28. The name of the Service français de la SDN was changed to the Sousdirection de la SDN in June 1934. See Georges Dethan, ‘Le Quai d’Orsay de 1914 à 1939’, in Opinion publique et politique extérieure en Europe II, 1915-1940, Actes du Colloque de Rome (16-20 février 1981), Publications de l’Ecole française de Rome 54 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1984), pp. 157-63. 29. Jacques Fouques-Duparc, La Protection de minorités de race, de langue, et de religion. Étude de Droit des Gens (Paris: Librairie Dalloz, 1922). 30. Livian, Le Parti Socialiste, p. 99. 31. Crouy-Chanel, Alexis Léger, pp. 49-50. 32. Armand Bérard, Un Ambassadeur se souvient du temps du danger allemand (Paris: Plon, 1976), pp. 327-28. 33. McDonald et al., Advocate for the doomed, pp. 157-58. 34. Lequesne, Ethnographie du Quai d’Orsay, p. 203. 35. AN F60 497, Commission interministérielle permanente d’immigration, séance (Meeting of the Permanent Interministerial Commission for Immigration) 16 mars 1936; also MAE 11 ACN 2 59, carton 260, 17 décembre 1937. 36. Ilsen About has written extensively about the system of police control of foreigners in the interwar years: see Enregistrer et identifier les étrangers en France, 1880-1940, Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration, 7 octobre 2014; ‘A Paper Trap, Police in France during the Interwar Period’, in Ilsen About, James Brown and Gayle Lonergan (eds), Identification and Registration Practices in Transnational Perspective. People, Papers, and Practices (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013), pp. 203-23 37. JO, Débats Parlementaires (Parliamentary debates) 1933, 28 mars 1933, p. 1612; 30 mars 1933, p. 1893. 38. MAE Z 710, Note du Contrôle des étrangers au ministre. (Note from Contrôle des étrangers to the Minister), 31 mars 1933. pp. 9-12. After the assassination of President Paul Doumer on 6 May 1932, consuls had been instructed to be very atten­ tive when issuing visas. 39. MAE Z 710, Instruction de Paul-Boncour à Francois-Poncet signé par Léger. (Instruction from Paul-Boncour to François-Poncet, signed by Léger), 7 avril 1933, pp. 26-29. 40. AN F7 13433, Ministre de l’intérieur aux Prefets (Minister of the Interior to Prefects), 20 avril 1933. The safe conduct was valid for twenty days, during which

The Quai d’Orsay

49

period the refugees had to go to the address in France they had given and register there with the authorities. 41. See Badia et al., Les Barbelés de l’exiï, Badia, et al. Les bannis de Hitler, Rita Thalmann, Emigrés français en Allemagne; émigrés allemands en France (Paris 1983); Rita Thalmann, ‘Emigration de la III Reich dans la France 1933-1939’. Le Monde juif35(96) (oct-déc). 1979), pp. 127-39. 42. MAE Z 710, Ambassade de Berlin au MAE. (Berlin Embassy to MAE), 17 juin 1933 pp. 161-62. It is not clear which authority issued a stateless person with an international passport. 43. MAE Z 710, Lettre du MAE à Cambon, Londres (Letter from MAE to Cambon, London,) 8 septembre 1933 pp. 280-82. 44. MAE Z 710, Note du Contrôle des étrangers à la Sous-direction d’Europe. (Note from Contrôle des étrangers to Sous-direction d’Europe) 12 août 1933., p. 231. 45. ANF7 16079, 18 juillet 1933. 46. AN F7 16079, 2 août 1933. See chapter 1. 47. AN F7 16079, 19 octobre 1933. 48. See chapter 11. 49. 1933-37. He was posted to Quito, Ecuador, in 1938. For a general overview of his correspondence, see the University of Virginia Library, Papers of Jean Dobler, 1913-39. 50. MAE Z 710, Notes pour le Directeur des Affaires politiques et commercia­ les. (Notes to the Director of Affaires politiques et commerciales), 27 avril 1933, pp. 80-84; 14 mai 1933, pp 112-21; 13 juillet 1933, pp. 193-94. 51. See Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 411, n. 89. 52. MAE Z 710 Réponse à Dobler du Directeur des Affaires politiques et com­ merciales (Reply to Dobler from Director of Political and Commercial Affairs) 10 mai 1933, p. 107. 53. He complained that no one took notice of his reports on Nazi activities and plans, which, it transpired, weré pertinent and accurate. 54. Bibliothèque Doucet, Hélène Hoppenot Journal Ms 11360 (8), Entrée 28 juin 1936. 55. She kept a journal, much of it gossip about the lives and careers of fellow diplomats. 56. Emmanuel de Peretti de la Rocca. 57. Timothy P. Maga, ‘Closing the Door: The French Government and Refugee Policy, 1933-1939,’ French Historical Studies, 12(3) (Spring, 1982), pp. 424-442. 58. See Caron, Uneasy Asylum. Chapters II and IV. 59. MAE Z 710 Note d’Amal pour Paul-Boncour, 11 avril 1933, pp. 36-40. MAE série C carton 260, p. 185, ‘Note pour le Président du Conseil’. (Note for the President of the Council), 17 décembre 1937. The countries that did not require a French visa also included Brazil, Cuba, Finland, Honduras, Japan, Lichtenstein, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Siam, Sweden, Uruguay, UK and its colonies. 60. There were debates about the length of stay permitted. See chapter 5. The decree of 14 May 1938 stipulated that foreigners who wanted to stay longer had to apply within eight days of their arrival.

50

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61. AN F7 16079, Lettre de Paul Py, Consul à Nuremberg (Letter from Paul Py, French consul in Nuremberg), 4 octobre 1934. 62. A carte d’identité did not serve as a work permit, which had to be applied for separately. 63. MAE Série C carton 260, 17 December 1937, ‘Note pour le Président du Conseil’, p. 185. The Quai added that relations with Switzerland, Belgium and the UK would be harmed if visas were required, and that tourism would suffer if visitors had to report to the police within 24 hours of arrival. 64. AN 'PHLlÂTIb Lettre du Ministre de l’intérieur au Ministre des finances. (Letter from Minister of the Interior to Minister of Finance) 3 mai 1938. 65. ‘Der Brand des deutschen Reichstages und Willi Münzenberg - (annoti­ erte) Rede anlässlich der Eröffnung der Ausstellung “Vom Verschwinden des Willi Münzenberg - Erste Fundstücke einer Freilegung’” (‘The Burning of the German Reichstag and Willi Münzenberg - (annotated) Lecture at the Opening of the Exhibition “The disappearance of Willi Münzenberg - Initial [archival] finds’”), 27 February 2012. https://www.rosalux.de Accessed 28 August 2018. 66. Lion Feuchtwanger, Exil (Amsterdam: Querido, 2000), p. 108. 67. An example was La Commission interministérielle des affaires musulmanes (The Interministerail Commission for Moslem Affairs) established in 1911. 68. Expression used by Jean Garchery: JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambre des Députés, Séance du (JO, Parliamentary debates, Chamber of Deputies, sitting of) 29 janvier 1935, p. 258. 69. See, for instance, the speech by Moutet in the Chamber of Deputies on 19 February 1935. JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambre des Députés, 2nd Séance 19 février 1935, pp. 550, 563. 70. MAE SDN 1C, carton 260, ‘Note pour le Directeur Politique’(Note for the Politcal Director) 13 mars 1935. Noiriel, Réfugiés et sans-papiers, pp. 222-26. 71. Quoted by Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français, p. 145; see Stanley Hoffmann, C. P. Kindleberger et al., ‘Paradoxes of the French Political Community’, in Hoffmann, Kindleberger et al., In Search of France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 1-117. 72. See JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambre des Députés, 12 octobre 1922. See also Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français, pp. 139-45. 73. Poincaré’s Fourth Ministry, 23 July 1926-1 November 1928. 74. MAE 11 ACN 2 58; Extract from JO, Lois et Décrets, 16 février 1938, p 1914. 75. Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français, pp. 183-85. 76. AIU 650 box 7. See interview of Albert Manuel and Robert Schumann with Serre, 11 février 1938: 77. Claire Zalc, Dénaturalisés. Les retraits de nationalité sous Vichy (Paris: Seuil, 2016), p. 27. 78. JO, Lois et Décrets (Laws and Decrees) 31 juillet 1920, p. 10894. 79. The departments Alsace and Lorraine. 80. JO, Lois et Décrets, 2 May 1928, pp. 4950-1. The Permanent Secretary was Julien Pillant, bureau chief at the Sous-section des affaires administratives et des unions internationales. 81. See chapter 3.

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51

82. Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français, p. 24; MAE SDN 1806 IM. 83. Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français, pp. 188-89. 84. Barbier, ‘L’accueil des réfugiés d’Allemagne en Alsace (1933-34)’. (The Reception of German refugees in Alsace (1933-1934): the arbitrary conduct and margins for individual and collective action). 85. William Oualid, ‘Carence de administration’, Esprit, Revue Internationale 82 (1 July 1939), pp. 562-78. 86. Sometimes also called La Commission des réfugiés allemands israélites (The German Jewish Refugee Commission) AN F16079, 27 mai 1933. 87. MAE Z 711 4952, pp. 92-96. He was also deputy Prime Minister. 88. AN F7 16079, 16 octobre 1933. 89. MAE Z 711 4952, 27 mai 1933, pp. 92-97. 90. AN F7 16079, 20 avril 1933. Ministre de l’intérieur aux Préfets (Minister of the Interior to Prefects). 91. MAE Z 711 4912, 16 octobre 1933, pp. 37-42. 92. MAE Papiers Delbos, Cabinet du Ministre 4055 QO 40. Livian says it was under the aegis of the Quai, whereas Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 177 says it was under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior. 93. Decreed on 17 September 1936. 94. See chapter 8. 95. Prefect 1930-35. 96. MAE SDN 1806 IM, pp. 153-58, Procès verbal de la réunion au Ministère des affaires étrangères (Minutes of the meeting at the MAE). 23 novembre 1935. 97. Massigli, de Reffye, Blanchet, Fouques-Duparc, Bringard; Charles Magny, head of the Sûreté Nationale; and Jacques Helbronner, councillor of state, represent­ ing the Jewish community. 98. MAE SDN 1806 IM, pp. 129-44. 99. Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Nantes and expert on the Quai, interviewed 15 June 2016. 100. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Note de la Sous-direction des Affaires administratives et des Unions Internationales au chef du Service du Personnel et de la Comptabilité. (Note from the Sous-direction des Affaires administratives et des Unions Internationales to the chief of the Service du Personnel et de la Comptabilité), 20 décembre 1930. 101. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Note au Sécretaire-général (Note to the Secretary­ general), 5 juin 1931. 102. About $2.3 million in today’s currency. 103. MAE Contrôle. Note au Service du Personnel et de la Comptabilité (Control. Note to Service du Personnel et de la Comptabilité), 12 juillet 1932. 104. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Ministre de finance au Ministre des affaires étrangères (Minister of Finance to the Minister of Foreign Affairs) 26 décembre 1934. 105. MAE 11 ACN 2 58 Note, 30 août 1935, ‘Service de l’immigration aux Affaires étrangères, service annexe à la Sous-Direction des Affaires administratives et des unions internationales’ (‘Additionnel service of the immigration service of Foreign Affairs to the Sous-Direction des Affaires administratives et des unions internationales’).

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106. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, ‘Projet de création au Ministère des affaires étrangères d’un service de l’immigration’ (Proposal to establish an immigration service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 20 août 1935. See also MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Lettre du Président de la Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration au Sécretaire-général du Président du Conseil (Letter from the President of the Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration to the Secretary-general of the President of the Council), 28 avril 1936. 107. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Daniel Tetreau, chef de la Sous-direction des Affaires administratives et des unions internationales au Service du personnel et de la compt­ abilité. (Note to the Service du personnel et de la comptabilité, from Daniel Tetreau, head of the Sous-direction des Affaires administratives et des unions internationales), 22 juin 1935. 108. Ministre plénipotentiaire, hors cadre à la disposition de la Commission inter­ ministérielle permanente de l’immigration (Minister Plenipotentiary, unattached, at the disposal of the Permanent Interministerial Commission for Immigration). 109. JO, Lois et décrets, ‘Attributions du sous-secrétaire d’Etat chargé des services de l’immigration et des étrangers’, Article 5 (Attributions of the Under-secretary of State responsible for immigration and foreigners services, Article 5) 16 février 1938. 110. Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs Publics Français, pp. 331-40. 111. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Note pour le Ministre (Note for the Minister), 9 février 1938. 112. He was Sous-directeur des affaires administratives et des unions internationales. 113. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Note pour le Ministre (Note for the Minister), 9 février 1938. 114. Pierre Racine, ‘Une expérience administrative à reprendre: le sous-secrétariat d’état à l’immigration et les projets Philippe Serre’. MAE au Sous-secrétaire d’état chargé des services de l’immigration et des étrangers, 5 mars 1938. Esprit 82 (1 juillet 1939), pp. 616-18 115. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, Note pour le Ministre (Note for the Minister, undated, but probably 15 February 1938). 116. MAE 11 ACN 2 58. 117. See chapter 3. 118. René Martial, Politique de 1’immigration. Mercure de France, 884, 75 avril 1935, pp. 267-294. Georges Mauco. Les Étrangers en France: leur rôle dans la vie économique (Paris, Armand Colin, 1932). 119. MAE 11 ACN 2 58, MAE au Président du Conseil (MAE to the Prime Minister), 8 avril 1939. 120. See Chapter 11 and Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 174.

Chapter 3

The Refugees

‘France’s tradition of hospitality’ (‘La tradition d’hospitalité de la France’') was frequently expressed in debates in the Assemblée Nationale as well as in the Quai’s correspondence in which instructions often started with this preamble. Republican culture was to welcome the persecuted and mostly it had real meaning. However, there were other times, as during the economic depression, when it was mere lip service and the reality was to temper the welcome. This was true for the German refugees. There was no statute that defined their civic rights and they were more vulnerable than the refugees who had arrived in the 1920s with the protection of Nansen passports. The Quai’s official policy was that the refugees should not be allowed to take part in political activity that might be considered offensive or threatening to the German government. It was anxious to avoid reprisals to the French citizens living in Germany, hence the condition that precluded them from political activity when on French soil applied to all refugees.1 Nevertheless, the German refugees were accorded freedoms they could not enjoy in the Reich. The exercise of these freedoms was enshrined in Third Republican values, as asserted in the Law of 29 July 1881 establishing Freedom of the Press (Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse).2 In practice the French authorities allowed the German refugees freedom to express their political opinions, freedom of assembly and, with the exception of one event in 1938, freedom from censorship.3 Many German refugees took this licence for granted and if they were grateful for it, they did not say so. Nor it seems were they grateful that the French authorities protected the refugees with high profiles by refusing to reply to German government requests for information about their whereabouts and activities. Instead, the refugees complained about the restrictions the authorities placed on them, who they blamed for their adversities and struggles. German refugees’ animus was especially 53

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directed against the police. The refugees also complained that they were cold-shouldered by French intellectuals which, as discussed below, was not so. Many hurdles were generic to refugee life in all countries of refuge and not particular to France. An examination of who the German refugees were, their side of the story and the conditions in which they coped are an essential backdrop to under­ standing the Quai’s policies. This chapter explores these themes.

THE HISTORY

The tradition of welcome for political refugees was first exercised when about two-thirds of the ‘10,000’ nationalists who fled Poland in the 'great emigra­ tion’ {'la grande émigration’) after the failure of the 1830 insurrection sought refuge in France, the majority in Paris.4 The French capital was a nineteenth­ century hub attractive because there was little police surveillance, France had a free press and no obligation for military service. It was the occasion for the first debate about refugees in the French parliament, which produced the law of 24 April 1832, formalising the welcome by legalising French residence for all political exiles.5 The debate was also the first time a potential conflict between two of the principles in the Montagnard Constitution was aired. Article 120 could contradict Article 119, which precluded intrusion into the affairs of other states.6 Another wave of refugees came to France from Italy, Prussia and the Hapsburg empire after the failed 1848 revolutions.7 However, this time, the welcome was curbed by the conservative government of Alphonse Henri d’Hautpoul’s (1789-1865) Party of Order, which passed the law of 3 December 1849, authorising the police and prefects to arrest and conduct to the frontier without explanation or right of appeal any foreigner deemed undesirable for being a threat to public safety or national security. Despite strong objections from pressure groups who argued for its abrogation, or at least the right of appeal and the right to know the reason for the expulsions, this law was still being applied in the 1930s. And additional repressive laws, known as the lois scélérates (evil laws'), of December 1893 and July 1894,8 introduced by the Third Republic to curb anarchist terrorism, were still in force after the danger from anarchists had subsided, and were used by the police to harass the Communists in the 1920s.9 However, there was a tradition in Russia of respect for French culture, many educated Russians spoke French, and France had a tradition of accept­ ing the Russian political refugees who frequently chose it as their country of refuge. It was an irony that France gave refuge to revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov and Leon Trotsky, escaping the Tsarist

The Refugees

55

Okhrana after the failed 1905 revolution, and then to Tsarists escaping the Bolsheviks after the 1917 October revolution.10 Another principle originally discussed in the 1832 debate relating to the refugees was the role of the state regarding their civil status. The Polish refugees were not granted a statute. The Assemblée decided that the state should intervene only to assign the refugees to reside in towns as directed by the Ministry of Justice and to help refugees who were temporarily in distressed circumstances. Apart from these two exceptions and expulsion as punishment for contraventions of the law, refugees were subject to the same laws as French citizens.11 However, in the 1930s, refugee rights were determined by a mixture of the application of fundamental laws, decrees and ad hoc instructions. Despite the demands of radical and socialist poli­ ticians and pressure groups, in conditions aggravated by xenophobia, the authorities refused to give the German refugees a statute that defined their civil rights.12 In 1833, the Ministry of the Interior set up an office to collate the lists sent to Paris by local mayors and prefects of refugees living in their areas and those claiming public aid. It was the foundation of the system of indices, the fiches (information cards), that from 1917 required the registration of all foreigners who applied for a residence permit.13 The massive immigration of the interwar years led to the exponential growth of the index. The census of 1911 recorded 1,132,696 foreigners, 3.9 per cent of the population; by 1926, the number had reached 2,498,230, 6.1 per cent of the population. In 1931, it was 2,890,923, 7 per cent of the population. By 1936, because of repatriation due to the economic depression, the number declined to 2,453,507, which was 5.9 per cent of the population.14 The official census of foreigners did not distinguish between workers and refugees: the former could return to the countries from which they originated whereas the latter could not or did not want to. Also, the Republican principle was to regard all its citizens as French and not to distinguish them by religion or ethnicity.

NANSEN A significant difference in the legal situation of the Russian, Armenian and German refugees was that the Russians and Armenians were protected by their Nansen passports. The High Commission for Refugees (not to be confused with the organisation indicated here by HCR) from 1921 to 1930, together with its successor organisation the Nansen Office from 1930 to 1938, was the first example of the international community undertaking legal responsibility for refugees. Under the aegis of the LON it dealt with the prob­ lem first, in 1922, of stateless Russians then in 1924 of Armenian refugees.

56

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Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldeans, Syrians, Kurds and Turks were added in 1928, and in 1935, refugees from the Saar. After the Russian civil war and the Turkish War of Liberation the mag­ nitude of the number of refugees had, for the first time, become an inter­ national concern. In August 1921, the French, together with the Belgians, Swiss and Czechs, were instrumental in arranging for the LON to establish the High Commission for Refugees to manage this crisis. Its director was the Norwegian explorer and statesman Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930). His remit was to regulate the legal situation of the stateless refugees, to help them to find countries in which they could work and settle and to coordinate aid. A League official summed up their condition: ‘As things are, the Russian refu­ gees cannot travel, marry, be bom, or die without creating legal problems to which there is no solution’.15 Nansen’s solution to the legal and practical problem of the stateless was the introduction of the passport that bore his name. The Nansen passport was a 'certificate of identity and right to travel' {'certificat d’identité et de voyage') issued by the High Commission that served as an internationally recognised substitute for a passport allowing Russians, and then Armenians, who were stateless because they had been stripped of their national passports, to travel to countries that recognised the Nansen passport. The LON wanted the holder of a Nansen passport to have the same rights as the citizens of the country that gave the refugee asylum. However, France together with other member states considered this compromised their sov­ ereignty and the rights of Nansen passport holders initially were severely restricted. At first, the passport was not much more than an attestation of the stateless refugee’s existence. Passports were issued at their discretion by indi­ vidual countries, the holders’ movements curbed. A conference in May 1926 introduced more freedom of movement and a further conference in June 1928 authorised the High Commission to set up offices in several capital cities to issue the passports instead of the authorities and the status of Nansen passport holders was greatly improved. In social and political rights, the holders were granted the same as citizens’ and in legal protection the states’ right to expel and refoule was constrained. Whereas the decisions of 1926 and 1928 were recommendations, the significant achievement of the Convention of October 1933 was to make them binding. Nansen died in 1930 and the LON replaced the High Commission with the successor organisation, the Nansen International Office for Refugees. The High Commission and its successor the Nansen Office had a bureau in Paris that was authorised to issue Nansen passports, with Marcel Paon as its director.16 The office had to finance itself partly from private donations but mainly from fees charged for the passports and the sale of stamps. Critics complained that the Nansen passport addressed the legal status of refugees

The Refugees

57

but not the questions of relief or settlement and that it prolonged the holders’ refugee status.17 Nansen reckoned that the High Commission’s work could be completed within ten years, so in 1929 the LON voted that the office be wound up by the end of 1938. The Nansen Office was duly wound up in December 1938, having issued some 800,000 passports, recognised by fifty-two countries.18 Nansen passports are still in use today, issued in France by Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides (OFPRA). Offices for refugees have been put in place in France to administer Nansen sta­ tus. There stateless refugees may obtain the certificate attesting to their refugee status, their origins and identity, and request the performance of various acts concerning civic life, marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. from offices exercising consular functions.19

Extension of Nansen status to German refugees, which could have been the solution to the problem, was not adopted because Germany insisted that the LON should not be involved in the matter. In addition, the Quai feared that giving a Nansen passport to German refugees would encourage their exodus with the majority choosing France as the country of refuge. Also it was ner­ vous that the provision of Nansen passports to German refugees might be construed as interference in domestic German affairs.20 The French position was endorsed by the LON’s Secretary-general, Joseph Avenol (1879-1952).21 L’Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides (The French Office for protection of refugees and the stateless) comments: The arrival of National Socialism in Germany in 1933 and the Anschluss in Austria in 1938 provoked the exodus to France of around 40,000 people, in the majority Jewish, and often stripped of their nationality. These refugees were called ‘refugees coming from Germany’. Their status, defined in 1936 and 1938, gave them less protection than that of Nansen.22

Instead, German refugees were issued with aliens’ passports according to the Recommendations Communications and Transit Conference of 1927.23

THE GERMAN COMMUNITY Schor says that 71,700 German nationals were living in France in 1933, including those who had come earlier.24 There are precise figures for the num­ ber of refugees, Jewish and others, who left Germany in 1933, but there are no precise figures of the countries they went to nor of the breakdown of Jews

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and non-Jews. The first refugees fleeing from the Nazi regime began to arrive in France in March 1933. Between then and August the same year, the Paris police registered 7,304 refugees from Germany, plus some 2,500 undocu­ mented immigrants.25 No official count was kept for the whole of France. Le Petit Parisien of 10 September 1933 reported that as of 1 July 1933, 25,000 Jews from Germany had come to France, 5,000 to the Netherlands, 4,000 to Poland, 2,500 to Belgium, 2,500 to the UK, about 1,000 to Czechoslovakia, 800 to Denmark, 750 to Austria and 5,000 to Palestine.26 The Quai thought the figures for France and the Netherlands were understated whereas that for Poland was too high.27 These numbers applied to Jewish refugees to which the non-Jewish refu­ gees should be added. James McDonald, the HCR High Commissioner, said the total number of refugees who had fled from Germany as of 5 December 1933 was 59,300, of whom 51,065 were Jewish.28 The HCR’s source pre­ sumably was German. He estimated that France admitted about 25,000 German Jewish refugees in 1933. The American Minister in Switzerland, Hugh Wilson, reported to Washington in September 1933 that the Dutch had received some 6,000-7,000 refugees, many of them Jewish, ‘some of education and standing’, France about 30,000, Switzerland 4,000 and the numbers for Czechoslovakia and Poland were not known.29 The Dutch confirmed that there were no exact figures, but in October 1933 they esti­ mated that about 50,000-60,000 refugees had left Germany, of whom about 6,000-7,000 had come to the Netherlands, some of whom had in the mean­ time probably proceeded to other countries, mainly Palestine and France.30 The 1936 official French census taken every five years by Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE)) records 58,138 German nationals resident in France. The estimates of German refugees who remained in France vary as well. Out of the 80,000-100,000 who arrived between 1933 and 1939, Vormeier says about 18,000-23,000 per year stayed.31 Palmier puts the annual figure of those who remained at some 35,000, about 1.5 per cent of the working population which, excluding refugees from the Saar and Austria, he reckons was constant throughout the period.32 The number of clandestine entries must be added. Some 4,000 were amnestied under the decree of September 1936 but probably several thousand more did not apply.33 Between June 1936 and May 1938, 31,700 foreigners were naturalised, of whom only 1,515 were German.34 In the 1936 national census, out of 516,637 naturalised French citizens, 7.3 per cent, or 37,959, were of German origin.35 This low figure may have represented a reluctance on the part of the refugees to apply for French citizenship but also a reluctance by the authorities to naturalise Jewish Germans, whom they considered alien and inassimilable.36

The Refugees

59

Even if it suited the Quai unofficially to condone their anti-Nazi activities, the timing of the German refugees’ exodus was not propitious. They had to cope with hostile public opinion because they came during the years of eco­ nomic depression, they were from Germany, the enemy that France had fought less than a generation ago, about 80 per cent were Jewish and almost all the non-Jews were Communists, Socialists and from the political left. Despite their small number compared with Russians and Armenians who had come to France ten to fifteen years earlier and the much larger number of immigrant workers from Poland, Italy, Spain and Belgium who could be repatriated, politicians, trade unions and the press insisted that the German refugees posed a threat to French jobs.37 Burgess argues that the hostility against the refugees was not so much anti-Semitic as anti-German and that this xenophobia was aggravated by the economic depression.38 The refugees from Germany suf­ fered from the hostility of much of the French right wing who accused the Jews of poisoning relations with Germany and of plotting to provoke France into war with Germany so that they could recover their confiscated property, an accusation that conflicted with the allegation that these refugees constituted a potential fifth column in times of war. Almost by definition, the German ref­ ugees were anti-Nazi although only a small percentage were politically active. Nevertheless, they were also hounded by a faction of the French right wing who were pro-German for being anti-Nazi. The ultra-conservative journalist Fernand de Brinon castigated them when he wrote in 1934: T, for one, find unacceptable that émigrés come here and tell us what to do’ .39 In many cases French antipathy towards Germans did not distinguish between the Nazis and their victims: a Boche remains a Boche (un Boche reste un Boche).40

EXILES AND INTELLECTUALS The difference between an exile and an emigrant is rendered in Bertolt Brecht’s poem. Seeking refuge is not voluntary: I have always found the name they gave us wrong: emigrants. The word means expatriates; but we did not leave voluntarily, to choose another land. We did not leave our country to live elsewhere, forever were it possible.

The reason for leaving is persecution: On the contrary, we fled. We were driven out, banished. And the country that takes us in will not be a home, but a land of exile, in ragged shoes,

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The refugee is an exile because he wants to return to the motherland when the regime that persecuted him is overthrown. (. . .) Each of us, walking in the crowd Denounces the shame that contaminates our land today. But not one of us will stay here. The last word has not yet been spoken.41

Many Russians and Germans came to France expecting that the Soviet and Nazi regimes from which they fled would be short-lived, that their displacement would soon be over so that they could return home.42 Indeed, the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (The German Communist Party) considered it a temporary respite and instructed its members to return to Germany to continue the fight.43 While waiting, they considered themselves exiles because the authorities in their countries of origin stripped them of their citizenship or protection. For instance, the Mensheviks, refugees from Soviet Russia, became exiles when in February 1932, the Soviet government dispossessed them - and other refugees like Trotsky - of Soviet citizenship and refused them the right of return. If refugees, even though not deprived of citizenship and technically not exiled, returned to their country of origin while it was ruled by the regime from which they had fled, their reception might be prison, concentration camp or death. The French authorities used the terms refugee and exile interchangeably. Moreover, they classified all foreigners who came to France as foreigners or immigrants, whether to work or as refugees. Mary Dewhurst Lewis, historian of migrant rights, suggests that the PF was the first French administration to distinguish labourers from refugees among the immigrants.44 However, when the authorities distinguished refugees from workers, they did not recognise a difference between apolitical and political refugees. Most German refugees were, in practice, apolitical, although categorised by the French authorities as political. They were not refugees because they had actively opposed the Nazi regime; in Germany they had been politically uninvolved, forced to seek refuge in France because of racial and religious persecution.45 Until the term political refugee was officially defined in 1938, it was not a civil status.46 The term migrant was not yet used. The British historian Eric Hobsbawm defined the politically active refugees as the elite of the foreign communities who stood out from most refugees and expected to be heard above the crowd.47 The small number who engaged in political activity when they came to France are better categorised as public intellectuals, rather than labelled together with the generic category of politi­ cal refugees that was used by the authorities for all the German refugees. The intellectuals were an elite of politicians, journalists, writers, publishers, philosophers, academics, scientists, artists, film and theatre producers, and

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religious leaders. The sociologists Charles Kurzman and Lynn Owens define intellectuals as ‘persons with advanced educations, producers or transmit­ ters of culture or ideas, or members of either category who engage in public issues’ .48 They moved and performed in a period in which intellectuals played an influential role in France. Historian Christophe Prochasson describes the concerns of intellectuals during this period, their arguments about political engagement and their political stances between Communists, Socialists, paci­ fists and anti-Fascists.49 Pierre Milza, historian of Italian emigration, points out that refugees can be political refugees in their country of departure as well as in their country of refuge, that they can also be political on the point of departure but not on arrival, and the other way around, apolitical on departure and political on arrival.50 While the intellectuals fell into the first category, most of the refugees came into the second.51 A significant difference between the German intellectual refugees and the bulk of German refugees was that many intellectuals pursued their politics in exile in the hope of returning to Germany. The refugee intellectuals included Italians and Russians, as well as Germans. Schor says that it is impossible accurately to establish the number of active political German refugees who came to France in the 1930s; how­ ever, he estimates they included about 2,000 writers.52 The historian Ruth Fabian states that about 20 per cent of the German refugees were what she calls political exiles. She gives figures for 1935-1936 in Paris: about 3,000 Social Democrats, 5,500 Communists, plus 500 pacifists and democrats, and 250 Catholics.53 Werner Roder, historian of German emigration, says that by 1936 about 9,000 intellectuals (whom he defines as academics, writ­ ers, artists, members of the cultural professions) had fled from Germany to France.54 Vormeier is precise in identification of the reasons for flight: in 1936-1937, 29 per cent of refugees left Germany for political reasons, 65.3 per cent for racial and economic reasons, and 5.7 per cent for various other reasons.55 In interwar France in the 'République des faveurs' {'Republic offavours'}, patronage and cronyism were essential features of political life.56 The benevo­ lence of politicians such as Blum, Herriot, Gaston Bergery,57 Henri Guernut,58 and intellectuals like André Gide, André Malraux, Romain Rolland, helped celebrities to enter France, regularise their papers, and solicit and advance their cause. For example, Bergery helped the Communist Willi Münzenberg.59 Blum, a friend of the Menshevik Fedor Dan, arranged for visas to come to France for seventy-three Mensheviks forced to flee from Berlin in 1933.60 Blum also helped his fellow Socialist, Rudolf Breitscheid, to obtain his visa.61 Breitscheid then went over the head of the French consul in Zurich, writing from Switzerland directly to Chautemps, the Minister of the Interior, asking that Rudolf Hilferding62 and three other colleagues be granted visas.

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Chautemps cleared the request with Paul-Boncour, the MAE.63 Viénot helped Heinrich Mann. Solomon Grumbach64 and Longuet were also involved. Pierre Comert at the Quai65 was helpful to Walter Benjamin,66 probably with Léger’s complicity.67 The writer and diplomat, Jean Giraudoux, helped Alfred Doblin and Annette Kolb to obtain French citizenship. Alma Mahler-Werfel68 and Lili Palmer69 mention that they bribed the officials to regularise their papers. But these were exceptional cases. The Radical Socialist politicians Justin Godart70 and André Honnorat71 helped less well-known refugees, but most refugees, Jews, and others, had to submit to the entry rules that applied to all refugees.72 The refugee intellectuals’ activities were manifold. They pleaded their cause through their contacts and friendships with French politicians and persons of influence. Although they tended to avoid taking part in French domestic politics, they had an indirect influence. For instance, the Italian exiles, the fuorusciti (persons gone abroad) described the nature of Fascism to the French political left, which, according to Milza, had an impact on the formation of the PF.73 The intellectuals were the spokespersons for their communities. Basile Maklakov, who had acted as Russian ambassador to France in opposition to the Soviets until French recognition of the Soviet Union in 1924, became the spokesman recognised by the French government to represent the Russian community. Heinrich Mann fulfilled a similar role for the Germans even though the French police considered him as potentially subversive. The Italians, especially Carlo Rosselli, while not having an official representa­ tive, were well connected with the French establishment. Filippo Turati’s Concentrazione d’azione antifascista (The Concentration of Antifascist Action) and Rosselli’s Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Liberty) formed an alignment of the main Italian anti-Fascist groups, apart from the Communists, to speak for the Italian community. A federation of refugee relief organisations recognised by the French authorities as speaking on behalf of the Jewish community was the Comité national de secours aux réfugiés allemands victimes de Vantisémitisme (The National Committee for Help for German Refugees, Victims of antiSemitism) (CNSRA), formed in 1933 to represent several Jewish relief organisations with one voice.74 It was influential and had close connections to French governments. As the principal Jewish reception and relief commit­ tee its funds came mainly from the Rothschilds and the JDC. Its presidents, first Paul Painlevé (1863-1933), succeeded on his death in October 1933 by Bérenger, were not Jewish. Under Bérenger, it liaised with the government on interministerial committees as did the Comité national de secours aux réfugiés allemands (National Committee to Help German Refugees) under the presidency of Raymond-Raoul Lambert, which was replaced by the Comité

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d’Assistance aux Réfugiés {The Committee for Assistance for Refugees') in July 1936. Together with French intellectuals and politicians the refugees set up committees to conduct propaganda campaigns focused on their countries of origin. The exiled German Social Democratic Party {SOPADE) reported that up to June 1936 it had smuggled from Czechoslovakia and France more than 1.2 million copies of its newspaper, Sozialistische Aktion {Socialist Action) into Germany, more than 100,000 brochures and more than 1.5 million handbills.75 The German refugees achieved two successes. The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror was published in Paris as part of the campaign that helped the acquittal of the Communists accused of setting fire to the Reichstag and the campaign in 1936 for the award of the Nobel Prize to the German journalist Carl von Ossietzky who was imprisoned by the Nazis. However, other campaigns such as the Thälmann Committee for the release of the Communist leader Ernst Thälmann, also imprisoned by the Nazis, were less successful. Although no refugees served as officials on the Committee, refugee intellectuals were heavily involved such as Ernst Toller, the German left-wing playwright, who wrote pamphlets with Henri Barbusse, French nov­ elist, political activist and member of the PCF. Some refugees tried to help the resistance movements in the Soviet Union, and Italy, but generally they failed. Refugees also made unsuccessful efforts to influence the French gov­ ernment. The authorities ignored German refugees’ pressure to stop the Saar plebiscite in 1935 and to intervene when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936. They also ignored Russian refugee objections to the Franco-Soviet rapprochement in 1935. The refugees organised pressure groups, associations and congresses to mobilise international opinion. The most prominent were the ones that asso­ ciated peace movements with anti-Nazism in which Münzenberg was a key figure. He instigated the 1934 Paris meeting of the Amsterdam-Pleyel peace movement and worked behind the scenes organising the International Writers Conference for the Defence of Culture in Paris in 1935. Alfred Kantorovich, another German Communist, together with Heinrich Mann, set up the Freedom Library in Paris in 1934 with copies of the 25,000 books burned by the Nazis in Berlin in 1933. The German Freie Deutsche Hochschule {Free German Highschool) was set up in 1935 in Paris by German refugees as a forum for the diffusion of liberal anti-Nazi programmes. The French authorities did not object to such enterprise, but few refugees appreciated such freedom. Many intellectuals considered themselves the legitimate practitioners and protectors of German, Russian and Italian culture. The regimes wanted legiti­ macy, and this was what the refugees challenged. The refugees asserted that a band of illegitimate adventurers and usurpers occupied their countries, that

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their exile was a form of resistance to these regimes and their activities were aimed at delegitimising the regime’s authority. The Soviet, Fascist and Nazi authorities took this opposition seriously enough to monitor refugee activities in France and to penetrate refugee associations. They operated with impunity. An example was the Russian Operation Trust that was active during the years 1921-1926.76 Also, there were clandestine operations. Soviet secret services were accused of the abductions of the heads of the Russian All Military Union (ROVS), the Tsarist generals Kutepov in 1930 and Miller in 1937. French Fascists, probably on the orders of Mussolini, assassinated the Italian Rosselli brothers in 1937. And there were official interventions. In January 1938 when the Thälmann committee, supported by the LDH and the Paris branch of the Confédération générale du travail {General Confederation of Workers) (CGT) sponsored the exhibition in Paris entitled 'Cinq ans du régime hitlérien' {Five years of the Hitler Regime), the German government protested to the Quai that much of the information was false and causing dis­ ruption of Franco-German relations. By then, the authorities’ lenient attitude to refugees’ political activities had hardened. The Quai instructed the police to remove five photographs and caricatures.77 Hobsbawm wrote that the political refugees were reluctantly accepted in the West, in this case in France, where they were neither welcomed nor, except in exceptional cases, integrated.78 Like Hobsbawm, Thalmann says that the French left was unwilling to integrate the German refugees into its campaigns against Nazism.79 This is not the full picture. There was contact when refugee intellectuals met their French counterparts on committees, in associations and at congresses. It is correct that some of the committees and associations that provided aid and support to German refugees were exclu­ sively French and others were exclusively German but some were joint French and German. They worked together on anti-Nazi propaganda. The Thälmann Committee was an example of one of these pressure groups. Another was the Comité d’aide et acceuil aux victimes de fascisme {Committee to help and welcome victims of Fascism) CAAVF. The Comité mondial contre la guerre et le fascisme {Worldwide Committee against War and Fascism)™ was yet another one of many that were made up of French and Germans intellectuals, several being Comintern front organisations established by Münzenberg like the Comité de Vigilance {The Vigilance Committee) and the Congrès de la Jeunesse {Youth Congress). Mann, an ardent Francophile, was the foremost example of a refugee writer’s engagement with French left-wing intellectuals. He circulated freely in French political circles and his commitments were as much to French com­ mittees as to those of the German exiles. An example of an association that was both professional and political was the Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller {Association for Protection of German Writers) founded in Paris in 1933 by

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the Communist Alfred Kurella and the left-leaning Rudolf Leonhard. There were arguments over the extent to which it should become involved in politi­ cal activities, but its focus was firmly anti-Fascist. Frenchmen were invited to speak at its meetings. For instance, in August 1934 Paul Nizan81 addressed a meeting of the association presided over by Henri Barbusse.82 Exilliteratur historian Albrecht Betz in his book Exil und Engagement emphasises the soli­ darity between French writers and their German refugee colleagues.83 Contact was especially strong when political ideologies were shared. The Board of the Labour and Socialist International, the international federation of which the Section Française de I ’Internationale Ouvrière (French Section of the Workers ’ International) (SFIO) was the French branch, included French members Longuet, Blum and Jean Zyromski,84 the Germans Hilferding and Otto Weis,85 the Italians Giuseppe Modigliani86 and Pietro Nenni.87 Other committees that brought together French and refugee members were the Centre de liaison des comités pour le statut des immigrés (Liaison Centre of the Committees for the Immigrants ’ Statute)33 and the Bureau international pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques (International Office for the Respect of the Right to Asylum and Help for Political Refugees) (BIR). In September 1936, the Blum government established the Comité con­ sultatif pour les réfugiés d’Allemagne (Consultative committee for refugees) to vet the applications for amnesty offered to clandestine German refugees,89 on which sat an equal number of German refugees and French officials.90 However, some German liberals like the writer Leopold Schwarzschild who were unattached to a political party had greater difficulty integrating with the French than the German Socialist and Communist Party members who had the support of their French counterparts. Organisations that although exclusively French had constant contact with refugees included the PCF which, not wanting to alienate its French members who worried that the refugees threatened their jobs, kept a low profile but nevertheless provided support for Communist refugees through the French section of the SR. The Comité Matteotti (Matteotti Committee) did the same for Socialists.91 The French branch of the LDH became heavily involved in giving advice to refugees and intervening on their behalf with the French authorities. A feature of this period was the existence of dozens of refugees’ politi­ cal and cultural associations. There were seventy-six registered associations to help and support refugees. Most had registered as required by the law of 1901 but there were many, especially Russian, which did not. As well as these professional contacts between French and refugee intellectuals, they met at social occasions and the more structured interchanges. Examples were the annual colloquium of the Décades de Pontigny (Pontigny Decades) attended by German and Russian refugees92 and between 1929 and 1931 the monthly

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soirees of the Studio Franco-Russe in which equal numbers of French and Russians took part.93 Another point of contact was the 1935 Paris Writers’ Congress, attended by refugee writers from France, Germany and Italy although, because it was a Comintern front, anti-Soviet Russian refugees were not invited.94 Another example was André Malraux, who cultivated a wide circle of anti-Fascists that included many refugees in addition to his attendance at the Writers’ Congress, the Décades de Pontigny and several committees. He also went to see Trotsky during his exile in France. André Gide, who had an equally wide circle of acquaintances, met refugees at the offices of the Nouvelle revue française. Malraux and Gide together went to Berlin in 1934 to plead with Goering for the release of the Communists accused of the Reichstag arson. Another feature of this period was the importance of newspapers and jour­ nals in which refugee writers and journalists participated. Although abused by Jean Chiappe (1878-1940),95 Préfet de police de Paris (Prefect of the Paris Police), France had a free press, guaranteed by the law on liberty of the press of 1881.96 In 1936, several French writers, including François Mauriac, André Maurois and Henri de Montherlant published an appeal to support their Russian refugee colleagues.97 The columns of the French press, and especially the journals, were available to the refugees. Russians and Germans took advantage of this facility.98 The Russians André Levinson, Vladimir Pozner and Boris de Schloezer contributed to Candide, Figaro, Mercure de France, Nouvelles Littératures and the Nouvelle Revue Française. The col­ umns of Nouvelles Littératures were available to Russian refugees in 1930 after Vladimir Mayakovski’s suicide to debate with French fellow travellers the political significance of his poetry. Feodor Dan and Greste Rosenfeld wrote articles in Blum’s socialist Le Populaire. The Germans Rudolf Breitscheid and Bruno Frei wrote for Henri Barbusse’s Monde and German refugees contributed to the French left-wing journal Commune, the review of the Associations des écrivains et artistes révolutionnaires. Its index includes articles by Johannes Becher, Brecht, Kantorowitz, Kurella, Heinrich Mann, Pozner and Anna Seghers. Emil Ludwig was a regular contributor to the left-wing Marianne, as were Stefan Zweig and Ernst Noth, who also wrote for Europe, Romain Rolland’s journal. Mann and Georg Bernhard wrote monthly articles for the daily newspaper La Dépêche du Midi. The editor was Maurice Sarraut, brother of the politician Albert Sarraut. Gallimard pub­ lished Gaetano Salvemini’s La terreur fasciste in 1930. Nevertheless, there was less interaction between the Italians and the French in journals, since the main thrust of Italian intellectuals’ anti-Fascist efforts was to organise meetings attended by French supporters. German and Russian Exilliteratur (Exile writing) described the difficult life of refugees, many of whom were in desperate situations, depressed and humiliated.99 Arthur Koestler listed the documents that refugees had to have:

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‘a passport to prove one existed, a resident’s permit to allow one to stay in the country and a work permit to allow one to earn a living’.100 Palmier has described the situation of many of the intellectual refugees, once they were in France, as: With no friends, no papers, no visa, no residence permit, no work permit . . . Abandoned to bureaucratic red tape. ... He must stand in line at counters for subsidies, papers, information, [and] advice, park himself for hours, for entire days, in front of Consulates, commissioners, [and] police headquarters, to attempt to denounce the legal imbroglio resulting solely from his existence.101 The novelist Bodo Uhse called refugee life ‘shitty’102 and Herman Kesten chronicled its adversities, hardships, and struggles: I don’t know to what extent men who have never been obliged to leave their countries can picture life in exile for themselves, a life without money, without family, friends and cousins, without a familiar language, without a valid pass­ port, often without an identity card, without a work permit, without a country willing to accept exiles. Who can understand this situation: to be without any rights whatsoever, rejected by one’s own country, a country which persecutes, slanders and sends beyond its borders murderers to execute them? Defenceless, they are handed over to the police, and the police in charge of foreigners throw them over one border after another.103 It was put even more bluntly by Claude Vernier: T was waiting for the stamp allowing me to continue to exist a little’.104 However, Nina Berberova exaggerated her complaint about the rejection of émigré writers by French society: ‘Writers from the emigration did everything possible to see to it that the voice coming from Russia was heard. But no one listened to them, they were received nowhere’.105 Rather than being cold-shouldered by their French hosts, many refugees did not want to integrate into French society. But not all refugees were critical of their reception. Marina Tsvetaeva’s New Year’s wish did not suggest alienation by French intellectuals, nor blame of the French for her predicament.106 ‘For Russia - a Bonaparte, for me publishers’. Her wish for a Bonaparte for Russia was for a leader who, like Napoleon, would emulate for Russia the glory he had brought to France, both heroism and culture. Eventually she returned to Soviet Russia in 1939. Erich-Maria Remarque also appreciated the comparative freedom of refu­ gees in France:

They were living in Paris, that was enough for them. They put their hope in a better tomorrow and felt safe. The spirit of tolerance that breathed over the city that had absorbed all the emigrants of the century; there you could die of hunger,

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but you were not hounded more than was absolutely necessary; this was already a great deal in their eyes.107

The demeaning and upsetting experiences the refugees had with the French police and bureaucracy doubtless were unpleasant. However, this should be put in the context of refugee life being difficult wherever it occurred. There was a tendency to blame the French authorities for the hardships and frustra­ tions that were generic to a refugee. Remarque described the general condition of a refugee: ‘A man without a passport is a dead man on leave. He barely has the asset to kill himself, and it’s all that’s left to do. And with a passport? A passport will not grant you a work permit abroad. Of course not. But at least it allows you to starve easily. Without being constantly alert. And that is already something’.108 Refugees had to make significant efforts to establish new lives in the countries that granted them a refuge, whether in France or elsewhere. Although the Quai may have secretly supported the refugees’ anti-Nazi stance, at the same time, French authorities were probably more inclined to overlook the refugees’ political activities because common to each refugee community, whether German, Russian or Italian, was its inability to form a united front to challenge the regime from which it had fled. The German Volksfront failed largely because the political left continued in exile to per­ sist with the enmity and distrust between Communists and Socialists that was a feature of the Weimar Republic.109 At their congress in Paris in 1926, attended by most of the émigré associations, the Russians were unable to agree a joint programme for their vision of how Russia was to be governed after the defeat of the Bolshevik regime.110 The Italian diaspora suffered from the same problem. Italian refugees did not enjoy the same LON protection as the Russians and Germans. By 1929, the Mussolini government had abandoned its policy of dis­ possessing Italian refugees of their nationality. It subsequently argued that the refugees were still Italian citizens so there was no need for the LON to grant them the same protection as it did for Nansen and subsequently the German refugees. In any case, most Italians coming to France were economic immi­ grants seeking work with the unofficial consent of the Italian authorities. Italians did not require a passport or a visa to enter France, only an identity card. When there was no work in France many Italians returned to Italy: they were apolitical.

THE POLICE The bitterness of many refugees was directed against the police. The work of 'Foreigners Police' ('lapolice des étrangers') included checking foreigners’

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identity papers and work permits, organising the fiches, and the surveillance of individual foreigners and their organisations, whether social, cultural or political, that the police judged were a danger to the state.111 Individual names were entered in the Carnet B, a list of potential subversives.112 Instructions to the Prefecture and the Sûreté Générale changed in sever­ ity with the politics of the Ministers of the Interior. The assassinations of President Doumer in 1932 and Foreign Minister Barthou in 1934 both by foreigners resulted in stricter conditions of entry and in the introduction of decrees to restrict the activities and movements of refugees involved in politics. The frequent changes of ministers allowed the police discretion in the way they carried out governmental instructions with some officials more exacting than others. Chiappe was an example of a police chief who used his discretion to pursue Communists to the extent of challenging his ministers’ authority. On the other hand, because of the frequent changes of ministries the police never knew which party would next be in charge often opting to play safe and not to exceed their authority. Consequently, the collection of information by surveillance and the creation of fiches to record the details of foreigners generally were politically neutral. This intelligence gave the police their power. The police kept the Quai informed of the political activities of the refugees, knowledge that helped the Quai to avoid embarrassment with foreign governments. Jean-Marc Berlière, an expert on the police, criticises the quality of the police reports.113 He points out that the police, trained to deal with pre-war anarchists, had not adjusted their methods to confront the new threats to pub­ lic safety from immigrants be they workers or refugees. For instance, there is no record of surveillance of Comintern operatives working long term in France such as Eugen Fried, who lived incognito in Paris from 1931 to 1940 (there is no evidence that the French government gave instructions to ignore their presence). Jean Vatlin, another Comintern operative, explained the lengths to which the Comintern went to avoid detection.114 The police reports were a simple narrative of what happened at meetings devoid of assessments of the activities and intentions of the targets and were reactive when they should have been predictive. Furthermore, Berlière says that the police were inefficient because there were gaps, misfiling and mistakes made in the fiches. The authorities were aware of these shortcomings and increased the personnel of the department but nevertheless the system of fiches even with its defects worked well enough. Daladier used the fiches to proscribe the Communists in 1938 and they were used by the Vichy government after 1940 for the per­ secution of the Jews. Indeed, Noiriel emphasises the singularity of the French Third Republic because it invented the fiches and used the technology for policies of exclusion and persecution.115

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NOTES 1. See chapter 1. 2. Article 11 of the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen of 1789: ‘Free communication of thought and opinions is one of the most precious rights of Man: any Citizen may therefore freely speak, write and publish, except when this freedom is abused as determined in cases brought before the Law’. See also the Law of 29 July 1881 on the liberty of the press. 3. In January 1938, to appease the German government, the French government instructed the police to remove some exhibits from an anti-Nazi exhibition. 4. ‘10,000’ is a figure of speech. There is no record of the exact number. For Polish emigration, see Norman Davies, God’s Playground, A History Of Poland, Vol II, 1795 To The Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Barbara Jelavich, ‘The Polish Emigration 1831-1871’, in L’émigration politique en Europe aux XIX et XX siècles, Collection of the Ecole française de Rome 146 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1991), pp. 217-34; Peter Alter, Theodor Schnieder and Otto Dann, Nationale Bewegung und Soziale Organisation (Munich: Oldenburg, 1978); R. F. Leslie, Polish Politics and the Revolution of November 1830, University of London Historical Studies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1969). 5. See AN. Débat 9 avril 1832. Archives Parlementaires 1787-1860, 2 séries vol. 77 (27 mars-29 novembre 1832) (Paris: Librairie administrative de Paul Dupont, 1862), pp. 323, 441. 6. The relevant section and articles were: Relations of the French Republic with foreign nations. Article 118. The Nation of France is the friend and natural ally of all free peoples. Article 119. It does not interfere in the government of other nations; it does not allow other nations to interfere in its own. Article 120. It grants asylum to foreigners banished from their native countries in the name of freedom. - It refuses it to tyrants. Article 121. It does not make peace with an enemy occupying its territory. 7. See Peter Jones, The 1848 Revolutions, 2nd edn (Harlow: Longman, 1991). 8. The law of 3 December 1839 reinforced the power to expel. 9. According to Jean Chiappe, the right-wing anti-Communist Prefect of Police, Communists, on instructions from Moscow, were a threat to public safety. He used this as an excuse to invoke the lois scélérates to prosecute and imprison the Communists and to proscribe the circulation of some Communist papers and journals. These laws were abrogated sixty-five years later on 23 December 1992! 10. They were given refuge despite France having signed a treaty of mutual assis­ tance with Czarist Russia in 1894 that lasted until 1917. 11. See Noiriel, Réfugiés et sans-papiers, pp. 40-57, and Patrick Weil and Catherine Porter, How to Be French: Nationality in the Making Since 1789 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). See also Cécile Mondonico-Torri, Les réfugiés en France sous la Monarchie de Juillet: l’impossible statut. Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 47(4) (octobre décembre 2000), pp. 731-745. She argues that the charitable measures defined who was a refugee.

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12. See debates, JO, Débats parlementaires - chambre des députés, Séance (Parliamentary debates, Chamber of Deputies, Sittings) 29 janvier 1935, pp. 246, 256-260, 265; Séance 19 février 1935, pp. 550, 563-565. 13. An exhibition at the Archives Nationales in 2011 published a catalogue of the history of fiches from 1850 to 1960: 'Fichés? Photographie et identification, (Paris: Perrin, 2011). 14. Résultats statistiques du recensement général de la population le 8 mars 1936, vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1938). 15. Quoted by Barbara Metzger, The League ofNations, Refugees and Individual Rights in Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch, Refugees in Europe 1919-1945 (London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), p. 103. 16. Expert on agriculture, he was also a member of the Permanent Committee of Emigration of the ILO, and a member of the Central Committee of the LDH. 17. Janine Ponty, ‘Réfugiés, exilés, des catégories problématiques’, Matériaux Pour L’histoire De Notre Temps 44(1) (1996), pp. 9-13. 18. The Nobel Lecture delivered by Michael Hansson, 10 December 1938. At https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1938/nansen/lecture/ (accessed 20 November 2016). 19. See https://ofpra.gouv.fr/f (accessed 12 February 2017). 20. See chapter 6. 21. Avenol was Secretary-general from 1933 to 1940: James Barros, Betrayal from Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary-general of the League of Nations 1933-1940 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969). 22. See https://ofpra.gouv.fr/f (accessed 12 February 2017). See chapter 10 for the 1936 and 1939 Conventions. 23. LON O.J Vol 8 II, pp. 1599-1600. See Atle Grahl-Madsen, the League of Nations and Refugees. In The League of Nations in Retrospect, The United Nations Library, Proceedings of the Symposium (La Société des nations rétrospective, Bibliothèque des nations unies, Actes du colloque (Berlin: de Gruyter. 1980), pp. 364, 358-68. 24. Schor, L’Opinion française, (Paris: Publication de la Sorbonne, 1958) p. 652. 25. Anne Grynberg, ‘L’acceuil des réfugiés d’Europe centrale en France (1933— 1939)’. Les Cahiers de la Shoah 1, 1994, pp 131-148. 26. MAE SDN 451, Extract from the paper Le Petit Parisien, 10 septembre 1933, p. 74. 27. MAE SDN 451, Note: ‘La question juive en Allemagne devant les Commissions de F Assemblée’ (Note: The Jewish question in Germany for discussion in the Assembly Commissions) 1 octobre 1933, p. 107. 28. LON C 1616, Memorandum to Permanent Committee of the High Commission for Refugees from Germany, 7 December 1933. 29. Foreign Relations of the United States diplomatic papers 1933, vol. II Minister in Switzerland (Wilson) to the Secretary of State Geneva, 28 September 1933. 30. LON Official Journal Special Supplement no. 117,4 and 7 October 1933. 31. Vormeier, Frankreich, Handbuch, p. 213. 32. Palmier, Weimar en Exil, p. 274. The JDC estimate is 30,000: JDC File 657. 33. Palmier, Weimar en Exil, p. IL

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34. Vormeier, Frankreich, Handbuch, p. 221. Half were Italian. From 1931 to 1936, the number of naturalised French citizens rose from 361,000 to 517,000. 35. The INSEE 1936 census gives the numbers of foreign nationals: 195,447 Belgians, 253,599 Spaniards, 720,996 Italians, 422,694 Poles, 63,957 Russians and 78,859 Swiss. 36. Patrick Weil, ‘Georges Mauco, expert en immigration: ethno-racisme pra­ tique et antisémitisme fielleux’, in Pierre-André Taguieff (ed.), L’Antisemitisme de plume 1940-1944, Etudes et Documents (Paris: Berg International Editeurs, 1999), pp. 267-76. 37. See Schor, L’Opinion française, Part 4, Chapters 1-3. 38. Greg Burgess, ‘France and the German Refugee Crisis of 1933’, French History 16(2) (2002), pp. 203-29. 39. Fernand de Brinon, France-Allemagne 1918-1934 (Paris: Grasset, 1934), p. 264. He was condemned and executed for collaboration in 1947. 40. Schor, Ecrire en exil, p. 82. 41. Bertolt Brecht, Svendborger Gedichte (Berlin: Insel Verlag, 1939). Translation by Jean Coyner. 42. See Hunter Bivens, Epic and Exile: Novels of the German Popular Front, 1933-1945 (Evanston, IL: North Western University Press, 2015). 43. Frank Caestecker, Red Aid, a Non-Accommodating NGO Challenging the Power of West-European States to Deny Protection to Undeserving Refugees, 1933— 1935. In Journal of Migration History 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 304-331. P315. 44. Lewis, The Boundaries of the Republic, p. 187. 45. Egon F. Kunz, ‘Exile and Resettlement: Refugee Theory’, International Migration Review 15(1/2) Refugees Today (Spring-Summer 1981), pp. 42-51. 46. See chapter 4 for a definition of political refugee. 47. Eric Hobsbawm, How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism, 1840-2011 (London: Little Brown, 2011), p. 275. 48. Charles Kurtzman and Lynn Owens ‘The Sociology of Intellectuals’, Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002), p. 63. 49. See Christophe Prochasson, Les Intellectuels et le socialisme, XIXe-XXe siècle (Paris: Plon, 1997); Christophe Prochasson and Madeleine Rebérioux, Les Intellectuels, le socialisme et la guerre 1900-1938, L’ Univers Historique (Paris: Éd du Seuil, 1993). 50. Pierre Milza, ‘Introduction et problématique générale’, in L’Emigration Politique en Europe aux XIXe etXXe siècles, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome 146 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1991), pp. 3-12. 51. Milza, ‘Introduction et problématique générale’, pp. 3-12. 52. Schor, Écrire en exil, pp. 10-11. 53. Ruth Fabian and Corinna Coulmas, Die Deutsche Emigration in Frankreich nach 1933 (Munich: Saur, 1978), p. 54. Boris Schilmar, Der Europadiskus im Deutschen Exil (Oldenburg: Wissenschaft Verlag, 2004), identifies ‘Kommunisten, Sozialdemokraten, Revolutionäre. Sozialisten Deutschlands, Sozialistische ArbeiterPartie, Neu Beginnen, Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund, Deutsche

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Volkssozialistische Bewegung, Pazifisten, Liberale und Bürgerlich-Konservative, Nationale Konservative’. 54. Werner Roder, ‘German Politics in Exile 1933-1945’, in Pierre Milza L’Emigration Politique en Europe aux XIX et XXe siècles, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome 146 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1991), p. 405. 55. Vormeier, Frankreich, Handbuch, p. 221. 56. On ‘La République des faveurs’ see the essay by Frédéric Monier in Marion Fontaine, Frédéric Monier and Christophe Prochasson, Une Contre-Histoire de la Ille République (Paris: La Decouverte, 2013), pp. 339-52. 57. At that time anti-Nazi. He was to change his stance in 1940 when he voted full powers for Pétain. 58. Radical Socialist deputy for l’Aisne, Secretary of the LDH 1912-1932. 59. In charge of Agitprop in the KPD. See Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg. Eine politische Biografie (Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1967). 60. See André Liebich, From the Other Shore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 217. 61. Senior member and spokesman of the German Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD). 62. Noted Marxist economist. The others were Arthur Crispien, Wilhelm Dittman and Fritz Demuth. 63. MAE Z 710, Lettre du MAE au Ministre de l’intérieur (Letter from MAE to the Minister of the Interior), 5 mai 1933, pp. 98-101. 64. Socialist deputy and journalist. 65. Press officer at the Quai d’Orsay, close to Léger. 66. Marxist, philosopher, cultural critic, essayist. 67. Léger was a fellow poet using the pseudonym Saint-Jean Perse. 68. Alma Mahler-Werfel, Ma Vie (Paris: Juilliard, 1961), p. 313. 69. Lili Palmer, Un Bon Petit Soldat (Paris: Laffont, 1979), p. 11. 70. Senator for the Rhone 1932-40. 71. Senator for the Basses-Alpes 1921-40, member of the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs. 72. For example, Hannah Arendt. See the Origins of Totalitarianism (1951, revised edn. (New York: Schocken, 2004) includes all the prefaces and additions from the 1958, 1968 and 1972 editions). 73. Milza, ‘Introduction et problématique générale’, p. 9. 74. See Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 95, 97, 106-108. Helbronner was on the Comité National’s Executive Board. 75. Roder, ‘German Politics in Exile 1933-1945’, p. 406. 76. In 1924, it was successful in luring Boris Savinkov, an opponent of the Bolsheviks, from France back to Russia and to his death. 77. Le Populaire (4 February 1938), no. 5469, p. 1. 78. Hobsbawm, How to Change the World, p. 263. 79. Rita Thalmann gives a one-sided picture of the reception of German refu­ gees in ‘Comité international d’histoire de la Deuxième guerre mondiale, Colloque

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franco-allemand’, La France et L’Allemagne, 1932-1936 Communications (Paris: CNRS, 1980), p. 172. 80. Formed in October 1933, by Münzenberg, its presidents were Henri Barbusse and Paul Longevin, also called the Amsterdam-Pleyel movement. 81. Philosopher and writer. He was a member of the PCF from 1928 until 1939. 82. Albrecht, Exil und Forschung. 83. Betz, Exil und Engagement, pp. 7-12. 84. Leader during the interwar years of the Bataille Socialiste, the left wing of the SFIO. 85. Prominent members of the SPD. 86. Anti-Fascist, Italian representative to the Socialist International. 87. Secretary of the Partita Socialista Italiana (Italian Socialist Party) (PSI), friend of Blum. 88. Created in June 1936 at the Paris International Conference for the Right of Asylum, to put pressure on the LON. 89. See chapter 6. 90. The Germans were Georg Bernhard, Albert Greszinski, Willi Münzenberg and Theodor Tichauer. The French were Paul Perrin, Solomon Grumbach, RaymondRaoul Lambert and Emile Kahn. 91. Livian, Le Parti Socialiste, p. 46. 92. Heinrich Mann, Ivan Bounine, Leon Chestov and Nikolai Berdiaev. 93. Gervaise Tassis (ed.), Leonid Livak and Studio franco-russe, Le Studio Franco-Russe, 1929-1931, Toronto Slavic Library (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2005). 94. This did not stop the journalist Magdeleine Paz from attacking the Soviet government for not releasing Victor Serge, a Marxist journalist critical of Stalin. 95. Director of the Sûreté Nationale 1924-27, Prefect of Paris Police 1927-34. 96. The law of 29 July 1881 on press liberty. 97. ‘L’Appel des écrivains français’ appeared in several daily newspapers. See Leonid Livak, ‘Nina Berberova et la mythologie culturelle de l’émigration russe en France’, Cahiers du monde russe 43(2) (2002), p. 470. 98. Betz, Exil und Engagement, has a bibliography. 99. There was no Italian exile literature of consequence. The Exilliteratur dis­ cussed here refers to the writing of mainly German exiles who lived in France and some Russians. 100. Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth (London: Eland, 2006). See also quoted in Robert G. Walker, A Critical Preface to Koestler’s “Scum of the Earth”. The Sewanee Review. Vol. 114(2) (Spring 2006), pp. 278-291. 101. Palmier, Weimar en Exil, p. 337. 102. Quoted by Gilbert Badia in 478. Vernier, Tendre Exil, p. 103. Saint Sauveur-Henn, Fluchtziel Paris, p. 34. 103. Quoted by Michael Winkler (ed.) Deutsche Literatur im Exil 1933-1945 (Ditzingen: Reclam, 1997), p. 478. 104. Vernier, Tendre Exil, p. 103. 105. Nina Berberova, C’est moi qui souligne (Arles: Actes Sud, 1993), p. 513.

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106. Marina Tsvetaeva’s 1926 New Year wish. 107. Erich Maria Remarque, Les exilés (Paris: Broché, 1962), p. 42. 108. Remarque. Les Exilés, p. 22. 109. See Langkau-Alex, Deutsche Volksfront, vol. 2, pp. 273-75. 110. M. A. Kotenko and I. V. Domnin, Rossiiskii Zarubezhnyi Sezd, 1926, Parizh: Dokumenty I Materialy (Russian Congress abroad 1926: documents and material) (Moscow: Russkii Put, 2006) describes the forlorn hopes of a return of Russian refugees. 111. See Ilsen About, ‘Identifier les étrangers. Genèses d’une police bureaucra­ tique de l’immigration dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres’, in Gérard Noiriel (ed.), L’identification des personnes. Genèse d’un travail d’État (Paris, Belin, 2007), pp. 125-160. 112. See Donald N. Baker, ‘The Surveillance of Subversion in Interwar France: The Carnet B in the Seine, 1922-1940’, French Historical Studies 10 (1978), pp. 486-516; Jean-Pierre Deschodt, ‘La preuve par le carnet B’, in Les Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques 45 (2010), pp. 181-93; Jean-Jacques Becker, Le Carnet B. Les pouvoirs publics et l’antimilitarisme avant la guerre de 1914 (Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 1973). 113. Jean-Marc Berlière and Denis Peschanski, La Police Française, 1930-1935: Entre Bouleversements et Permanences (Paris: Documentation française, 2000); JeanMarc Berlière, ‘The Difficult Construction of a ‘Republican’ Police: The Experience of the French Third Republic’, in Gerald Blaney, Jr (ed.), Policing Interwar Europe: Continuity, Change and Crisis, 1918-1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 14-30. 114. See Jean Vatlin, Out of the Night (London: Fortress, 1988). 115. Noiriel, Immigration, antisémitisme et racisme en France, p. 479. See also Pierre Piazza, ‘Système d’enregistrement d’identité, numéro d’identification et “carte d’identité de Français” durant le Régime de Vichy (France 1940-1944)’, Criminocorpus, Identification, contrôle et surveillance des personnes, at http://criminocorpus.revues.org/3659 (accessed 23 November 2017).

Chapter 4

Definitions

James Hathaway, an authority on refugee law, wrote that the definition of a refugee is: An extremely malleable legal concept which can take on different meanings as required by the nature and scope of the dilemma prompting involuntary migra­ tion. If properly defined, refugee-hood enables the maintenance of a delicate balance between domestic policies of controlled immigration and the moral obligation of the international community to respond to the plight of those forced to flee their countries.1

He analyses three periods that distinguish trends in international refugee definition: 1920-1935 as juridical because persons outside their state of origin who had effectively been deprived of the formal protection of their government needed the facility to move internationally; 1935-1939 as social because the refugees were the helpless casualties of social or political occur­ rences that separated them from their home society designed to ensure their safety and well-being; 1938-1950 when refugees were defined primarily in individualist terms. It is important to point out that the international definition of a refugee, in law and policy, was vague in the 1930s and became clearer only after the Second World War, the establishment of the United Nations (UN) and CSR.2 In France, the social period was defined by those who fled from Nazi Germany and from Fascist Italy. The few who could support themselves were allowed to remain as immigrants whereas the majority, without sup­ port, needing work and welfare, were undesirable because they presented competition for French jobs during the years of unemployment. The Germans threatened both labour and the professions. 77

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A formidable question for the Quai was how to apply the balance described by Hathaway to the definition of refugees from Germany. The Quai preferred to avoid generic definitions because they involved questions of sovereignty and duties but the LON, which was charged with the international responsi­ bility for managing the German refugee situation, was the theatre in which the Quai had to operate when this issue was confronted. The discussions concerned the categories to be defined and the concomitant obligations, the Quai wanting to limit the categories solely to German refugees and narrow the obligations without defining them in a statute. The opinion of the LON official dealing with the refugees from Germany, Kefvik Erim,3 was that consideration of any arrangement for their legal status required a definition of refugee.4 It might have suited the Quai had the LON adopted a broad definition that included all refugees and gave them a statute to ensure their rights: if the LON assumed the responsibility for looking after the refugees, it would have relieved France of this burden. But it needed the cooperation of the countries in which the refugees might settle for which there was no appetite so the Quai had to opt for definitions that were narrow with limited scope.

DEFINITION OF A GERMAN REFUGEE

The first international definition of a German refugee was formulated for the HCR when it was set up in December 1933. It was simple, probably based on the definition of Russian and Armenian and assimilated refugees used in the 1933 LON Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees, which read: ‘Any person of Russian origin who does not enjoy or who no longer enjoys the protection of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and who has not acquired another nationality (the same for any person of Armenian origin formerly a subject of the Ottoman Empire)’.5 The HCR definition fulfilled the Quai’s requirement of protec­ tion, Germany as the country of departure and German nationality. It read: ‘Any person formerly settled in Germany who does not possess any nation­ ality other than German nationality and in respect of whom it is established that in law or in fact he or she does not enjoy the protection of the German Reich’.6 Two years later, in January 1936, when the LON took over the supervi­ sion of the HCR,7 the LON Council needed a definition for the Provisional Arrangement concerning refugees from Germany. Erim suggested that the template should be the definition used for Nansen refugees in the 1933 LON Convention8 and indeed the definition adopted was almost the same.9 It defined a German refugee as:

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For the present arrangement, the term ‘refugee coming from Germany’ shall be deemed to apply to any person who was settled in that country, who does not possess any nationality other than German nationality, and in respect of whom it is established that in law or in fact he or she does not enjoy the protection of the Government of the Reich.10

It is estimated that about 60 per cent of the refugees leaving Germany between 1933 and 1939 had German nationality and of the remaining 40 per cent a large majority were so-called Ostjuden (Jews from Eastern Europe), who had lived in Germany for many years, even generations, but had never acquired German citizenship.11 In 1936, this method of categorisation by country of origin could have been applied also to the protection of refugee Italians, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians and others, but was not, because the Quai and the LON continued to maintain that refugees from those countries still had citizenship which, in theory, entitled them to their state’s protection. Immediately after the adoption of the Provisional Arrangement, signed on 4 July 1936, the LON Assembly instructed Sir Neill Malcolm (1869-1953), the new High Commissioner for Refugees,12 to arrange a conference to agree a convention to replace the Provisional Arrangement that would give the refugees ‘more permanent status’.13 The conference, which met in March 1937, issued a preliminary draft definition of a refugee from Germany, based on the one used in 1936, but extended to include stateless persons: ‘Stateless persons not covered by previous Conventions or Agreements who have left German territory after being established therein and who are proved not to enjoy, in law or in fact, the protection of the German Government’.14 New also was the distinction between political and economic, significant because it formed the basis of future tests to decide which refugees qualified for asylum. ‘Persons who leave Germany for reasons of purely personal conve­ nience are not included in this definition’.15 Among the pressure groups, the Centre de Liaison campaigned for amendments to the draft. After meeting in Geneva in September 1937 it sent its proposals to all interested govern­ ments, including the Quai. They were incorporated into the 'Proposal for Modifications’ ('proposition de modifications’) submitted by the BIR to Fouques-Duparc to raise at the LON.16 Conceding to the reality that the con­ vention would concern only refugees from Germany, the counterproposals included a carefully worded wide definition that included Germans citizens living abroad. It had the qualified support of the PF. In preparation for the Centre’s national congress in Paris on 15-16 January 1938, Vincent Auriol (1884-1966), the Minister of Justice, had written a letter to the BIR to say that he would study the congress’s initiative.17 The BIR’s definition of a refugee was:

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In the present Convention, the term ‘refugee coming from Germany’ is consid­ ered to be any person residing at present in a contracting state, who is proved not to enjoy, either in law or in fact, the protection of the government of the Reich nor of the government of the country where he or she previously resided, and furthermore does not enjoy the benefits of any international convention concern­ ing refugees previous to this one.18

Nevertheless, others, including Philip Noel-Baker the influential British dip­ lomat, persisted in criticising the draft because it favoured only the refugees from Germany.19 The proposition de modifications and the criticisms were to no avail. But, because it was extended to cover stateless persons, the definition of refugees coming from Germany in the final text of the LON 1938 Convention was wider than the one of 1936. Article 19(a) and (b) stated: (a) Persons possessing or having possessed German nationality and not pos­ sessing any other nationality, who are proved not to enjoy, in law or in fact, the protection of the German Government.20 (b) Stateless persons not covered by previous Conventions or Agreements who have left German territory after being established therein and who are proved not to enjoy, in law or in fact, the protection of the German Government.21

The term ‘established therein’ was not defined. In exchange for agreeing to this extension, the Quai insisted on the inclusion of Article 1.2, which stated that the qualification for refugee status excluded personal convenience, again without defining ‘personal convenience’. This was the first time a definition referred to the reason for seeking refuge but overall it was still based on the proposition that refugees were persons who no longer enjoyed the protection of the German government.22 The PF and pressure groups may have forced the concession over stateless persons, but this was offset by the continued refusal to entertain the reasons for leaving. Once again, the Quai’s influence in Geneva appears to have been decisive: the text adopted in the final version was the narrow definition that the Quai had wanted.23 The last pre-war international definition was the resolution adopted at the Evian Conference on 14 July 1938, convened by President Roosevelt independently from the LON.24 Although it referred to Germany, the defini­ tion was nevertheless significant because it was the first universal one and it dropped the premise of protection adopting instead the reasons for refugees having to leave (refugees in transit were included): Persons who have not yet left their country of origin (Germany, including Austria), but who are forced to emigrate by reason of their political opinions,

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religious beliefs or racial origin, and those persons such as they are defined above who have already left their country of origin but who are not yet estab­ lished elsewhere in a permanent manner.25

However, the shift in defining refugees in terms of protection to the univer­ sal definition of refugees in terms of persecution, because persecution had violated their human rights, came after the Second World War in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.

DEFINITION OF A POLITICAL REFUGEE

The LON did not attempt a definition of a political refugee. The determination was too controversial, the frame of reference ranging from anti-Fascist to anti-Communist. The Quai, in any case not wanting to be tied down by definitions, also found the determination problematic not least because it called into question the reason for the refugees’ flight from Germany, a subject that the Quai preferred to avoid. There was the difficulty of how to categorise the refugees. As explained in chapter 3 French bureaucracy often did not distinguish between refugees and workers, both coming under the category of immigrants and sometimes referred to as foreigners. The term political refugee as applied to Germans was occasionally understood in its precise sense referring to those who actively opposed the Nazi regime but mostly it was given a loose meaning to include all who were forced to flee from Germany for political, racial and religious reasons. This was confirmed in 1934, when Herriot’s Commission to review the situation of immigrant labour26 stated that racial and confessional refugees were included in the term political refugee.27 Some government notes even referred to all German refugees as ‘Hebrew' (fisraélite"), a general category that included Jews, non-Jews and non-denominational political refugees, while others’ notes referred to ‘political refugees’ (fies réfugiés politiques'} or ‘German Hebrews' (fisraélites allemands').2* There was further confusion when Bérenger declared to the news agency Agence Havas in Lausanne after the first meeting of the Governing Board of the HCR that France was a secu­ lar country, which did not distinguish between Jews and non-Jews.29 He said that the LDH called all the refugees from Germany political refugees,30 while the SR talked of political emigrants fémigrés politiques’).31 Despite the difficulty of agreeing on an official definition of political refugee, political commentators tried their own. According to the German refugees Ruth Fabian and Corinna Coulmas, political refugees were the ones who wanted to return to Germany when the Nazi regime was overthrown.32 They referred to refugees who came to France to settle permanently as ‘emi­ grants' (fémigrés'). The Austrian Nazi journalist and humourist Valentin

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Schuster divided the German refugees into three categories: the apolitical who hoped soon to return to Germany, the agitators who were disappointed by the indifferent reception they received in France, and the Communists and Socialists.33 The CAAVF discussed the question in June 1933.34 It reported that the Ministry of Labour had said that the Ministry of the Interior was responsible for the definition of a political refugee; on its confirmation that the person concerned was a political refugee the Ministry of Labour would issue a twomonth work permit during which the police would make enquiries about the person’s legitimacy. According to the report, the Quai did not distinguish between political refugees; instead it divided the refugees into German citi­ zens, citizens of other countries but established or bom in Germany, stateless persons holding a Nansen passport and stateless persons without a Nansen passport. It separated the German refugees into three categories: 'politi­ cal exiles' {'proscrits politiques'}, those who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis professionally, economically or physically; 'ordinary emigrants' {'émigrés ordinaires'}, who had left Germany because they were anti-Nazi but had not suffered; and 'questionable cases' {'cas douteux'} made up of scroungers and profiteers. The Quai then subdivided each category into German citizens and non-Germans.35 The newspaper Le Temps of 11 October 1934 reported 3,930 refoulements in the first six months of 1933 and 5,340 in the same period of 1934. There were 5,335 refoulements for the whole year 1933 and 6,728 in the first nine months of 1934:36 The Socialist deputy Marius Moutet (1876-1968) proposed that the best protection against this increase would be a statute for immigrants which singled out political refugees. Moutet, a Dreyfusard, was a specialist on the French colonies who campaigned in favour of a democratic colonial­ ism and against the exploitation of the colonies. He was also member of the International LDH Council, and his daughter Marianne married George Basch, the son of the LDH president, Victor Basch. Moutet was often the voice of the LDH in the Assembly. In 1940, he voted against giving Pétain full authority. He submitted a draft in the Assemblée Nationale on 11 December 1934, in which the definition was generic and did not mention refugees from Germany.37 Article 1 defined political refugees based on persecution, without clarifying what serious threats to life or liberty were: ‘Political refugees shall be defined as foreigners who have had to leave their country to escape serious threats against their life or liberty by reason of their convictions, political or religious attitudes, or of their race’.38 It was not adopted. In January 1935, the Commission of Foreign Affairs of the Chambre des Députés had reminded the Minister of the Interior, Marcel Régnier (1867-1958), 'of the neces­ sity of respecting the right of asylum' {'sur la nécessité du respect du droit d’asile'}.39 Moutet followed this up in the session of 19 February by contend­ ing that police and prefectural powers were limitless and the implementation

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of the regulations so strict that a foreigner could never be sure that his papers were in order: that this authority should be taken away from the police and given to the Quai. The Quai replied to the Commission with a detailed threechapter note that it had received from Régnier’s successor Paganon, undated but probably written nine months later in November 1935, in which the Minister referred to political refugees.40 Without specifying German refugees but with the inference that he was referring to them the Minister understood adherence to the right of asylum for political refugees to mean that it should not compromise public order and state security and that political refugees should be able to prove their status. It was the job of the Quai to ensure that to qualify as political refugees they had either to have been the victims of or were threatened with violence. Paganon regretted that France was one of the few countries that was practising a liberal policy which was a heavy burden on its finances and economy. It therefore behoved other countries to adopt the same rules, which included refusing to expel or refouler political refugees to their countries of origin if they were in danger there of severe measures. Moutet, newly appointed Minister of Colonies in the PF revived his project in July 1936 probably in the hope that the Socialist government would pass it when he presented a revised, more explicit proposal, again universally appli­ cable.41 This fresh approach was made also in the expectation that politicians like Paganon, who had shifted their attitude to a more liberal stance, would endorse it.42 Contrary to the Quai’s emphasis on protection, Moutet’s defini­ tion was concerned with persecution. Article 3 redefined a political refugee and this time the reasons for being a political refugee were spelled out. The definition read: Is termed a political refugee a person who is a national of a country whose government has suspended all or a portion of public freedoms and rights, who is pursued by the government for his political, philosophical or religious atti­ tudes or opinions. Those invited to benefit from the status of political refugee are those who have had to leave their country as a result of pogroms or special restrictions on individual freedom or the social conditions of ethnic or racial minorities.

When Moutet presented the revised draft in 1936 he explained that a change of social situation did not qualify a person as a political refugee giving the example of the son of a capitalist who was a refugee because his situation had been altered by a law that deprived him of his fortune. This was a sop to the Communists and SR. However, even though the government was now Socialist it did not adopt the project. The concern with persecution was a focus at the International Conference for the Right of Asylum in Paris in June 1936,43 which passed a resolution with a definition similar to Moutet’s but added the danger of returning to the

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country of origin as one of the criteria, a concern of the political left that had accused the Flandin government of excessive refoulement.44 Article 1: Deemed to be political refugees: a) foreigners who, for political reasons or for their union, pacifist or scientific activities, have been obliged to leave their usual country of residence and origin, where their life or liberty is at risk: b) foreigners who would put their life or liberty at risk by returning to their country of residence and of origin. Article 2: Defined as political activity in the country of usual residence or origin is any activity that, directly or indirectly, aims at overturning or modifying the established political system. Article 3: Included in the category of political refugees are foreigners who, for religious or racial reasons, would be exposed to persecution or subject to a system of dis­ crimination either in the country from which they are arriving or in the country of which they are nationals.45

The resolutions also called for a ban on extradition for political reasons and a ban on expulsion after five years of residence. The subject was in the air and raised next time by Paul Perrin (1891-1950), General-secretary of the CLCSI.46 With its backing, the Communist deputies submitted an alterna­ tive draft proposal for a statute of immigrants to the Chamber in July 1936,47 which defined a political refugee: Deemed a political refugee is any national from a country whose government has suspended part of public freedoms and rights, and who is pursued by that government for his attitude or his political, philosophical or religious opinions. All those who have been obliged to leave their country after pogroms or special restrictions constituting an infringement of the freedom of the individual and the social conditions of ethnic or racial minorities are considered to be political refugees.48

The Chamber adopted the Communist resolution in January 1937 but the follow-up was indifferent and it never became law.49 In the interim, the Communists had cooled to the project because the PCF at the same time was accusing refugees of taking the jobs of French workers and did not want to be seen as too supportive of the refugees. The assassinations of Dimitri Navachine50 in January 1937 and the Rosselli brothers51 in June 1937, in which foreigners associated with La Cagoule52 were implicated, did not help. Nevertheless, Caron says that the PCF draft served as a foundation for the refugee policy of the PF.53 Meanwhile, in Geneva the Quai had signed the LON July 1936 Provisional Arrangement, which again did not attempt a definition of a political refugee.54 As described previously, French refugee policy hardened when Daladier’s government took office on 10 April 1938. Following the German Anschluss

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of Austria on 12 March, which caused a new wave of refugees to come to France from Austria, the government reversed its previous stance and adopted a definition of a political refugee that was generic and universal, and for the first time introduced 'honourability' {'honorabilité'} as a condi­ tion for approval. The decree of 2 May 1938 and accompanying note were precise:55 1) The status of political refugee can only be applied to a foreigner who was obliged to leave his country of origin after having, for purely political reasons, been subject to ill-treatment of his person, to damage done to his property or who has been the object of threats which, without his departure, put his life or his patrimony at serious risk. 2) In addition, a foreigner can only be considered a refugee if he has not been condemned for an infraction against the law and whose honourability is indisputable.

The note itemised: ‘The fundamental principles for determining the definition of political refugee’ ( ‘Les principes fondamentaux pour la détermination de la qualité de réfugié politique’). The refugee had to satisfy all three conditions: Perfect honour­ ability, including in particular the absence of imprisonment for a crime: perse­ cution of his person, the fact of having belonged to a persecuted group being insufficient: material sacrifice as a result of his exile, the person involved being unable to benefit from settling in France (distinction between political refugee and economic refugee).

They were the criteria Serre proposed when he was Undersecretary of State and on that occasion agreed by Perrin.56 Consuls had initially to vet visa applications assiduously and a member of the Quai sat on the Commission that then again vetted the applicants. The Commission was to be made up of a President (a member of the Council of State), a Vice-president (a senior magistrate) and one representative from each of the Ministries of the Interior, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Labour and Health. It was to form the basis of the future system of examination of asylum seekers.57 While this definition appeared on the surface to be a worthy expression of the Republican tradition of generosity towards the persecuted, the quali­ fications gave discretion to the public officials to decide who was a political refugee, so that in practice the officials continued to enforce the directives as before with consuls, prefects and police exercising wide discretion. Impitoyable {ruthless) refoulement was the fate of refugees deemed undesir­ able and now there was no reference to any legal or humanitarian obligation.58 An example had been the French authorities’ policy towards Germans threat­ ened with sterilisation.59 However, this was an anomaly. Up to May 1938

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when Daladier took office, the Quai tried to avoid definitions that would tie it down with universal obligations.

NOTES 1. James C. Hathaway, ‘The Evolution of Refugee Status in International Law: 1920-1950’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 33 (1984), pp. 348-80. 2. See Chapter 11. 3. Erim was seconded from the LON Political Section in which he worked from 1934 to 1947. 4. NA HO 213 1631, Note from Makins, Geneva, 14 May 1936. 5. LON Treaty Series, Vol 89 No 2004, and Vol. 159, No. 3663 Article 1 6. LON Treaty Series, Vol 171. No. 3952. Article 1. 7. See chapter 8. 8. NA HO 213 1631, 8 June 1936, Memorandum regarding adoption of definition of German refugees and ratification of 1933 Convention. 9. NA FO 371 20482, 5 August 1936, Circular from Downing Street, W. Ormsby-Gore to colonial governments. 10. LON Treaty Series, vol. CLXXI, no. 3952, Chapter 1, Article 1. 11. Grynberg, ‘L’accueil des réfugiés d’Europe centrale en France (1933-1939)’. 12. Following the resignation of McDonald, he was High Commissioner from 1936 to 1938. 13. LON CL 58 1937 XII, 23 March 1937, International Conference for the Adoption of a Convention concerning Refugees coming from Germany. 14. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, Chapter 1, Article 1. (b). 15. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, Chapter 1, Article 1.2. 16. BIDC, F delta res 0798 66, Bureau International pour le Respect du Droit d’Asile, Service d’information, It was set up by the Paris International Conference on the Right of Asylum in June 1936, to lobby the LON to adopt the Paris Conference’s resolutions. 22 septembre 1937. See chapter 6. 17. BEDC, F delta res 0798 66, Congrès national du Centre de liaison du Comité pour le statut des immigrés (National Congress of the Liaison Centre of the Committee for the Statute for Immigrants) 15-16 janvier 1938. 18. MAE Papiers Delbos, Cabinet du Ministre 3. ‘Bureau International pour le respect du Droit d’Asile et l’Aide aux Réfugiés Politiques, Propositions de modifi­ cations’ (International Office for the Respect of the Right of Asylum and Help for Political Refugees) pp. 49-54. 19. Philip Noel-Baker, ‘The Juridical Status of German Refugees’, Yearbook of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 191-93. Noel-Baker was closely involved with the LON, having been assistant to its first Secretary­ general, Sir Eric Drummond. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959. 20. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, P560, Chapter 1 Definition, Article 1. (a).

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21. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, P560, Chapter 1 Definition, Article 1. (b). 22. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, P560, Chapter 1 Definition, Article 1.2. 23. There were those in the Quai who were concerned that the definition could be abused if it was too narrow. See MAE SDN 450 Note 26 février 1938. 24. Historians give reasons for calling the conference that range from a genuine con­ cern for the refugees to a cynical move to deflect criticism of US restrictive immigration policy. See also Allen Wells, Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosua (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 6-8. See Evian and Conclusion. 25. Actes du Comité Intergouvememental, Evian, ‘Compte rendu des séances plénières du Comité: Résolutions et Rapports’, Annexe IV (Minutes of the Plenary Session of the Committee: Resolutions and Reports), 6-15 juillet 1938. 26. Appointed by Flandin in the autumn of 1934. 27. LON C 1616, Minutes of the HCR Governing Body, 12 February 1935, p. 10. 28. AN F7 14823, ‘Ministère de l’intérieur à Monsieur Paul Perrin’ (Ministry of the Interior to Paul Perrin) 10 mars 1936, pp 12-22. 29. MAE Z 711, 8 décembre 1933, pp. 131-32. 30. MAE SDN 1819, Lettre de la LDH au Ministre (Letter from LDH to the Minister) 29 août 1934, pp 22-23. 31. AN F60 492, Lettre de la Section française du Secours Rouge International au Ministre de l’intérieur (Letter from Section française du Secours Rouge International to the Minister of the interior) 30 mai 1936. 32. Fabian and Coulmas, Die Deutsche Emigration in Frankreich nach 1933, pp. 19-20. See also Badia et al., ‘L’immigration allemande et l’opinion’, p. 50. 33. See Romeo Felsenreich, Die Journalisten des Völkischen Beobachters Woher kamen sie? Wohin gingen sie (Wien: Magisterarbeit. 2012), pp. 104-106. 34. MAE SDN 451, Comité d’Aide et Accueil aux Victimes de l’Antisémitisme en Allemagne, ‘Compte Rendu no. 4, et Circulaire no. 1, sur l’activité du Secrétairegénéral du 10 au 30 juin 1933’ (The Committee for Assistance and Reception of the Victims of Antisemitism in Germany. Minutes no. 4 and circular no. 1 of the Secretary-general’s activity), 13 août 1933, pp. 38-54. The Committee changed its name in August 1933 to the Comité National de Secours aux Réfugiés Victimes de F Antisémitisme (The National Committee to Help Refugees, Victims of anti-Semitism). 35. See also Anne Grynberg, Les Camps de la honte: les internés juifs des camps français, 1939-1944 (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), Chapter 4. 36. BDIC, F Delta res 0798/75. 37. JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambre des Députés, Doc. Parlement Chambre Annexe no.4263 1935, p. 233; Proposition Moutet (Moutet’s proposai) 11 décem­ bre 1934. 38. ‘La proposition de loi Moutet sur le statut des étrangers’, Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme (10 mars 1935), pp. 164-66.

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39. MAE SDN 1806, Note au Président (Note to the President), undated, pp. 187-89. Régnier was Minister of the Interior from 8 November 1934 to 1 June 1935 in Flandin’s government. He was in the Gauche Démocratique group. 40. MAE SDN 1806, Réponse au Président de la Commission des Affaires étrangères de la Chambre des Députés. (Reply to the President of the Commission of Foreign Affairs of the Chamber of Deputies), no date, pp. 190-97. 41. Rahma Harouni, ‘Le débat autour du statut des étrangers dans les années 1930’, Le Mouvement Social 188 (juillet-septembre 1999), pp. 61-75. 42. AN C 14979, Séance (sitting) 23 juin 1935. Régnier was Minister of the Interior in Laval’s government from June 1935 to January 1936. His position changed after his grilling by the Foreign Affairs Commission of Moutet and Viénot in its ses­ sion of 23 June 1935, in which he insisted that the regime applied to foreigners was above all a matter for the police. 43. Anti-Fascist conference organised by Paul Perrin and the SR. 44. Flandin’s government, 8 November 1934 to 1 June 1935. 45. Jacques Omnes, Les Bannis d’Hitler. L’Accueil des Emigrés Politiques (19331938) (Vincennes: PUV, 1984), pp. 97-98. 46. The federation of 27 immigrant and refugee organisations formed in January 1936. In contrast to the CNSRA, it was not a Jewish pressure group. See Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 425, note 128. Perrin was at that time a member of the PSF, Secretary-general of the BIR. Freemason and member of the LDH. He was nominated by Viénot to serve on the Comité Consultatif for amnesty. See chapter 10. 47. Bonnet, Les Pouvoirs publics, pp. 316-17. JO, Débats Parlementaires Chambre des Députés (Parliamentary debates-the Chamber of Deputies) 9 juillet 1936, annexe no. 632, p. 1265. 48. Harouni, ‘Le débat autour du statut des étrangers’, p. 65. 49. JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambre des Députés (Parliamentary debates- the Chamber of Deputies) 21 janvier 1937, p. 100. 50. 26 January 1937; Soviet citizen, director of the Paris branch of the Russian State Bank. 51. 9 June 1937; prominent Italian anti-Fascists, refugees in France. 52. Far-right group. 53. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 91. 54. AN F7 16079 Police, ‘Note 1. Définition du Réfugié Politique’ (Note 1. Definition of a Political Refugee), undated, unsigned. 55. AN F7 14823, ‘Note. Monographie de réfugié politique’ (Note. Monograph of a political refugee) undated, probably sent with the instructions to prefects on 28 May 1938. 56. See chapter 2. 57. See Conclusion. 58. 'Impitoyable' was a favoured adjective in Ministry of the Interior instructions. It is striking how often the Ministry used this word. The Quai’s language was more restrained and circumspect. Noiriel points out the administrative terms, indésirable, faux réfugié, se débarrasser (undesirable, fake refugee, to be rid of) were hardly ever used or not known in the nineteenth century. Noiriel. Réfugiés et sans-papiers, p. 226. 59. See chapter 5.

Chapter 5

Debating Human Rights

This chapter examines the ways in which debates about the idea of human rights were framed in the aftermath of the First World War, the theoretical discussions, the attempts to translate them into practice and how the Quai responded in the light of its policy regarding the German refugees. In recent years, historians have turned their attention to the emergence of a human rights discourse and its role in international relations after the Second World War but there is a prehistory to this story, which provided part of the context in which the Quai had to formulate its response to the refugee emer­ gency it faced in 1933. The proposition that all citizens in all countries had a human right to equality of civil rights evolved from the abuse of the rights of minorities in some European states that were alleged to be in violation of their undertaking to treat their citizens equally. A group of international law­ yers determined the best way to ensure that international law respected the rights of minorities was to embed them as individual human rights. It would secure minority rights, not because they were protected as a national group, but because each member of the minority would be entitled to civil rights as a human right and it followed that one of the individual’s rights was the right to asylum. The historian René Rémond has called the creation of a space for the recognition of human rights 'an intermediate reality' ('une réalité intermédiare' )? Between the countries that are the point of departure and those offering to accommodate there has been constituted, as a result of the currents of political emigration, an intermediate reality of international dimension which has given rise to a distinctive form of legislation: a specific form of law that has little by little established itself which gives a status to emigrants and sets out a legal area that is an extension of and a specific chapter in people’s rights; Geneva 89

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Convention, Nansen passport, etc, just as laws on warfare and the status of prisoners have been established.2

Previous declarations had been in the form of the rights of man issued by the governments of individual countries, most famously the 1791 United States of America’s Bill of Rights and the French constitutions of 1789 and 1793. They were municipal, revolutionary declarations made by individual govern­ ments in particular political circumstances.3 The only national declaration in the interwar years was of human dignity in the preamble to the 1937 Irish constitution that referred to ‘the dignity and freedom of the individual’.4 Although the formal legal declaration by an international body had to wait until the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was signed on 10 December 1948, the first steps towards it were taken during the interwar years; the resolutions were the first time human rights were internationally affirmed. The difference between the rights of man and human rights is indetermi­ nate, depending on who is using the terms. The classic distinction is that the rights of man are legal municipal rights enjoyed by virtue of citizenship granted by the state, whereas human rights are fundamental rights that are inherent in human beings. Historically, the former arose out of municipal politics while the latter was concerned with persecutions abroad. However, historian Samuel Moyn argues that the rights of man and human rights did not evolve at the same time and that despite the UDHR, human rights had all embracing traction only from 1975.5

THE BACKGROUND Jack Donnelly, an authority on human rights, claims ‘with minor exceptions, human rights were simply not a subject of international relations before World War II’ ,6 suggesting that the concept of human rights was no more than a germ of an idea in the 1930s. This is misleading. As it affected refugees and their right to asylum it was a significant issue in the interwar years and of concern for the Quai, which could not have been unaware of the debates, lectures and resolutions of international jurists and their organisations. Their declarations were in the public domain.7 Indeed, there are copies of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale (ADI) resolution of November 1928 and the Instituí de Droit International (IDI) resolution of October 1929, in the Quai’s archives. Founded in Paris in 1926, the ADI was a place for politicians and lawyers to exchange views, and a forum for discussion of public and private interna­ tional law. In 1928, its Board included La Pradelle, Louis Le Fur, Alejandro

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Alvarez, André Mandelstam, James Scott Brown and Antoine Frangulis. In 1934, its membership boasted 7 presidents of Republics, 70 prime ministers and MAE, 30 heads of other ministries and 400 ambassadors and ministers. French politicians who were members of the ADI included Herriot, Bérenger and Aristide Briand, none of whom signed the ADI declaration. It is possible that Herriot and Bérenger did not agree with the resolution which stated that the universality of human rights should take precedence over the sanctity of (French) sovereignty, but Briand might have approved it; there is no indica­ tion of why he did not sign. The IDI dates from September 1873 in Ghent. It is still active. Its mem­ bers are limited to 132 international lawyers who tend to be apolitical. It is highly regarded for its work on human rights law and arbitration law and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1904. It was active throughout the interwar years. During these years, its members included the French international law­ yers Georges Scelle, La Predelle, Jules Basdevant, Le Fur, and lawyers active at the LON, Alvarez, Mandelstam and Nikolaos Politis. In addition to international lawyers’ legal assertions, the claims of carita­ tive organisations based on humanitarian and of anti-Fascists on political grounds joined to solicit the LON and the French authorities to acknowledge that every refugee had a human right to asylum. The Quai resisted the pres­ sure because it threatened French sovereignty and it could do so because there was no governmental will to comply.8 Acceptance of an international right to asylum would commit France to an obligation to all refugees, past, present and future.9 And if France were to provide asylum, it would want it done by domestic legislation, not by the imposition pf an international Convention. The Quai noted that it must ‘avoid subscribing to new engagements which might at a future date restrict the freedom of action that the French govern­ ment seeks to reserve for itself vis-à-vis refugees’.10 In the 1930s, the French administrative procedure was imprecise. Although, in effect, the issue of an 'identity card' (‘carte d’identité") was confirmation of asylum, the criteria for identification of refugees and their qualification for asylum were not clear, and there was no statute to determine their rights. The evolution of how the concept of human rights developed and was understood is the subject of much recent debate.11 Some argue that the UDHR of December 1948 and the declaration of the rights of man in the preamble of the Constitution of the 1958 French V Republic were both conceived as the enduring culmination of the idea of national sovereignty sitting above human rights.12 The Preamble to the Constitution reads: ‘The French Nation solemnly proclaims its attachment to the Rights of Man and to the principles of national sovereignty as defined in the Declaration of 1789, confirmed and completed by the Preamble of the Constitution of 1946’. The Preamble to the 27 October 1946 IV Constitution reads: ‘the French nation again proclaims

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that each human being, without distinction to race, religion or beliefs, has inalienable and sacred rights. It solemnly reaffirms the rights and liberties of man consecrated in the Declaration of Rights of 1789 and the fundamen­ tal principles recognised by the laws of the Republic’. The IV Republic’s Constitution does not mention sovereignty while that of the V Republic rein­ troduces the concept. Moyn contends that the present understanding of human rights as supra­ national, protecting all people against violations wherever they occur and in whatever circumstances, became effective only from the 1970s.13 In the 1930s, the concept of human rights as they are understood today was still in its infancy, the purview of a few lawyers and politicians mainly on the left. For the majority it was a threat to national sovereignty. The Paris Peace Conference of 1918 created the first international refer­ ence to the protection of the rights of minorities in the successor states. It was in Article 23(b) of the LON Covenant, which said that members of the League would ‘undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants of territories under their control’.14 The French, in particular, wary of injunctions that were too comprehensive and global achieved a watered-down version of the first draft, which had proposed: ‘To accord to all racial or national minori­ ties within their several jurisdictions exactly the same treatment and security, both in law, and in fact that is accorded to the racial or national majority of the people’.15 Protection was to be secured by a system of bilateral and special treaties between the LON and individual countries as well as by unilateral declarations, all assigning certain supervisory powers to the Council of the LON.16 Some successor states were then accused of violating the rights of their minorities.17 Carole Fink has described how the system was unworkable: the victors of the Great War assigned the LON the delicate political ques­ tion of the protection of minority rights in Eastern Europe while the United States’s absence removed one of the concept’s principal creators: As could be predicted, the League’s work was hampered by the inconsistencies and gaps in the peacemaker’s design. Having rejected a universal commitment to minority rights, the victors had imposed a degrading and detested form of international control over a disparate group of new, expanded, and defeated east European States.18

Out of the sixty million population of these newly created states, twenty-five million belonged to minorities who lived in countries whose governments were committed to an ultranationalist programme of dominating their reli­ gious and ethnic minorities. About two-thirds of the minorities had defenders, partisans and irredentists who spoke on their behalf. The Jews had private organisations that fulfilled the same need.19 Nevertheless, despite the efforts

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of Erik Colban, director of the LON’s minorities section, the international community was unwilling to underwrite the system to make it work. For example, France’s efforts to secure an Eastern Pact meant that it was reluctant to chastise Poland and Czechoslovakia for the treatment of their minorities. Colban’s concern to find a way to alleviate the minorities’ plight was the catalyst for the international lawyer and émigré Tsarist diplomat who had served as Russian ambassador to the Ottoman empire, André Mandelstam (1869-1949), living in Paris, to condemn the selection of categories.20 In 1928, he declared: The division of countries into categories, where one type has no obligations, while another is subject to very rigorous ones, is indefensible. The principle of equality between States is in strict opposition to such discrimination. The proclamation of the rights of man thus must bind all nations, and the respect of these rights must be insured against all deviation by any and all States without any exception.21

His solution was to use the ADI and IDI to circumvent the impasse with resolutions that secured the human right of every individual to enjoy the same civil liberties. Although there had been a previous Declaration of Rights and Duties of Nations by the American Institute of International Law in 1916 and a draft of a Declaration of Rights and Duties of Nations by the International Juridical Union in 1919, Mandelstam was instrumental in drafting the first international declaration of human rights by the ADI on 8 November 1928.22 The wording was unequivocal: ‘Any inhabitant of a State has the right to the full and entire protection of his life and liberty and that, all citizens of a State are equal before the law and enjoy the same civil and political rights, without distinction in regard to race, language or religion’.23 This was followed a year later by the resolution of the IDI at its thirty-sixth session held in New York in October 1929. The French lawyer de La Pradelle prepared it. Professor at the Faculty of Law in Paris, Director of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales, he had previously been jurisconsulte (legal adviser) to the Quai until he fell out with Aristide Briand (the Foreign Minister), because he was employed by other governments while at the same time advising the Quai. In September 1927, he advised the Hungarian government without first asking permission from the Quai. Briand told La Pradelle to choose between being jurisconsulte and his private practice upon which La Pradelle resigned to keep his independence. La Pradelle presented a draft text which Mandelstam had developed. The preamble said: ‘Considering that the judicial conscience of the civilised world requires recognition of rights of the individual that are out of reach of State interference’. And Article 1 imitated the ADI declaration: ‘It is the duty of

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every State to recognise for every individual an equal right to life, liberty and property, and to extend to all of those in its territory, the full and entire protec­ tion of that right, with no distinction as to nationality, gender, race, language or religion’.24 La Pradelle and Mandelstam understood that they had to take account of the threat this posed to states’ sovereignty, so the declaration was qualified by Article 6 stating that the obligation not to withdraw citizenship was a question of domestic, not international, law.25 However, the declara­ tion contained no mechanism for enforcement. For this reason, some lawyers considered these declarations a waste of time and their proponents dreamers. A. Pearce-Higgins, a British law Professor, wrote: ‘A considerable time was taken in the discussions of abstract doctrines relating to the international rights of man, which in the opinion of many of those present could lead to no practical results and were an echo of eighteenth-century philosophical doc­ trines’.26 He abstained in the vote for the resolution, having said in the session that the declaration was useless and without legal validity.27 La Pradelle voted in favour but the current jurisconsulte, Basdevant, abstained although for a different reason.28 His position was that national sov­ ereignty was the guardian of human rights. Indeed, during the interwar years the focus of many international lawyers including Basdevant was on peace rather than on human rights. Mandelstam cleverly linked the two, positing that the provision of human rights helped guarantee world peace. Le Fur, who was on the drafting committee, appears not to have been present when the Commission voted on the declaration. Founded in 1922 with headquarters in Paris, staffed by volunteers, its mission ‘securing the freedom and capacity to act for human rights defenders, the universality of rights and their effective­ ness’, the International Federation of Human Rights endorsed the New York declaration. The coterie of French, foreign and émigré international lawyers living in France, including La Pradelle, Mandelstam, Scelle,29 Boris MirkineGuetzevitch,30 Alvarez,31 Politis32 and Rubinstein lectured to the international community on human rights. These lawyers held that there was a natural law in which natural rights stood above the state and its sovereignty. They belonged to the school of natural law, as opposed to the school of positivist law that held that there was no natural law which was superior to synthetic law. Following Léon Duguit,33 who questioned the very notion of state sover­ eignty, the school of natural law maintained that human rights were the rights of individuals and took precedence over the absolute sovereignty of states.34 Indeed Scelle argued that individuals, not the state, were the principal subject of international law, and that legal experts should be the guardians of a moral authority calling states to account. Michel Tabbal, researcher on Human Rights, comments ‘For Scelle, the principal subjects of international law are in no circumstance whatever States - he refuses the notion of the absolute

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sovereignty of States, by reason of the major evils of the beginning of the century provoked by it, to wit, the triggering of the First World War - by Individuals’.35 Le Fur also asserted that human rights were an extension of natural law from which both international and domestic law developed and that there was no place for the absolute sovereignty of a state.36 His defini­ tion of sovereignty was ‘Sovereignty is for the State, that quality of not being obliged or decided except by its own will alone, within the limits of the high­ est principles of the law and in conformity to the collective goal that it has been called on to attain’. The jurists elaborated their ideas in lectures: Duguit in a course at Columbia University in New York in 1920-1921, on sovereignty and liberty.37 Mandelstam in lectures in 1923 at The Hague Academy of International Law38 on the protection of minorities argued that, although this was not mentioned in the final draft of the LON charter, minority rights must be included among the rights of man, and that the rights recognised in the minority treaties gave protection to life and personal and religious lib­ erty.39 Indeed, he cited Fouques-Duparc’s thesis of 1922.40 Mandelstam also lectured on the rights of man at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva in 1931 contending that state sovereignty was not absolute. Politis lectured in 1925 asserting that the absolute sovereignty of the state was an obstacle to peace and that it was no longer relevant and had to be replaced by an international system.41 The French jurists Basdevant,42 Le Fur43 and Seelie44 avoided the direct topic of refugees, giving lectures on peace claiming that peace would be threatened if there was no resolution to the problem of refugees. In addition to using the international associations and lectures to promote human rights, the international lawyers were at one with the LDH whose campaign for the international recognition of the rights of man was fun­ damental to its existence. The LDH opened the columns of its journal, Les Cahiers des Droits de VHomme, to Mandelstam.45 In its issue of December 1931, he wrote that in international law all states were equal, therefore it followed that all states were obliged to respect human rights. This was the thinking behind the New York declaration, which he saw as ushering in a new era: a solemn challenge to the idea of the absolute sovereignty of states. Its two shortcomings were the absence of a procedure to enable an individual to lodge a claim of violation directly with the international community and the lack of any measure for enforcement. He concluded that even without legal sanctions the declaration was a new and precious guarantee of world peace. He concluded that each country was at liberty to apply such sanctions as it considered appropriate in the case of violation of these rights.46 The LDH embraced the campaign. On 24 December 1932, it organised an International Congress in Paris.47 The second item on the agenda was the

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declaration of the rights of man; the rapporteur was Mandelstam. He offered a detailed history of the campaign for human rights explaining that even if the rigid principle of state sovereignty had generally prevailed before 1914 there had been occasions when the rights of man were recognised: for example, from the end of the seventeenth century peace treaties often stipulated liberty of conscience and the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 imposed the exercise of human rights on Turkey and in the newly emancipated states of Serbia, Montenegro, Romania and Bulgaria. The LON intended that minority treaties of 1919 and 1920 ensured the rights of all citizens to life, liberty, and civil and political equality. For Mandelstam, the problem was that the obligation to uphold human rights was restricted to states on which the treaties had been unilaterally imposed. He pointed out that the third LON General Assembly in 1922 recognised this and had passed a resolution expressing the hope that all countries would abide by the obligation to respect the rights of all citizens. However, in 1925 at the fifth LON General Assembly, Lithuania, supported by Poland, and Romania, complained that its citizens who formed minorities in countries such as Germany were being maltreated. Since Germany had not been required to sign a minority treaty the Lithuanian delegate proposed that all members of the LON sign a convention to abide by the commitment to minority rights.48 It was opposed by the UK, Italy and Belgium, who argued that the Convention would create new artificial minorities, but the greatest opposition was from France. The French delegate, Henry de Jouvenel,49 said that because France had no minorities it would not sign and that the LON should not be concerned with internal matters of state. As reassurance, de Jouvenel claimed that all states were obliged to adhere to the same minimum standards of humanitarian behaviour. Mandelstam finished his report by say­ ing that the best way of achieving acceptance by all states was to refer to the highest authority in international law, the IDI, and its declaration of human rights. He added that the LIDH had endorsed the IDI’s declaration. MirkineGuetzevitch, the second rapporteur, proposed that the LIDH look at the ques­ tion of the international protection of man’s rights and what restrictions on state sovereignty such protection would impose. Three years later, in 1935, the LDH referring to the work of Mandelstam and the IDI commissioned a draft of an up-to-date declaration of the rights of man to supersede the original one of 1789. It was presented to the LDH National Congress in Dijon in July 1936, which passed the ‘The Addition to the Declaration of the Rights of Man' {‘Complément à la déclaration des droits de l’homme'}.50 Article 1 said: The Rights of the human being means without distinction as to gender, race, nationality, religion, or opinion. These inalienable rights, to which no time

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limit may apply, are attached to each human being, they must be respected in any time and in any place and are the guarantee against all political and social forms of oppression. International protection of human rights must be organised universally and guaranteed in such a way that no State may refuse the exercise of these rights to a single human being living in its territory.51

Despite Avenol’s reluctance to offend the German government, the question of minority rights was also debated at the LON when Frangulis52 spoke at the General Assembly in 1934.53 Referring to the violation of the human rights of Jews in Germany, he quoted the Magna Carta of 1215, the Fourteenth Amendment of the American Constitution, the 1793 French declaration of the rights and duties of nations drafted by Abbé Grégoire, declarations by Queen Victoria and Gladstone, and his own speech to the Assembly the pre­ vious year: he argued that the LON should guarantee certain rights inherent to human beings, which was what the authors of the LON treaty had wanted. Every nation needed to respect the rights of its minorities to preserve its unity and by the same token had to honour its international commitment to the prin­ ciples of liberty and equality of races and justice. He called for the Council of the LON to organise an international conference to study how to make the minority system effective. The Quai also had to deal with the influential International Federation of LON Societies with which it was in constant contact.54 Theodore Ruyssen,55 its Secretary-general, was active promoting the declaration of human rights as the best way to solve the problem of countries that did not respect the rights of minorities.56 The agenda for the Federation’s meeting in June 1933 in Montreux included a discussion of a general convention for the international protection of the rights of man.57 A paper Ruyssen wrote in March 1935 was based on the idea that a generalisation of human rights ‘constitutes, with no doubt whatsoever, the most rational solution to the problem of inequality resulting from the Treaties for Minorities’.58 He argued that all states should be legally obliged to ensure that their minorities of race, language or religion enjoyed the rights of man. In support of this case he quoted an article by Politis: ‘To artificial and somewhat arbitrary political protection substituting objective and perfectly impartial protection: jurisdictional protection’.59 However, it was the Quai’s conviction that human rights were an assault on states’ sovereignty. This may be the reason why it did not use German viola­ tion of human rights as an argument in May 1933 at the LON when it joined other members in censuring Nazi Germany for breaching its undertaking to grant equal civil rights to all citizens living in Lipper Silesia, basing its case instead on the less controversial and more solid accusation that Germany was in breach of the legal obligation it had signed at the LON.60 The attempts to translate the principles of human rights into practice were constrained by the

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limits to which states - France and others - were willing to give up sover­ eignty. Human rights were not mentioned in the LON Covenant because the concern was for the rights of its member nations and no less an authority than Léon Bourgeois,61 one of the LON founders, said that there was no intention of setting up a superstate that might compromise sovereignty.62 This was the official attitude throughout the interwar years.

CODIFICATION An example of the protection of state sovereignty was the first LON Conference on the codification of international law in The Hague in March and April 1930. The preparation took two years; the Drafting Committee met in 1928 and 1929.63 Human rights, minorities’ rights, the civil rights of foreigners, asylum and refugees’ rights were among the issues that might have been discussed, but the Committee shied away from them as being too contentious. Instead, it selected three seemingly less difficult issues: national­ ity, territorial waters and the responsibility of states for damage to foreigners’ property or persons, even though the question of nationality did have links to human rights and civil rights. An instruction from the Quai to Massigli for the 10th LON General Assembly of 1929 is evidence of French nervousness about the Conference. He was advised not to propose new subjects for the progressive codifica­ tion of international law until the consequences of the first Conference were known.64 Regarding nationality, the Quai’s concern was that the principle that each state had the competence to decide on the acquisition and loss of nationality was challenged or called into question.65 This was brought up when the Nationality Committee proposed its solution for dealing with state­ less persons: ‘If an individual, having entered a foreign country, has lost his nationality without acquiring another, the State of which he was a national remains obliged to take him back at the request of the country of temporary sojourn’.66 Representing the Quai on the Committee, de Navailles objected. He wanted the provision removed because, he said, this was a police matter rather than a question of nationality.67 Depriving a state of its right to expel compromised its sovereignty if it were forced to take back a citizen it con­ sidered undesirable. The proposal would in any case have been rejected as unworkable three years later when applied to the refugees from Germany. In the end, the Committee decided that the question of stateless persons was a political matter and should be left to the LON. The Committee drafted a much watered-down Special Protocol that referred to the obligations of the state whose nationality the person last had.

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A state could refuse to take indigents back if it paid for the cost of their relief in another country; and a state making a request for repatriation had to pay the cost of sending back a person who was condemned or had served not less than one month’s imprisonment, but even this protocol was never put into effect because the ratifications did not reach the required minimum of ten.68 Although the conference having decided to eliminate the contentious questions and there was no agreement on territorial waters and the status and nationality of unmarried women, it could agree on expatriation permits, the status and nationality of married women and children, dual nationality and adoption.69 And it did resolve the French concern by agreeing that individu­ als’ acquisition and deprivation of nationality was a state’s sovereign right, subject to generally agreed international Conventions.70 Article 1 of the reso­ lution confirmed the principle that ‘it is for each State to determine under its own law who are its nationals. This law shall be recognised by other States in so far as it is consistent with international Conventions, international custom, and the principles of law generally recognised with regard to nationality’.71 On another question in relation to nationality, the Quai, when confronted with what it regarded as the peremptory demands by some governments for legal equality of the sexes, counselled prudence and moderation explaining that compromise was the way things got done in international negotiations.72 The rapporteur, Gustavo Guerrero, summed up the reason why the Conference’s results were limited: ‘The work was very difficult and sensitive because nationality was essentially a political problem and countries of immigra­ tion and emigration have different requirements’.73 The inability to agree on several issues concerning nationality did not presage well for the way the international community would deal with the problem of German refugees. Indeed, it was seven years before,, another international law congress was convened. The Hague Congress of August 1937 was organised this time not by the LON but by the International Academy of Comparative Law.74 The large French delegation, headed by Eustache Pilon,75 included Scelle76 and Edouard Lambert.77 The French chargé d’affaires in The Hague, Jacques de Blesson, summed up that the question of human rights, which he said was the basis of international law, represented an ideal that was still a long way from universal acceptance, the legal concept conflicting with the political.78 The independence of countries, he wrote, conflicted with international law and legal theory was far removed from political practice. International law­ yers might agree on the recognition of human rights but states, with France at the forefront, were agreed that such recognition would compromise their national sovereignty. He did not touch on the claim that non-refoulement also was a human right, which presented yet another threat to states’ sovereignty.

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THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM

The next and logical step was the recognition of asylum as a human right.79 The Quai was faced with the demand for recognition of human rights from the jurists who based their argument on legal grounds, from caritative organ­ isations on humanitarian grounds, and from the political claims of the SR and the LDH. They called for France and the LON to recognise the obligation to give asylum as a human right to all refugees. Interestingly, the LON had avoided the term asylum: the 1928 Arrangement relating to the Legal Status of Russian and Armenian refugees referred to the ‘governments of countries of residence’.80 An international agreement on diplomatic asylum had been taken by the Inter-American Committee of American Jurists. At their meeting in Rio de Janeiro in March 1927 they agreed a draft Convention and they signed the American International Law Convention concerning Asylum at the Sixth Inter-American Conference. Even though the Quai could prevail in the inter­ national debate about human rights it had to face the specific proposition that there was a human right to asylum in France. Its reply in Geneva was to insist that French sovereignty dictated that this was a domestic French decision. The aide-mémoire, probably (but undated therefore not certain) prepared for the October 1933 meeting of the German Refugees’ Interministerial Commission (Commission interministérielle sur les réfugiés allemands) is important because, although it does not mention a human right to asylum, the lawyers’ opinion was that the right of asylum was the first privilege of a polit­ ical refugee, which was central to the discussions of definition, sovereignty, refoulement, status, settlement and aid.81 There are seven notes on blank paper in the police archives. The language, less opaque and circumspect than the Quai’s, suggests the origin was the Ministry of Justice, especially as it presided over the Commission. Note 1. The definition of a political refugee. The LON had never defined a political refugee, limiting itself to note the existence of two categories of refu­ gees, Russian and Armenian, to whom it had granted the embryo of a statute. It was necessary to fill this gap by establishing what characteristics a person had to have, whatever his original nationality, to be categorised as a political refugee, and to set out what privileges a statute would provide. Note 2. The first privilege of a political refugee was the right of asylum. The exercise of this right had to be equally distributed among the countries that granted it. The reception of refugees could not be left only to the countries that bordered the countries of the refugees’ origin. This was what happened to France in 1933, which had accepted 25,000 refugees from Germany out of a total of some 60,000 refugees. Note 3. The distribution of refugees among the various countries should take the

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economic situation of each into account. An international organisation should be set up that centralised the labour, industrial and trade needs of each country in the best interests of everyone. Note 4. If the state granted the right to asylum, it also had the right to withdraw it. This raised the question of under what condi­ tions the withdrawal could take place. It was not possible for France to refoul refugees because the borders of adjacent countries were ‘pitilessly closed’, and it was out of the question to send the refugees back to their country of origin. Note 5. Political refugees who often did not have identity cards or passports, should be allowed to travel from one country to another. After the Geneva Conference of 1922, Russian and Armenian refugees were issued with a Nansen passport by the authorities in the countries that had given them refuge. A similar document should be issued to German Jews which would be recognised by the countries to which they travelled. Note 6. The right of asylum implied the right to aid. The number of refugees and France’s financial difficulties made this impossible, so that an international fund should be created to cater for the refugees’ essential needs. A system was agreed in 1926, at the LON whereby Nansen stamps with a value of 5 gold francs were issued and which each refugee had to buy when issued with a passport. The payment was optional and unsatisfactory. Note 7. The problem of the Saar. Its geographical position meant that it was used by many German refugees who did not have a work permit, a residence permit, or a permit to stay, to come to France whatever the cost. This showed that many Germans who said they were political refugees, but were not under pressure to leave Germany, could enter France and the practice should be stopped. Because France had supplied the most of all the countries that had given refuge, its voice should carry weight on the Governing Board of the HCR and in international refugee councils.

&

There was the question of what the right of asylum meant. Asylum exercised by the state, according to Roman Boed, specialist in refugee law,82 comprises six elements devolving from the right of the state, which are:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

to admit a person to its territory to allow the person to stay there to refrain from expelling the person to refrain from extraditing the person to refrain from refoulement to refrain from prosecuting, punishing, or otherwise restricting the per­ son’s liberty

Furthermore, he states that ‘if the right of asylum is to play a meaningful role in the system of protection of individuals fleeing persecution, the issues of administration and burden sharing must be addressed’.83 The law Professors

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Denis Alland and Catherine Teitgen-Colly84 make a distinction between the droit d’asile, the right of the state to grant asylum, and the droit a I’asile, the right of the refugee to request asylum.85 Alland points out that the request for asylum is no more than an assertion, not an obligation on the state to hear the request.86 This is his interpretation of Article 4 of the preamble to the Constitution of the IV Republic that proclaimed: ‘Any man persecuted because of his actions in favour of liberty has the right to asylum in the territories of the Republic’. The proposition that the state has an obligation to grant asylum was not generally accepted until some sixty years after the UDHR and was justified on humanitarian, rather than legal grounds.87 The extreme position that there is a human right innate to refugees to be granted asylum was not current in the interwar years.88 The tradition of granting refuge was a privilege that France exercised out of her sovereign authority, not a universal right imposed on France. The Quai used the argument of the inviolability of French sovereignty to insist that the state had the right to choose the categories of people to whom to grant asylum. This was used in a note by the Quai as early as 1928 concerning the Ukrainian refugees who wanted a separate status from Russian refugees. The Nansen remit at this date was to provide a passport for the specific catego­ ries Russians and Armenians who were without state protection because the governments of their countries of origin no longer provided it.89 The Quai’s note stated: The doctrine constantly defended by the French government was that generalis­ ing the title of refugee had to be avoided, since it would result in all persons without nationality being under the protection of the LON. On the one hand, this extension would have met opposition from some governments, little inclined to see their former citizens protected by the LON (the case for example for politi­ cal deserters, Italian antifascists, Hungarian opponents). Until then the LON had constantly striven to avoid mixing refugee questions with political problems, and one of the reasons for its success was due to this attitude.90

The LON Intergovernmental Advisory Commission for Refugees, created in December 1930 after Nansen’s death, looked at the question of extend­ ing protection to other refugees. In December 1933, the Commission, which could only recommend, suggested: Tn view of existing circumstances, that it might be desirable to reconsider the question of extending de facto and de jure the Arrangements (for Nansen refugees) of 5 July 1922, 31 May 1924, 12 May 1926, and 29 June 1928, to other categories of refugees to whom the benefits of those Arrangements do not apply or apply only in part’.91 This suggestion was opposed by Avenol who had been appointed the new LON Secretary-general in July of that year. Even though the LON was protecting

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Nansen refugees, he said that dispossession of citizenship meant these per­ sons were criminals and the LON should not be sheltering them. According to his biographer, James Barros, Avenol was partly responsible for the failure of the LON because his sympathies were pro-Nazi. Probably Avenol did not want the LON to protect any refugees but had to accept the Assembly’s resolution that the HCR take care of refugees from Germany.92 Although the Quai was reconciled to helping the German refugees, it shared Avenol’s view that the LON should not protect all refugees. The practical argument that if this right applied to all refugees, there would be a conflict between rights and numbers. The historian Simon Rabinovitch calls this a clash between moral­ ists and institutions, the reality being that the state’s institutions would not be able to cope with the number of asylum seekers.93 Oppenheim’s International Law endorsed the Quai’s interpretation: ‘The right to asylum is nothing but the competence of every state to allow a per­ secuted alien to enter, and remain on its territory under its protection, and thereby to grant asylum to him’.94 Anthony Aust, legal adviser to the British mission to the UN, agrees: ‘Asylum: A State can let an alien enter and remain in its territory even if his own State objects. This is more correctly called the grant of asylum (or political asylum) and is conferred by States in their discretion. Aliens have no right of asylum; it is merely the right of the State to grant or refuse it’.95 Teitgen-Colly also confirms: ‘Asylum is not a right of the refugee; it remains a prerogative essential to the sovereign State’.96 The Quai’s Léger was categorical that ‘the right to asylum cannot take precedence over national rights’.97 After the Second World War the state’s right was made explicit in the 1993 amendment to the constitution of the V Republic: ‘The authorities of the Republic always have the right to give asylum to any foreigner who is persecuted by reason of his actions in favour of liberty or who seeks the protection of France for another reason’.98 This was not only the position of the Quai. The British Foreign Office had the same opinion. It issued an exhaustive memorandum on the subject that included: The modem conception of the term the right to asylum for political refugees is that it is the right, not of the alien to claim admittance to a country on the ground of that he is a political or religious refugee, but that of the State which he wishes to enter, by virtue of its territorial supremacy, to admit fugitive aliens and to accord them such hospitality as in its discretion it desires to extend.99

Statements by international lawyers supporting the contention were attached as annexes to the memorandum. They included Calvo’s Dictionnaire de Droit International and Fauchille’s Traité de Droit International Public.100 While international lawyers might agree with the state authorities that it was the state’s sovereign right to grant asylum, many lawyers - as well as

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political and caritative pressure groups - still argued that the state should rec­ ognise that the right to request asylum was universal and therefore should be available to all refugees from all countries. The Quai was adamant that France could not accede to the imposition of rights and consequently it did not rec­ ognise either the right to ask for asylum or that it was universal. Furthermore, it held that the state’s discretion applied both to individual refugees and categories of refugees. It successfully limited French obligations concerning categories and used its influence at the LON to do the same. Its obligations extended only to the categories specified by the Nansen Office, plus the German refugees, and it insisted that recognition of these obligations should not set a precedent for the future.101 French diplomacy succeeded in convinc­ ing the LON to adopt the French guidelines so that in 1960 the Nobel Prize medallist René Cassin summarised what had been the policy of the LON, and by association France, during the interwar years:102 ‘It protects the rights of man in all the countries under mandate, it protects them in a certain form by the laws governing minorities, but it does not protect the man himself. It protects only men belonging to certain collective categories’.103 However, Cassin also maintained, in 1974, that the LON’s censure of Germany in the Bernheim minority case in 1933 (as discussed in chapter 6), although it was founded on the contravention of a legal undertaking, marked a turning point in the international recognition of human rights.104

STATUTE AND REFOULEMENT The Quai was anxious to forestall the adoption of a statute imposed on it by the LON that would formalise the refugees’ status and entitle them to civil rights. In 1937, the LON went so far as to specify that ‘refugees shall be ensured the enjoyment of civil rights, free and ready access to the courts, security and stability as regards establishment and work, facilities in the exercise of the professions, of industry and of commerce, and in regard to the movement of persons, admission to schools and universities’.105,106 Civil rights were here opposed to political rights such as the right to citizenship, to vote and to take public office. As discussed in chapter 2, within France, instead of formal acts the authori­ ties used a system of non-legislative ad hoc executive instructions to consuls, prefects and the police to manage entry, refoulement, asylum and refugees’ rights. For example, the Quai instructed consuls to reject applications for resi­ dence visas from holders of passports of a country other than Germany and if a German refugee wanted to enter France from another country of refuge, say Switzerland or Belgium, the frontier official had authority summarily to deny entry.107 Ministers ruled piecemeal, when needed, on specific rights such as

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residence and work. While this system worked in France it was inappropriate for the LON. In Geneva, the Quai had to use its skill and influence to ensure the LON adopted provisions acceptable to France. One of them was mitiga­ tion of the rule of non-refoulement: another was the distinction between desirable and undesirable refugees. When confronted with the campaign for a statute of civil rights for refu­ gees, which included the provision of non-refoulement presented as an indi­ vidual human right, the Quai had to defend the authorities’ right to refoul. On signing the 1933 LON Convention concerning Nansen refugees the Quai accepted the limitation to French sovereignty of non-refoulement on condi­ tion that the state could contract out in cases of threats to national security or social cohesion.108 During the period in question, in French documents, the use of the words refoulement and expulsion appeared to be synonymous and together with terms such as deportation and removal were all subject to the rules of refoulement. The campaign for a French statute was conducted by international law­ yers, the LDH, radical politicians like Moutet and there was hope that the PF would take it up. The LDH, even before the arrival of the refugees from Germany, placed great emphasis on a statute: it was first item on the agenda of the International Congress of the LDH in Paris in December 1932.109 The rapporteur, Rubinstein, proposed that the grant of civil rights should be a statutory legal entitlement and a human right, but separate from the humani­ tarian provisions of relief and settlement; that the right of asylum should be defined by the principle of non-refoulement; and that this principle should be accepted by all countries. However, he said that this minimalist definition avoided the question of whether the refugees would enjoy all the civil rights of their country of asylum, fie argued that a statute was needed to redress this problem. He further proposed that a judicial review should decide whether the asylum seeker was a political refugee. Those who qualified should be issued with an identity card, a residence permit and a work permit. The stat­ ute would set out the refugee’s right of residence, to social security, access to courts, to work, to education, to free movement, the conditions relating to naturalisation, and the refugee’s duties. He recognised that the civil right to non-refoulement had to be overridden by the right of the state to refoul, but it should be exercised with restraint, and it should apply only to persons who seriously endangered public safety. The decision to refoul had to be made by a tribunal with the right of appeal and its exercise must be deferred until the person to be expelled could find another country to reside in. Pending the outcome, the tribunal might take the appropriate measures, but he did not spell out what this meant. The LDH made these proposals a month before the Nazis’ accession to power in Germany; nevertheless, they were germane throughout the remaining interwar years.

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The LON Convention of 28 October 1933, relating to the International Status of Refugees, established states’ duties concerning refoulement. Although it applied only to Nansen refugees and not to the German refugees, its effect was the same as a statute: it specified states’ obligations to ensure refugees’ equality before the courts, legal and labour conditions, industrial accidents, welfare, relief, education and fiscal equality with nationals.110 Gilbert Jaeger, a former Commissioner for Refugees at the LON, says that the 1933 Convention was a milestone in refugee protection, the critical dif­ ference being that previous intergovernmental agreements were non-binding recommendations,111 whereas the 1933 Convention required the signatories to undertake mandatory duties.112 Its aim was to ensure the protection of refugees after the liquidation of the Nansen Office in 1938, and although it applied to Nansen refugees, it served as the model for the 1938 Convention concerning the Status of Refugees coming from Germany, and indeed for the UN Conventions after the Second World War.113 It included, for the first time, the contracting parties undertaking not to expel or refoul. Article 3 of the 1933 Convention stated: Each of the Contracting Parties undertakes not to remove or keep from its ter­ ritory by application of police measures, such as expulsions or non-admittance at the frontier (refoulement), refugees who have been authorised to reside there regularly, unless the said measures are dictated by reasons of national security or public order. It undertakes in any case not to refuse entry to refugees at the frontiers of their countries of origin. It reserves the right to apply such internal measures as it may deem necessary to refugees who, having been expelled for reasons of national security or public order, are unable to leave its territory because they have not received, at their request or through the intervention of institutions dealing with them, the necessary authorisations and visas permitting them to proceed to another country.114

The Quai insisted that the French authorities would be the judges of whether the refugees were a threat to national security or public safety. Because of this de Navailles, who signed the Convention, said that French sovereignty was not compromised. He wrote to his colleague Louis Bourgois that the Convention ‘contains only sensible and moderate measures, dictated by considerations both of justice and of humanity and out of concern for public order and sound administration’.115 However, even if Article 3 gave the state a get-out the Ministries waited for three years until November 1936 before submitting it to the Assemblée Nationale when they could be sure of the PF’s ratification.116 Moutet, Maklakov and Rubinstein had written to Laval in February 1935 urg­ ing his government to ratify explaining, without mentioning the Germans, that the number of refugees would not increase because the state could exercise

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the let-out clause.117 This was somewhat disingenuous because it implied that all additional refugees were a threat. The problem was better explained when the Quai wrote to Avenol a few days later to voice its concern that ratification of the 1933 Convention might make it difficult not to extend the same rights to German refugees and that it would not pass a vote in the Assemblée because of adverse public opinion, unemployment and social costs; what had been acceptable fourteen years ago was no longer the case.118 The letter implied that de Navailles had been precipitate in signing. Many countries were more reluctant than France to undertake these commitments and the Convention was ratified by only eight countries.119 Although de Navailles did not say so, such agreements were useful if they set an international standard that would render other countries equally attractive to refugees. There was another concern relating to refoulement. The campaigners who wanted the statute to apply to all refugees joined with Jewish agencies who demanded that a statute for German refugees should additionally call for a curb on the sweeping discretion the state gave to consuls, prefects and the police to control entry, residence, refoulement and expulsion. The officials’ arbitrary decisions were also criticised by the LDH and in the Assemblée Nationale by politicians such as Moutet and de Jouvenel,120 who called for these decisions to be subject to judicial review, with the right of appeal.121 The draft proposal for a definition of political refugees that Moutet had submitted to the Chambre des Députés in December 1934 also included the details of a statute.122 Explaining why there was a need for a statute, he asserted that some 150 years after the Declaration of the Rights of Man foreigners were still subject to the law of 3 December 1849 which gave the Minister of the Interior the right to expel a person whose presence in France was undesirable. In practice, this meant that the decision devolved on the police who were not qualified to exercise such judgement. There were no rules of procedure, decisions were not published and there was no right of appeal. Moutet’s draft secured the protection of foreigners threatened with refoulement, by taking the decision away from the bureaucrats and giving it to judicial tribunals, with the right of appeal.123 He presented the proposal on behalf of the LDH with the support of de Navailles, who had recently retired from the Quai. Barbier quotes extracts from Moutet’s address to the Chamber of 19 February 1935: All systems of government have their advantages and drawbacks; some have more advantages and others more drawbacks. But what is horrifying, is tyranny from below, and when Government orders are carried out by certain smallminded bureaucrats, proud of and even drunk with their own authority, how the poor wretches in this miserable conflict are treated.... How can you battle with

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police intelligence reports and the attitude of the administration at the border finding yourself in the hands of these all-powerful men? How are they judged? ... - I want your department to function as it should, not give itself over to the arbitrary. . . . The administrative machine must not function like a grinder, it should not act automatically; it must not be purely and simply cogging in a process. Its actions must be accompanied by the examination of the cases of humans. When we hear you say that your decision was made in principle to refoul anyone without a card, we cannot agree with it. ... I ask you not to limit yourselves to your draconian measures, to your too rigid regulations, to the impossibility of knowing everything, to simple police information . . . surround yourselves with other kinds of information. Do not settle questions, as you do, through the disorganization of the whole. Five or six Ministers are responsible for knowing something about it . . . above all that, you have the commission where you meet under the presidency of M. Herriot, but there is no central department organised to deal with the question of foreigners.

Under Flandin’s right-wing government in which Laval was MAE,124 the project never had a chance of becoming law.125 In fact, especially after the Stavisky affair (he was a foreigner),126 and the assassination by a foreigner of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Barthou,127 the authorities were deploying refoulement and expulsion with increased severity.128 Noiriel makes the same point about the arbitrariness of the system, which he ascribes to ‘a character­ istic of a State in a position of weakness’ :129 In the debate, when Moutet asked a question of the Minister of the Interior, Régnier replied: ‘France has the privilege and the extreme honour of being alone in continuing to respect the right of asylum’.130 But he qualified this by adding that refugees had to have a means of subsistence, and that the issue of a work permit was not automatic and was given only to those who would fill a gap in the French labour force. The rest had to leave. This embarrassed the Quai. Worried that France’s good name as a liberal democracy was damaged by the high rate of expulsions it endorsed Moutet’s proposal that a special commission be set up to oversee the process in the hope that the country’s reputation would be viewed abroad in a better light. Noiriel points out that there was disagreement within the Quai. He quotes the French consul in Berlin in July 1934 saying that visas should be refused unless the applicant was willing to work in agriculture.131 However, the Quai was careful to say that the final decision was the preroga­ tive of the Ministry of the Interior. In the end, the proposal was shelved, and nothing was done. There was no help from the LON. In April 1935, Avenol repeated his mantra that the question of a statute was a domestic political problem and that because refugees opposed domestic regimes, it was not wise for the LON to take sides or to identify with political refugees. He added another reason:

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no country, not even France, which had many refugees, was willing to com­ promise its sovereignty concerning the right to expel. Therefore, it was not opportune for the LON to establish an international statute for refugees.132 Perhaps this was in response to the suggestion by the Quai’s Henry Spitzmuller that was circulated in the Quai and maybe also to Avenol.133 In a note of 1 April 1935, he wrote now would be an appropriate moment to have recourse to the LON for an international statute for refugees and that it would have a good chance of success because the HCR, which was independent from the LON, had shouldered the responsibility of taking sides. This meant that the Quai itself was absolved from the impact this might have on FrancoGerman relations.134 His suggestion was unexpected because the Quai was not keen on the idea of a statute: unsurprisingly it was not followed up. In the changed atmosphere under the PF, Vienot interpreted the LON Provisional Arrangement of 1936 as providing a legal status for refugees coming from Germany, which he considered was equivalent to a statute. He wrote to Basch at the LDH that those who were identified as refugees were now entitled to a certificate which would serve as both identity card and passport, protect them from arbitrary refoulement and enable them to travel providing they had the required visas from the countries they intended to visit. Although it was not a requirement of the Arrangement, the French government resolved to be generous with the issue of work permits.135 But meanwhile, confronted with the increasing numbers seeking refuge in France from the authoritarian governments in Poland and Eastern Europe, the PF continued the policy of its predecessors of refoulement of non-German nationals, though less vigorously.136 Once again, the IDI had a say, this time in the pursuit of civil rights and a statute. In September 1934, the IDI held its thirty-ninth session in Paris. Max Huber137 and James Brown Scott138 distributed a questionnaire about a statute,139 the replies being presented to the IDI Brussels session in April 1935,140 at which La Pradelle and Seelie, both advocates of universal human rights, were present. The session unanimously passed the resolution.141 The preamble was ‘the object of the present resolutions is to determine the gen­ eral law applicable to stateless persons and to refugees, should more favour­ able measures not exist in the internal judicial system or in international Conventions’.142 Its articles stated that refoulement and expulsion of refugees were forbidden unless another state was willing to accept them. If this proved impossible, internal security measures were applicable. It defined a stateless person as: ‘any individual considered by no State as possessing its nationality.’ A refugee was ‘any individual who, by reason of political events occurring in the terri­ tory of the State of which he was a national, had to voluntarily or not leave this

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territory or remain outside it, who has not acquired any new nationality and does not enjoy the diplomatic protection of any State’.

It was a conceptual resolution that could be appropriate for any group of refugees and stateless persons. As such, because the Quai could choose the categories it did not consider the resolution a threat. However, this changed again when De Reffye, the Quai’s representative, signed the LON 1938 Convention. It included the new stringent regulation concerning refoulement'. ‘The High Contracting Parties undertake not to reconduct refugees to German territory unless they have been warned and have refused, without just cause, to make the necessary arrangements to proceed to another territory or to take advantage of the arrangements made for them with that object’.143 The Daladier government did not ratify it and issued its own instructions. Prefects and the police were given detailed orders to apply the requirements for entry 'very strictly' {'très strictement') and to carry out the refoulement of undesir­ able and clandestine refugees 'pitilessly' {'impitoyablement').

UNDESIRABLE REFUGEES: STERILISATION

The Quai played a part in the authorities’ decisions about which refugees were undesirable. The governments claimed that refugees from Eastern Europe would be a burden on the public purse, that eastern Jews were inas­ similable and the sick threatened public health. All were undesirable and should not be allowed into France. The Quai concurred. An example of the treatment of undesirable refugees was the Quai’s refusal to allow entry into France of Germans who were threatened with sterilisation. This was an issue on which the Quai might have honoured the Republican duty to give refuge to the persecuted, but it came down firmly on the side of refusing their entry to France. To deny them entry, the Quai could also have argued that it did not want to interfere in German domestic affairs. Instead, eugenics took precedence; these people were undesirable because they car­ ried the risk of a ‘defective inheritance’ for the French people.144 The German government enacted the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring on 14 July 1933, to come into force in January 1934.145 Its basic provisions were that any person suffering from a hereditary disease was to be rendered incapable of procreation by means of a surgical opera­ tion. The diseases were congenital mental deficiency (feeble-mindedness), schizophrenia, manic-depressive insanity, genetic epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, genetic blindness, genetic deafness and severe genetic deformity, and included any person suffering from chronic alcoholism. A later law authorised the castration of sexual criminals and perverts. Genetic health courts were set

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up to decide who was to be sterilised, the law applying to the entire popula­ tion, not just to persons in mental health hospitals. The courts consisted of a judge, a medical officer and a medical practitioner. An appeal could be made to a higher genetic health court. If the appeal failed the sterilisation would be conducted, the use of force being allowed in instances where sterilisation was enforced against the will of the condemned person. In 1934, 84,600 cases were brought before the courts, of which 62,400 were condemned to sterilisa­ tion. Out of 4,000 appeals, 3,559 were rejected. In 1935, there were 88,100 cases and 71,700 sterilisations.146 By 1945, the authorities had performed over 400,000 sterilisations.147 The French position, on which all Ministries agreed except the Ministry of Health, which surprisingly was less strident, was that these nine categories of persons threatened with sterilisation were undesirable and should not be allowed refuge in France. The refusal created the problem of how to stop them from escaping to France. The Quai wrote to the Minister of the Interior, Sarraut, on 28 February 1934, informing him of the details of the law and its implications for France.148 The letter estimated that 416,000 persons would be sterilised and gave specific numbers for each category: 200,000 feeble-minded, 80,000 schizophrenics, 60,000 epileptics, 20,000 manic-depressives, 600 Huntington’s, 4,000 blind, 16,000 deaf, 20,000 deformed and 10,000 alcoholics. It was obliged to draw the Minister’s attention to the exceptionally grave consequences this law could have for France. Given the generous tradition of offering hospitality to the persecuted there was no doubt that many Germans threatened with sterilisation would come to France to seek asylum as political refugees. The Quai was concerned that the organisation of medical checks in France might compromise the free circulation of non-immigrant tourists and business­ people and might also give the German government an excuse to retaliate in kind against French citizens in Germany. Sarraut relayed the question to the Director of the Sûreté Générale,149 frightening him saying that 400,000 Germans threatened with sterilisation were intending to come to France and asking what measures he was going to take to stop them.150 The problem of sterilisation was inserted as a handwritten addition under item 8 to the agenda for the 5 March 1934 meeting of the Permanent Interministerial Immigration Commission (Commission interministérielle permanente de Vimmigration)}51 According to the minutes of the meeting, the Commission considered there was no need for a medical check on immigrant workers because they had to have a medical certificate when applying for a job. It suggested that a declara­ tion of good health should be required of other immigrants when they applied to a French consulate for a visa to come to France, or when they applied in France for an identity card or a work permit. However, asking for a declara­ tion at the frontier would be bad for tourism and should not be required.152

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On 6 April, the Minister of Health, Louis Marin (1871-1960), wrote to the Quai, confirming that a distinction should be made between immigrant workers and other immigrants. All immigrant workers in any case had to have a medical certificate. Other immigrants now needed to have a medical certificate, but it should note a disability only if the disability was so serious as to prevent the immigrant from working.153 (Presumably, in this case the applicant would be refused entry.) This tolerant attitude contrasted with the Ministry of the Interior. It wrote to the Quai that it shared the Quai’s view that the entry and residence in France of elements likely to constitute a seri­ ous health and social danger must be barred. The problem was how to do it. A severe check at the frontiers would upset France’s neighbours and risk retaliation. In any case, a single medical check might not reveal all hereditary diseases. However, it would be difficult to enforce a period of quarantine. The Quai had referred to political refugees but many of the persons threatened with sterilisation were not political refugees. They had German passports so if they dissimulated the real reason for their visa application would not be found out by the French consuls. The solution had to be that Germans who came to France and requested a residence permit should be required to live in one place for a certain time and regularly attend the local medical centres.154 The Quai agreed to raise these questions at the next meeting of the Commission interministérielle of 11 May. There is no record of the minutes of this meeting. However, a letter of 13 May from the Minister of the Interior to the prefects of border departments instructing them to be pitiless in refus­ ing entry to Germans escaping to avoid sterilisation is an indication of what was resolved.155 There was no mention of liberal or humanitarian consider­ ations. Nor, it seems, did the policy raise the concerns of lawyers who were involved with human rights. Eugenics had an established place in the theories of the time and the eugenicist policy that the French race should not be tainted was the accepted norm even by Socialists who wanted to help German refugees. Although he did not publicly support a policy of sterilisation, Henri Sellier (1883-1943),156 the Minister of Health in the PF, renowned for his social work as the creator of garden cities around Paris, wrote in 1940 that the state did not want defec­ tive children to be born and the same precautions must be put in place as those taken for the selection of domesticated animals and plants.157 Their policy was a rare case of the Quai and the Ministry of the Interior agreeing that pitiless was the correct attitude. It was an example of the Quai using the attribution of undesirable as a reason for refusing entry, let alone asylum, to these refugees and overrode any claim that they may have had a human right to refuge. It was also an example of the benefit of the argument for not having a statute that might have obliged the Quai to abide by a legal requirement to provide refuge to refugees.

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NOTES 1. United Nations General Assembly in Paris, 10 December 1948, resolu­ tion 217A. 2. René Rémond, ‘Conclusions’, in L’Emigrationpolitique en Europe auxXIXe et XXe siècles: actes du colloque, Rome, 3-5 mars 1988, Collection de l’école fran­ çaise de Rome 146 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, Diff. De Boccard, 1991), p. 519. 3. The term municipal refers to the internal affairs of a state as opposed to its international affairs. 4. Samuel Moyn, Christian Human Rights (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), pp. 33-49, explains that the first appearance of the term ‘human dignity’ in constitutional law is de Valera’s Irish constitution of 1937, a docu­ ment that begins with an invocation of the Holy Trinity. 5. See Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 6. Jack Donnelly, ‘The Social Construction of International Human Rights’, in T. Dunne and N. Wheeler, Rights and Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 71. 7. See Pamela Slotte and Miia Halme-Tuomisaari, Revisiting the Origins of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 6. 8. Donnelly, ‘The Social Construction of International Human Rights', p. 71; Jan Herman Burgers, ‘The Road to San Francisco: The Revival of the Human Rights Idea in the Twentieth Century’, Human Rights Quarterly 14(4) (November 1992), pp. 459-64. 9. Eventually the International Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951, as amended by the 1967 Protocol, extended the Convention to cover all refu­ gees, past, present and future. See Aust, Handbook of International Law, pp. 171-72. 10. MAE SDN 1805, Note pour la 79 reunion du Conseil de la SDN (Note for the 79th session of the LON Council), 7 mai 1934. pp. 22-28. 11. Paul Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 12. See Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York: Norton, 2007); Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, René Cassin and Human Rights: From the Great War to the Universal Declaration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 13. See Moyn, The Last Utopia. 14. See Athanasia Spiliopoulou Akermark, Justification of Minority Protection in International Law (Leiden: Brill, 1997), Chapter 6. 15. First Paris Draft Supplementary Agreement VI, 10 June 1919. 16. Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey (not in the peace treaty with Germany), in special treaties concluded with Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia, and in declarations which Albania, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania, had to make as a condition for their admission to the LON. Moreover, similar clauses were included in two bilateral treaties, namely between Germany and Poland, regarding Upper Silesia and between Germany and Lithuania, regarding the Memel Territory: Burgers, ‘The Road to San Francisco’, p. 449.

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17. See Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 18. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, p. 268. 19. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, p. 271. 20. See Dzovinar Kevonian, ‘Question des réfugiés, droits de l’homme: éléments d’une convergence pendant l’entre-deux-guerres’, Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 72(1) (2003), pp. 40-49. 21. Quoted by Emmanuel Naquet, ‘Paix, humanitaire et droits de l’homme. Notes sur des acteurs de la société civile au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles’, Cahiers d’histoire 127 (2015), p. 29. 22. See UN Document A/CN.4/2 Preparatory Study Concerning a Draft Declaration on the Rights and Duties of States, Memorandum submitted by the Secretary-general; topic: fundamental rights and duties of states, 1948. 23. Frangulis quoted this declaration when he addressed the LON in September 1933: ‘Les Droits de l’homme et du citoyen devant Assemblée de la SDN’, speech of A.-F. Frangulis before the 14th Assembly of the SDN: see ADI, Séances et Travaux 3 (July-September 1933). 24. See Annuaire de l’institut de Droit International, Part 2, New York session, October 1929, pp. 298-300. 25. Annuaire de l’institut de Droit International, Part 2, pp. 298-300. 26. A. Pearce-Higgins (Professor of Law at Cambridge University), Yearbook of International Law 2 Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1930), pp. 175-77. 27. Annuaire de l’institut de Droit International, Part 2, 1929, New York session, 22nd commission, 12 octobre 1929, p. 137. The declaration passed, with forty-five votes for, eleven abstentions and one vote against. 28. See François Xavier Saluden, ‘Jules Basdevant 1877-1968’, Société fran­ çaise pour le droit international, at http://www.sfdi.org/intemationalistes/basdevant (accessed 25 April 2017). He belonged to the positivist school of philosophy. 29. Professor of International Law in Paris, proponent of a federal Europe, and lectured on peace. In 1925 Scelle had been appointed Professor of International Law at the Sorbonne. Right-wing students of the Action Française objected to what they considered a political appointment made by the Cartel des Gauches, which they insisted should have gone to Le Fur and went on strike. Scelle had to withdraw. He was reappointed to the Paris faculty in 1933. From 1935 he was Secretary-general of the Academy of International Law at The Hague. 30. Russian émigré constitutional lawyer, a founder of the school of Constitutional Comparative Law. An active contributor to the Cahiers des Droits de I’Homme. He argued for the rights of man be incorporated into states’ constitutions. 31. Chilean Professor of Law, he was a judge at the International Court of Justice from 1946 to 1955. 32. Greek lawyer and diplomat. During the interwar years, he was Greek repre­ sentative at the LON, Greek Foreign Minister and Greek plenipotentiary to France. 33. Professor of Law at Bordeaux; specialist in public law, friend of Emile Durkheim.

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34. See Dzovinar Kevonian, ‘Exilés politiques et avènement du Droit Humain. La pensée juridique d’André Mandelstam’, Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah 117/118 (2003), pp. 245-73. For the relationship between the ideas of Duguit and Politis, see Robert Kolb, ‘Politics and Sociological Jurisprudence of Inter-War International Law’, European Journal of International Law 23(1) (2012), pp. 233-41. 35. See Michel Tabbal, ‘Georges Scelle (La Galerie des internationalistes, Société française pour le droit international)’, at https://www.academia.edu/75252 47/Georges_Scelle; Hubert Thierry, ‘The European Tradition in International Law: The Thoughts of Georges Scelle’, European Journal of International Law (1990), pp. 193-209; Carlos Miguel, ‘Un juriste aux prises du social’, Revue Française d’Histoire des Idées Politiques 21(1) (2005), pp. 113-37. 36. In Précis de droit international public, 4th edn (Paris: Dalloz, 1939), p. 443. See Jan Klabbers, ‘Clinching the Concept of Sovereignty: Wimbledon redux’, pub­ lished in edited form in the Austrian Review of International and European Law, vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1998). See also Louis Le Fur, État fédéral et confédération d’états (Paris: Marchai & Billard, 1896), p.443. 37. Léon Duguit, ‘Souveraineté et liberté: Leçons faites à l’Université de Columbia, New York, 1920-21 (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1922). 38. André Mandelstam, La protection des minorités, Collected Courses, The Hague Academy of International Law, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1923). 39. André Mandelstam, La protection internationale des droits de l’homme, Collected Courses, The Hague Academy of International Law, vol. 38 (Leiden: Brill, 1931). 40. See chapter 2. 4L Nikolaos Politis, Le Problème des Limitations de la Souveraineté et la Théorie de L’Abus des Droits dans les Rapports Internationaux, Collected Courses, The Hague Academy of International Law, vol. 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1925). 42. Jules Basdevant, Règles générales du droit de la paix, Collected Courses, The Hague Academy of International Law, vol. 43 (Leiden: Brill, 1936). 43. Louis Le Fur, Règles générales du droit de la paix, Collected Courses, The Hague Academy of International Law, vol. 54 (Leiden: Brill, 1935). 44. Georges Scelle, Règles générales du droit de la paix, Collected Courses, The Hague Academy of International Law, vol. 46 (Leiden: Brill, 1933). 45. 11 November 1931. See chapter 8 for the LDH. 46. André Mandelstam, ‘La Protection Internationale des Droits de 1’Homme’, Les Cahiers des Droits de THomme, 31 Année (Nouvelle série) (10 December 1931), pp. 723-33. 47. Les Cahiers des Droits de THomme, 33 Année (Nouvelle série) no. 2 (20 January 1933). 48. LON Official Journal, February 1926, Annex 828, pp. 286-98. 49. Senator of the Corrèze from 1921 to 1933. He was French ambassador to Italy, 1932-33, Minister of Colonies in 1934 and French representative to the LON. He died in 1935. 50. BDIC, Archives Ligue des droits de l’homme, F delta res 0798/9 bis. ‘Commission sur la nouvelle déclaration des droits de l’homme 1935’, Report

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presented to the Commission by Georges Bourdon, 17 January 1936. See William D. Irvine, Between Justice and Politics: the Ligue des droits de l’homme, 1898-1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 22-25. Mark Mazower says in ‘The Strange Triumph of Human Rights’, The Historical Journal 17(2) (2004), pp. 379-98 that the Human Rights League was not much concerned with human rights. This was not so in 1935-1936. H.G. Wells quoted the LDH declaration in full in his book The Rights of Man, or What are we fighting for (London: Penguin, 1940), pp. 84-93. 51. Human Rights League, Le congrès national de 1936: compte-rendu sténographique (Dijon, 19-21 juillet 1936), pp. 418-22. 52. Frangulis was a Greek international lawyer and diplomat who represented Haiti at the LON, as well as being president of the ADI. 53. BDIC, Archives Jules Basdevant, F Delta 1830 carton 6: Frangulis’s speech at the 15th Assembly of the LON, ‘La Garantie Juridictionnelle de Certains Droits Inhérents à la Personne Humaine’. ADI, Séances et Travaux 3 (Juillet-septembre 1933). 54. LON P. 101, no. 11 Minorities; the file holds several envelopes from the MAE addressed to Ruyssen in Brussels, one franked 6-5-33, the others illegible. 55. Professor of the History of Philosophy at Bordeaux University; pacifist, he was a founding member in 1888 of the Association de la paix par le droit. 56. They included Poland, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. 57. See Union Internationale des Associations pour la SDN. Deuxième Commission Permanente Minorités Nationales, Montreux, 2 juin 1933, Ordre du Jour. 58. Union Internationale des Associations pour la SDN. Deuxième Commission Permanente Minorités Nationales, ‘L’Etat actuel du problème des Minorités’, Note presented by the Secretary-general, Professor Th. Ruyssen, March 1935. 59. Politis, ‘Le problème des minorités’. 60. See chapter 6. 61. He was the first president of the Council of the LON, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1920. 62. Theodore Marburg and John Holladay Latané, Development of the League of Nations idea: documents and correspondence of Theodore Marburg, 2 vols. (Buffalo, NY: W. S. Hein, 2003), vol. 2, p. 770. 63. MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1929, no. 1930. 64. MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1930, Note 27, août 1929, pp. 183-84. 65. MAE SDN IP Droit international no. 1929, C44 M21 1928 V. SDN Première conférence de la codification (LON first conference for codification) 15 février 1928. 66. MAE SDN IP Droit international no. 1934, Première conférence (first Conference) 20 mars 1930-10 avril 1930, p. 1. 67. MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1934, MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1934, ‘Compte rendu de la quatrième séance’ (Report of the fourth session) 20 mars 1930, pp. 58-60; Délégation française au Ministre des affaires étrangères, The Hague, 7 avril 1930. 68. LON Conference, CD1 25, 9 April 1930, Special Protocol Concerning Statelessness.

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69. LON Conference CD 1.22, 9 April 1930, Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws. 70. MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1934. ‘Compte rendu de la quatrième séance’ (Report on the fourth session) 20 mars 1930, pp. 58-60; la délégation fran­ çaise au ministre des affaires étrangères, The Hague, 7 avril 1930. 71. LON Codification Conference 1930: Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, The Hague, 12 April 1930, Chapter 1, Article 1. 72. MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1936, de Navailles, Note pour le Service français de la SDN (Note for the Service français de la SDN) 7 septembre 1931, pp. 243^14. 73. MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1935 CD 1 21, Compte rendu de Gustavo Guerrero (Salvador) (Report of Gustavo Guerrero (Salvador)), 9 April 1930. 74. Founded in The Hague in 1924. 75. Président de Chambre à la Cour de Cassation. 76. Also, a member of the Standing Committee of the International Federation of LON Societies. 77. Director of the Institut de Droit Comparé and the Institut des Sciences Sociales at the University of Lyon. 78. MAE SDN IP Droit International no. 1938, Rapport du chargé d’affaires français aux Pays-Bas (Report of the French chargé d’Affaires to the Netherlands) 20 août 1937, pp. 55-60. 79. The LON avoided the term asylum. The 1928 Arrangement relating to the Legal Status of Russian and Armenian refugees referred to the ‘governments of coun­ tries of residence’: LON Treaty Series, vol. LXXXIX, no. 2005. 80. LON Treaty Series, vol. LXXXIX, no. 2005. 81. AN F7 16079, ‘Note: Définition du Réfugié Politique’ (Definition of a politi­ cal refugee) undated, unsigned. 82. Professional Development Fellow in Refugee Law, International Institute of Education, New York. 83. Roman Boed, ‘The State of the Right of Asylum in International Law’, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law 5 (1994), pp. 1-34. 84. Professors at the Universities of Paris, Panthéon-Assas, and Jean-Monnet, Sceaux. 85. See discussions in Denis Alland, ‘Le dispositif international du droit de l’asile’, Droit d’asile et des réfugiés: colloque de Caen, Société française pour le droit international (Paris: A. Pedone, 1997), pp. 13-81. 86. Hubert Thierry, ‘Débats’, Colloque de Caen, pp. 144-45. 87. Boed, ‘The State of the Right of Asylum in International Law’. 88. See David Miller,’ Is there a Human Right to Immigrate?’, and Kieran Oberman, ‘Migration as a Human Right’, in Sarah Fine and Lea Ypi (eds) Migration in Political Theory: The Ethics of Movement and Membership (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 11-56. 89. Hathaway, ‘The Evolution of Refugee Status in International Law’, pp. 348-80.

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90. MAE SDN 1805, 11 septembre 1928, pp. 22-28. See Dzovinar Kevonian, ‘Représentations, enjeux politiques et codification juridique: les réfugiés des années vingt’, Relations Internationales 101 (Printemps 2000), pp. 21-39. 91. LON Fonds des réfugiés, 20A 8609 686, 13 décembre 1933. They applied to refugees protected by the Nansen Office. Refugees from the Saar were added in 1935. 92. See Barros, Betrayal from Within. 93. Simon Rabinovitch, ‘A “Historical Commitment”? Identity and Ideology in Israel’s Attitude to the Refugee Convention 1951-4’, International History Review 37(4). See H-Diplo at https://networks.hnet (accessed 22 April 2016). 94. H. Lauterpacht (ed.), Oppenheim’s International Law, 8th edn, vol. 1 (London: Longmans Green, 1955), p. 678. 95. Aust, Handbook of International Law, p. 170. 96. Colloque de Caen, p. 145. 97. LON C 1609 59-53 506. Note from MAE signed by Léger, 18 June 1934, in response to McDonald’s memorandum of 24 April 1934. 98. Loi constitutionnelle no. 93-12156 du 25 novembre 1993. 99. NA FO 371 19653 1935, ‘Right of Asylum for Political Refugees’, 10 January 1935, pp. 8-43. 100. NA FO 371 19653 1935, ‘Right of Asylum for Political Refugees’, 10 January 1935, pp. 14-15; Charles Calvo, Dictionnaire de Droit International, vol. 1 (Paris: Hachette, 1885), p. 64; Paul Fauchille, Traite de Droit International Public, vol. 1, part 1 (Paris: Rousseau, 1922), paragraph 441. 101. MAE Z 710 Allemagne, ‘Note. Service français de la SDN’, 24 août 1933, p. 253. 102. Professor of Law, René Cassin was a member of the French delegation to the LON. He was a founder in 1917 and Secretary-general of the Union fédérale des anciens combattants et mutilés de guerre. He represented them at the LON assemblies from 1924 to 1938. Appointed to the UN Commission on Human Rights he wrote the final draft of the UDHR, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968. 103. René Cassin, ‘Vers l’organisation internationale - de la Société des Nations aux Nations Unies d’aujourd’hui’, conférence prononcée 26 janvier 1960, La pensée et l’action (Boulogne: F. Lalou, 1972), p. 120. 104. René Cassin, ‘Les droits de l’homme’, Recueil des cours de TAcadémie de droit international, vol. 140 no. 4, 1974 (Leiden: Brill, 1976), p. 324. See also Greg Burgess, ’The Human Rights Dilemma in Anti-Nazi Protest: The Bernheim Petition, Minorities Protection, and the 1933 Sessions of the League of Nations', CERC Working Papers Series no. 2/2002 (Melbourne: Contemporary European Research Centre. 2002). 105. LON CL 58.1937.XII, Preliminary Draft Convention Concerning the Statute of the Refugees Coming from Germany, Geneva, 23 March 1937. 106. LON Treaty Series, vol. LXXXIX, no. 2005. 107. MAE Z 710, Note MAE à Berlin, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Berne and Luxembourg (Note. MAE to. . . .), 21 juillet 1933, 108. See chapter 10.

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109. Les Cahiers des Droits de I’Homme, 33 Année (Nouvelle série) no. 220 (jan­ vier 1933). 110. LON Treaty Series, vol. CLIX, no. 3663, Convention on International Status of Refugees, 28 October 1933, Chapters II, Article 3 and chapters III-VII. 111. Arrangements of 5 July 1922, 31 May 1924, 12 May 1926, 30 June 1928. 112. Gilbert Jaeger, ‘On the history of the international protection of refugees’, International Review of the Red Cross 83(243) (September 2001), pp. 727-37. 113. For example, the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Article 33 of the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 28 July 1951, reads ‘Prohibition of expulsion or return (refoulement). 1. No Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. 2. The benefit of the present provision may not, however, be claimed by a refugee whom there are reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country’.

114. LON Treaty Series, vol. CLIX, no. 3663, Convention on International Status of Refugees, 28 October 1933, Chapter II Administrative Measures, Article 3. 115. MAE SDN 1805 (Note M. de Navailles à M. Bourgois (Note from de Navailles to M. Bourgois, 12 janvier 1934. Louis Bourgois worked in the Sousdirection de la SDN. 116. French ratification registered at the LON on 3 November 1936. 117. MAE SDN 1812 Copie 13 février 1935, pp 145-47. 118. MAE SDN 1812, ‘Note pour le Secrétaire Général’ (Note for the Secretary­ general) 19 février 1935, pp. 148-49. 119. Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway. 120. Senator, ex-ambassador and delegate to the LON. 121. Debates in the Chambre des Députés in January and February 1935. See JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambre des Députés, 20 février 1935, no. 20, pp.563-66; AN C 14879, ‘Procès-verbal de la séance 19 février 1935’ (Minutes of the session of 19 February 1935). Barbier, ‘L’accueil des réfugiés d’Allemagne en Alsace (1933— 34): arbitraire de l’administration et marges de l’action individuelle et collective’, pp. 4-5. 122. ‘La proposition de la loi Moutet’, pp. 157-66. 123. ‘La proposition de la loi Moutet’, Articles 9-20, pp. 164-66. 124. 8 November 1934 to 1 June 1935. 125. ‘La proposition de la loi Moutet’, pp. 157-66. 126. It was exposed in December 1933. See Paul Jankowski, Stavisky - A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). 127. 9 October 1934, by Vlado Chemozemski, a Bulgarian revolutionary. 128. The government decrees of 6 February 1935 led to more expulsions. See Harouni, ‘Le débat autour du statut des étrangers’, pp. 71-75; Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 43-63.

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129. Noiriel, Réfugiés et sans-papiers,, pp. 58-59. 130. ‘La Question des Étrangers, la Chambre des Députés, 19 février 1935’, Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme 8 (10 mars 1935), pp. 151-66. 131. Noiriel, Réfugiés et sans-papiers, p. 196. 132. MAE SDN 1806 IM, ‘Note sur la question des étrangers et des réfugiés et la SDN’ (Note on the question of foreigners and refugees and the LON) 2 avril 1935, pp. 18-23. 133. Sous-chef de division in the Sous-direction de la SDN (deputy head of). 134. MAE SDN 1805, ‘La question des étrangers et des réfugiés et la SDN’ (The question of foreigners and refugees and the LON) 1 avril 1935, pp. 19-23. 135. MAE Papiers Delbos, Cabinet du ministre 3, Lettre à LDH, Victor Basch, (Letter to LDH, Victor Basch) 27 juillet 1936 pp. 24-25. 136. AN F7 14823, Police Générale, décrets du 2 mai, 14 mai, 13 août 1938; Instructions du Ministre de l’intérieur du 28 mai, 15 juin 1938 (Police Générale decrees. Instructions of Minister of the Interior.). 137. President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, ex-president of the Nansen Office. 138. Secretary-general of the Carnegie Foundation. 139. Annuaire de 1’Institut de droit international, ‘Travaux préparatoire de la Session de Bruxelles’, vol. I (1936) (Preparatory work for the Brussels session) pp. 1-109 (Paris: Pedone, 1936). 140. Annuaire de 1’Institut de droit international, ‘Session 24 avril de la deux­ ième commission, Session de Bruxelles’, vol. II (Sitting 24 April of the Second Commission, session in Brussels), avril 1936, pp. 91-174 (Paris: Pedone, 1936). 141. Annuaire de 1’Institut de droit international, ‘Session de Bruxelles’, vol. II (avril 1936), pp. 292-99 (Paris: Pedone, 1936). 142. Annuaire de 1’Institut de droit international, ‘Session de Bruxelles, Partie 1, Article 2, 2’, vol. II (avril 1936), p. 294 (Paris: Pedone, 1936). 143. LON, Convention concerning the Status of Refugees Coming from Germany, 10 February 1938, LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, Chapter IV, Administrative Measures Article 5, paragraph 3. 144. See Using Science to Define the Undesirable Immigrant, from the archive of the Center for Migration Studies of New York. At http://cmsny.org (accessed 13 October 2017). 145. ‘Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses’, published in the Reichsgesetzblatt on 25 July 1933, Reichsgesetzblatt Part I, no. 86 (1933), pp. 529-31. 146. See Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 147. Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 96. 148. AN F7 16073, ‘Réfugiés allemands’, Lettre 28 février 1934 de la Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, Europe, no. 130 (Letter 28 February 1934 from the Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales, Europe, no. 130). 149. Jean Berthoin. Sarraut replaced him with Charles Magny on 5 May 1934.

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150. AN F7 16073, Lettre du cabinet du Ministre de l’intérieur au Directeur de la Sûreté Générale (Letter from the Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior to the Director of the Sûreté Générale). The letter is not dated but is stamped 10 March 1934 by the Service central des cartes d’identité des étrangers. 151. AN F7 16073, ‘Ordre du jour (Order of the day) 28 février 1934. 152. AN F7 16073, ‘Extrait du procès-verbal de la réunion de la Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration’ (‘Extract of the minutes of the meet­ ing of the Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration’) 9 mars 1934. 153. AN F7 16073, Lettre du Ministre de la Santé publique au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères (Letter from the Minister of Health to the Minister of Foreign Affairs) 6 avril 1934. 154. AN F7 16073, Lettre du Ministre de l’intérieur au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères (Letter from the Minister of the Interior to the Minister of Foreign Affairs) 6 avril 1934. 155. AN F7 16073, Lettre du Ministre de l’intérieur aux Préfets du Nord, Ardennes, Meuse, Moselle, B.-Rhin, H.-Rhin, Belfort, Doubs, Ain (Letter from the Minister of the Interior to the Prefects) 13 mai 1935. 156. See Roger-Henri Guerrand and Christine Moissinac, Henri Sellier. Urbaniste et réformateur social (Paris: La Découverte, 2005); Geoff Read, The Republic of men: gender and the political parties in interwar France (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2014). 157. ‘Ce que le code de la famille a malheureusement négligé’ (That which the family code has regrettably ignored) in La Lumière, 23 février 1940, p. 3.

Chapter 6

Minorities and Intervention

This chapter looks at the Quai’s dilemma whether the French government should officially criticise the German government for persecuting Jews and opponents of the regime and persuade the Nazis to stop the policy that was driving so many refugees to France. To censure Germany for the violation of basic humanitarian principles would be the correct response for a liberal democracy and had the support of Jewish caritative organisations. However, this came with the risk that the Quai would be accused of interfering in the internal affairs of another sovereign state, a breach of the internationally accepted norm, while in any case the chances of changing German policy were slim. International law allowed the Quai to intervene only if French citizens were threatened when abroad. The Quai’s reluctance was supported by LON Secretary-general Avenol, who declared that the LON should remain neutral. The Quai preferred that the HCR and non-governmental associations censure Germany although it did instruct François-Poncet to raise the issue with the German government unofficially. Nonetheless, having a secure legal basis for official condemnation was another matter. Germany’s violation of the undertaking it had signed with the LON to give equal treatment to all citizens in the territory it had received in the partition of Upper Silesia provided the Quai with an opportunity formally to intervene to censure Germany using the sanction of the LON. Yet, the legal victory proved pyrrhic because Germany gave notice that it was leaving the LON on 19 October 1933 and it took no further part in the LON.

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MINORITIES The protection of minorities, a basic principle of the Versailles settlement of 1918, was a consequence of the creation of new states that had significant minority populations. The sociologist Joe R. Feagin defines minorities as follows: Minorities were nationalities within nation states. A definition of a minority group has five characteristics: (1) suffering discrimination and subordination, (2) physical and/or cultural traits that set them apart, and which are disapproved of by the dominant group, (3) a shared sense of collective identity and common burdens, (4) socially shared rules about who belongs and who does not deter­ mine minority status, and (5) tendency to marry within the group.1

To ensure that the minorities were guaranteed the same rights as the major­ ity, the Supreme Council of the Allies set up the Committee on New States and for the Protection of Minorities. Between 1919 and 1921 the new suc­ cessor states, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, were required to sign minority rights treaties as a precondition of diplomatic recognition,2 while Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Albania signed unilateral declarations. Furthermore, the Versailles Treaty decreed that a plebiscite be held in the ethnically mixed German-Polish border district of Upper Silesia to decide whether it would belong to Poland or Germany. On 20 March 1921, the vote resulted in a majority in favour of joining Germany, which provoked skirmishes between the local Polish and German populations. The LON was charged with resolving the problem. It arranged that on 15 May 1922 both countries signed the LON Convention that divided Upper Silesia and guaran­ teed their minorities’ rights.3 However Germany, apart from this undertaking to the LON regarding Upper Silesia, had not been required to sign a minor­ ity treaty and therefore was not bound legally to protect its minorities in the rest of Germany. Nevertheless, on several occasions the Weimar government confirmed Germany’s intention to abide by the provisions of the minority treaties,4 to the extent that Gustav Stresemann, the Weimar foreign minister, was praised for his undertaking at the LON to uphold the principle of minor­ ity rights.5 In 1929, the German government had answered a questionnaire from the Preparatory Committee for the Conference for the Codification of International Law: ‘Obviously, as international law is binding on all mem­ bers of the community governed by international law, a state cannot refuse responsibility by appealing to the provisions of its municipal law’.6Article 14 of the Weimar constitution, which was still in force during the Third Reich, declared that generally recognised rules of international law were binding on

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the Reich.7 No doubt the German position had been prompted by its vigor­ ous representations in the LON Minorities Commission to protect the large German minorities in Poland, Czechoslovakia and smaller ones in other suc­ cessor states.8 Circumstances in Germany changed after Hitler’s accession to power.9 On 1 April 1933, the Reich government organised a public boycott of Jewish businesses, lawyers and doctors throughout Germany, including Upper Silesia. A week later, on 7 April,10 the government issued decrees for the reorganisation of the civil service which discriminated against non-Aryan civil servants and prohibited Jewish lawyers and notaries from practising their profession and on 25 April it passed a law against the ‘alienisation’ of German schools (including high schools) by decreeing that the proportion of non-Aryan pupils should not exceed 1.5 per cent.11 These measures were applied to the whole of Germany, including Upper Silesia. The Quai explored possible reactions.12 In a note of 1 April, FouquesDuparc explained to his colleagues that Jews in Germany, other than Upper Silesia, were not protected by a minority convention but that Jews outside Germany were submitting petitions to the LON Council claiming discrimi­ nation against Jews as a minority in Germany. These petitions, he wrote, were being ignored and 'will pile up in the drawers of the Secretariat' (s’accumuleront dans les tiroirs du Secrétariat’) because there was no con­ vention to protect minorities in Germany. Between 1920 and 1939, 883 petitions were submitted to the Minorities Section. Only 16 of the 395 petitions considered ‘receivable’ ever reached the attention of the council and of these 16 the council very reluctantly con­ demned the accused state of improper treatment in only four cases. However, Erik Colban, the first director of the Minorities Section, developed a personal approach whereby the section officials would investigate matters locally and address their findings locally. This close cooperation between the section and the accused states made it possible in many cases to avoid further aggravation and alleviate future problems.13 Yet this was an instance that superseded the local level. The protection of minorities was 'a sacred duty' ('un caractère sacré’) of the LON, and both France and the LON would lose face if nothing was done to protect the Jewish minority in Germany. Fouques-Duparc suggested three possible responses. One was to raise the matter in the next meeting of the LON Assembly, using the argument that not respecting minority rights was a threat to world peace. A second, which would be more effective, providing the British also agreed, was that France no longer undertook the protection of German minorities outside Germany. Because this might be too provocative he proposed instead a third solution: that France should refuse to sit on any minority committee that contained a German delegate.14 Five days later he added that he was

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confident this proposal would have British support given the indignation in the UK provoked by the German measures.15 Meanwhile, because the Union of Poles in Germany16 had submitted peti­ tions claiming discrimination to the LON Council in March and April 1933,17 Fouques-Duparc was trying to dissuade the Polish government from using the occasion as an opportune moment for countries - as opposed to minorities that had signed the conventions on minority rights to review their grievances about the inequality of the system.18 On 17 April, American and British Jewish agencies on behalf of twenty Polish Jewish communities living in Germany submitted a petition to the LON denouncing the treatment of Jews in Germany and Upper Silesia and they countersigned another petition submitted by a Czech Jew.19 Although neither petition came from a citizen of Upper Silesia, Massigli’s opinion was that the matter would be raised at the next LON Council meeting in May. There is a pencil remark on the telegram, 'this would be very good’ ('Ce serait tres bien"). The Quai’s legal department had confirmed that the Jews of Upper Silesia had the right to petition the LON Council and that even though this right did not extend to Jews in other parts of Germany it offered an open­ ing to raise the matter even if the Quai did not want to take the initiative in supporting these petitions.20 On 18 May, Massigli reported that a new petition had been submitted to the council this time from an Upper Silesian citizen, Franz Bernheim, making certain that the matter would come up in the council as a matter of urgency.21 Bernheim, a Jewish, therefore ‘non-Aryan’, German citizen living in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, had been dismissed from his employment with the Deutsches Familien-Kaufhaus because of his religion. With the help of inter­ national Jewish agencies, he submitted his petition protesting that Germany had violated its obligations.22 Massigli sent another telegram on the same day confirming that the Germans were greatly embarrassed about the matter, which he saw as an excellent opportunity officially to intervene in German affairs.23 The Quai would justify its censure of Germany’s persecution of Jews in Upper Silesia and throughout the Reich because Germany was in breach both of a legal undertaking that it had signed at the LON guaranteeing minority rights in Upper Silesia and of its promise to abide by international law. If Germany were found guilty Massigli thought the judgement would validate interven­ tion enforceable in international law. This, he suggested, offered an oppor­ tunity not only to embarrass Germany, useful for tactical reasons linked to the disarmament talks that were taking place in Geneva at the same time, but also to enhance France’s standing as one of the orchestrators of the LON’s positive response to the complaint.24 He believed the Germans would have to accept the findings of the council or put at risk the conventions that protected

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German minorities in other countries. On 18 May, Avigdor Jacobson, del­ egate of Zionist organisations to the LON, visited the Quai to solicit French support for the urgent consideration of the petition by the LON Council. Emile Charveriat received him.25 He said that the French delegation would do so and the Cabinet du Ministre (The Minister’s Office) confirmed it the next day.26 The correspondence suggests that Massigli was loath to pass up the oppor­ tunity of scoring a diplomatic coup in Geneva. While he was suggesting to his superiors that the minority question was an opportunity to humiliate Germany in the LON, which the Quai’s lawyers judged to be legally justified interven­ tion, the Quai was taking a much softer line in its dealings with the Reich, and he was initially instructed to tone down his response. In addition to not wanting to alienate Germany too much during the disarmament talks, there were also negotiations going on concerning the four-power pact between France, the UK, Germany and Italy, which, although signed on 15 July 1933, was not ratified by France. The Quai was nervous of embarrassing the gov­ ernments of the Central European states with whom it was negotiating treaties for collective security. By accusing Germany of discrimination against the Jews in Upper Silesia, the Quai’s action might be construed as supporting the minorities, mainly German, maltreatment by the authorities of the countries the Quai was soliciting. The Quai’s standpoint set out in an unsigned note dated 21 May sup­ ported the request that the petition be brought before the council as a matter of urgency but was cautious about the stance the French delegate should take when the question came up for debate.27 The Quai thought it wise to let the British and Czechs take the initiative.28 It recommended a withdrawal from the aggressive posture suggested in the earlier notes writ­ ten by Fouques-Duparc, probably encouraged by Massigli, suggesting that France should let the English ‘be in the front row of the orchestra’ in order to avoid aggravating relations with Germany. Because of the indignation expressed in the House of Commons, the British government would not be able to shirk its role as leader. France would be supportive from the wings to protect her principled reputation as the emancipator of Jews. Having let the British complain about the treatment of Jews in Upper Silesia, the French delegate could point out that the question of discrimination was not just geographical limited to Upper Silesia, but a universal and just one concerning the treatment of minorities everywhere to which Germany had subscribed during the six years of its membership of the LON. The note concluded that to counter any adverse reaction about French support for the rights of minorities among France’s central European friends, specifically the logic that German minorities in these countries had to be protected, the French delegate could point out that this was not just a question of minority

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rights: it was as much a question of the liberal tradition of tolerance for all religions and peoples. The French delegates to the LON Council meetings examining the minor­ ity petition were the MAE Paul-Boncour and Massigli. A further unsigned note of 26 May probably was the Quai’s advice for Paul-Boncour’s address to the council. It pointed out the contradiction between the new laws of the Reich and the German declarations upholding the rights of minorities. However, contrary to the note of 21 May, which talked of universal protec­ tion, the French delegate should restrict his observations to the local question of Upper Silesia and emphasise that France was merely defending its liberal tradition, not attacking Germany. Germany would be aware of the implica­ tions that a council decision in favour of the petition would have for German minorities in other countries.29 In the event, Paul-Boncour’s address was more aggressive than the Quai proposed. He pointed out that this case was only one aspect of a more general problem of the rights of minority nation­ alities. He invoked France’s emancipation of Jews, that it had been France that had insisted that Jews be given equal rights when the new nations of Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria were established at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Germany, which had wanted to ensure respect for the rights of German minorities in other countries would doubtless want to ensure minority rights in its own territory.30 The Germans rebutted this with the argument that the Reich was willing to protect minorities but not Jews because they were German citizens not a national minority. However, on 27 May, the German delegate, Friedrich von Keller, conceded that there was a contravention. He declared to the council that the Reich laws had been applied in Upper Silesia in error, but that the petition must be rejected because Bernheim had been bom in Austria and therefore was not qualified to submit a petition from Upper Silesia.31 Massigli’s report from Geneva said that von Keller understood how weak his argument was and that he was resigned to suffering universal disapproval of Germany’s racist doctrines.32 The council then appointed three jurists Max Huber, Maurice Bourquin and Manuel Pedroso on 30 May to give their opinion on two points: whether Bernheim belonged to a minority and, if so, whether he had the right to submit the petition. They reported on 2 June that he did have the right with the rider that it was still possible to secure redress from the national authorities in Germany.33 Massigli’s intercession in the 6 June Council meeting that adopted the jurists’ report was acerbic: he regretted that in law the resolution to be adopted related only to Upper Silesia, imply­ ing that it should be applied to the whole of Germany. Germany and Italy abstained in the subsequent vote that confirmed the judgement.34 The question of minorities was brought up again in early October 1933,35 in the LON Sixth Committee when the Germans produced a new argument

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in debates about refugees from Germany. This was the concept of dissimula­ tion.36 It reconciled racist theory with the protection of minorities by making a distinction between the case of Jews in Germany and German minorities in other countries. Jews in Germany were permitted legally to behave as a minority by opening and attending synagogues, Talmudic schools and Jewish associations, and practising Jewish culture. But unlike minorities in other countries, they were suppressing and shedding their particularities and assimilating into German political, economic and social society to such a degree that they no longer qualified for protection as a minority. Notably, the minority question prefigured the appeasement debate in the Quai and the government with Massigli already the hardliner. In May 1933, Massigli’s superiors were uneasy about alienating Germany whereas by the autumn the Quai had shifted its position and had fewer qualms no doubt because it saw no resolution to the deadlock in the disarmament negotia­ tions.37 Indeed, Germany withdrew from the talks on 14 October 1933. The anti-Semitic laws were on the Reich’s statute books and the Quai must have realised that even though there was a difference of emphasis between the softer approach of the Quai and the politicians’ more strident one, Germany’s humiliation would not stop Nazi persecution. Nevertheless Bérenger, the French delegate at the Assembly’s Sixth Committee, told von Keller in no uncertain terms that the German government by treating Jews as non-Aryan had created a minority.38 When the Committee discussed minorities,39 the Quai suggested he repeat the declaration of the Second Committee in 1922:40 The Assembly expresses the hope that the States which are not bound by any legal obligations to the League with respect to minorities will nevertheless observe in the treatment of their own racial, religious or linguistic minorities at least as high a standard of justice and toleration as is required by any of the treaties and by regular action of the Council.

The 1933 LON Assembly resolution repeated that the minority principles ‘must be applied without exception to all classes and groups of nationals in countries in which minorities differed from the majority in race, language, or religion’.41 Bérenger was not interested in placating Germany. His prior­ ity was to stop refugees coming to France and get rid of the ones already in France.

THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

Although François-Poncet said that Blum was the only minister who read his dispatches,42 his Berlin staff, French consuls in Germany, German refugees in

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France, international Jewish organisations and the Bulletin périodique de la presse allemande (The Periodical Bulletin with Reports of the German Press) published by the Quai kept the government fully informed of the plight of the Jews and opponents of the Nazi regime.43 Duroselle criticised François-Poncet for underestimating Hitler’s inten­ tions regarding the reoccupation of the Rhineland, for his optimism that Hitler had toned down the more extreme views expressed in Mein Kampf and for his misunderstanding of German economic policy.44 But as early as March 1933, the ambassador certainly forecast Hitler’s racial policies accurately. For example, he sent a telegram to Paris saying that despite the concerns of the conservative members of the Reich cabinet, nothing could be done to alleviate the anti-Semitic decrees.45 Another striking example was FrançoisPoncet’s report to the MAE, Laval, on 1 May 1935, in which he reported that anti-Semitism was getting worse by the day. Jews were not allowed to be German citizens. The Nazis were withdrawing their rights and it would be the same for Socialists, Catholics, recalcitrant Protestants, Communists and all who opposed the regime.46 Politicians also advertised the German refugees’ situation. De Jouvenel gave an exposé to the Senate Commission for Foreign Affairs of the dire situation in Germany with examples of the persecution that provoked their flight.47 Therefore, the point at issue was whether France should intervene to stop the German persecution. The Quai believed it should do so when intervening legally. It was on a firm base when the LON sanctioned Germany for breach­ ing its undertaking concerning the minorities in Upper Silesia. The Quai’s action was in line with the definition of the historian William Lingelbach, who considered an official protest was meaningless without the legal sanction to enforce it. Intervention is the interference of a state or group of states in the affairs of another state, for the purpose of compelling it to do or refrain from doing certain acts. Its essential characteristic is force, either open or concealed. Simple media­ tion or even a formal protest, unless there is present the intention of enforcing the demand, does not constitute intervention.48

After the Germans withdrew from the LON, the Quai could no longer use the LON as the legal vehicle to censure Germany. The premise that each state was at liberty to act within its borders as it wished meant that a formal complaint about Germany’s behaviour was construed as intervention and that this was an impingement of its sovereignty. Thus, to admonish Germany was a contradiction of the principle that the Quai was itself defending: the maintenance of France’s sovereignty being a fundamental principle of French foreign policy. Furthermore, as discussed in chapter 5, the Quai could not

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endorse persecution as a motive for asylum because that meant France had to interfere in the politics of the state that was persecuting the refugees.49 Instead, it considered protection. When the question of extending LON protection universally to all coun­ tries was brought up at a LON Council executive meeting in May 1934 and the French MAE, Barthou, persuaded the council to reject the proposal, he added: ‘The present circumstances do not seem to be such as to commend this course to the Council. Moreover, each Government is at liberty to decide what treatment should be applied to refugees established in its territory’.50 The Quai did not deem its business to judge the situations that gave rise to the need for protection and was unwilling to enter any discussion of the reasons for internal displacement. It recognised only that German refugees needed protection because de jure or de facto the Reich had deprived them of their citizenship, so it applied the protection only after they had crossed the border. Yet, even recognition of the need for protection was construed by the German government as intervention in its internal affairs. On these grounds, with Avenol’s support, Germany had forced the LON to disassociate itself from the HCR.51 The Quai could no longer use the LON to censure Germany. Without this, however distasteful German racial policy was both from a humanitarian standpoint and because it caused the refugees to come to France, the Quai was loath to intervene directly in German affairs. There was no will to use military force to compel Germany to stop its practices and the Quai assessed that a formal protest would not change the Nazi regime’s policy and might even reinforce it.52 France was in a weak position.53 A rebuff would be a loss of face for the Quai and might have repercussions on the wider stage of Franco-German relations when there were hopes in the immediate aftermath of its withdrawal from the LON that Germany might reverse its decision. The British and the LON secretariat also agreed that an official protest to pressure the Reich to alter its domestic policy would almost certainly fail,54 a judge­ ment that was confirmed when the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg laws of September 1935 that stripped Jews of most of their civil rights.55 Robert Vansittart, Permanent Undersecretary at the British Foreign Office, a convinced anti-Nazi, saw no possibility of a successful political approach to the Germans, since ‘Hitler was quite mad on two subjects, Jews and Austria’.56 And if, in the unlikely event that a formal protest would have an effect on Nazi policy, there was always the possibility that intervention might result in the Germans asking the LON, or the French and the British, to take responsibility for the refugees and shelter them.57 Monty Penkower wrote, ‘London hesitated to make formal representations to the Reich authorities regarding anti-Semitic legislation, one Whitehall official privately noting that if successful “Britain could be asked to take the Jews’”.58 The fact that

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Michael Hansson, president of the Nansen Office, did want the LON to undertake the responsibility did not change Avenol’s or French and British opinion.59 There was, however, another basis on which intervention could be justi­ fied, which was that the sovereignty of the country of refuge, France, was compromised by the policies of the country that provoked the emigration: ‘The origins of this criterion stem from the positivist legal norm which asserts that states have equal inviolable sovereign integrity and that the intervention in the internal affairs of one state will reduce the stability for all’.60 Although, as discussed in chapter 3, the French authorities were concerned about for­ eigners’ political activity in France, the Quai did not use this argument until 1938 when it protested to the German government about expelled refugees coming to France. The Quai reversed its argument and chose instead to stress the principle of the inviolability of German sovereignty as the reason for not intervening. In justification it could refer to the Montagnard Constitution’s Article 119, which declared that France would not intervene in the affairs of other states and to the LON Covenant that underscored the same principle. It said: ‘If the dispute between the parties is claimed by one of them, and is found by the Council, to arise out of a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic jurisdiction of that party, the Council shall so report, and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement’.61 The Quai’s position was that an official protest and efforts at mediation constituted intervention and would contravene the rules of sovereignty. It maintained that to intervene in the Reich’s racist and political policies however repugnant they might be would be to intrude on the state’s right to choose its political, social and cultural system, what the French deemed a 'reserved domairi {'domaine réservé'1').62 This chimed with international relations expert Luke Glanville’s simple definition of sovereignty: ‘A state is sovereign means that it decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems’,63 and with article 8 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: ‘No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another’.64 The British Foreign Office shared the Quai’s opinion: ‘If states claimed a right to make their own internal decisions unmolested, then they had a duty to allow other states to do the same’.65 Apart from the legal intervention at the LON, and eschewing an official protest that would pro­ voke German accusations of interference, the Quai approached the German authorities unofficially not to change their overall policy but in the hope of achieving a marginal easing of the emigration restrictions.66 The department note of 3 May 1933 pointed out that the Quai could officially intervene only if French citizens were threatened but that an unofficial approach could be considered:

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The Department has decided on the measures essential to offering asylum in our territory to German Jews. Instructions have been addressed to our Consuls that, so far as it is compatible with our National security and the conditions of the labour market in France, the entry of these foreigners onto our territory will be facilitated. In addition, during conversations with Influential Persons, the attention of the Government of the Reich has been called to consider the conse­ quences of its acts. These conversations, when the subject has been discussed, will necessarily remain of a non-official character. Indeed, from a judicial point of view, the Government of the Republic is not authorized to intervene with a Foreign State in favour of persons not of French nationality.67 If the Quai could persuade the German authorities to allow the refugees to take their assets with them it would not only help the refugees it would also lessen the burden of refugee relief in France. Léger wrote to François-Poncet on 4 May 1933 about approaching the German government unofficially:

It had been suggested that my Department intervene in Berlin so that the fugi­ tives be authorized to have the assets belonging to them in the Reich put at their disposal. But on the one hand, the laws forbidding the exportation of capital are applicable not only to refugees, but to the whole of citizens of the Reich. On the other hand, we are not authorized to intervene with a foreign Government in favour of persons who are not of French nationality. Given these conditions, I can only leave it to your care, if you have no objection, to take advantage of a personal conversation of no official character whatsoever, to remark that it would be fair to authorize those persons who can no longer operate in Germany, to move their money in other directions. Such a measure would also be apt more than any other to calm much ill feeling.68

This drew the comment from René Binet, French consul in Berlin, that if the refugees were permitted to take their possessions to France they were likely to stay there.69 Nevertheless, a further note of 28 September 1933 to brief the Quai’s delegate for a meeting of countries bordering on Germany suggested that 'very possibly' ('très eventuellement') one could negotiate with Germany that refugees be allowed to take their capital with them.70 The idea may have originated from the Haavara Agreement signed on 23 August 1933 whereby Jews emigrating to Palestine, instead of paying the exit tax imposed by the German government, were allowed to transfer a portion of their assets to pay for German manufactured goods exported to Palestine.71 Under its terms 60,000 German Jews were to be allowed to emigrate to Palestine and take $100 million in assets with them. Between 1933 and 1939, a total of some 230,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, legally and illegally - about

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55,000 of them from Germany and Austria. The Quai seems then to have dropped this line of approach: there is no further reference to it. The debate about what constitutes intervention and interference continues. In his talk ‘The Principle of Non-intervention in Contemporary International Law: Non-Interference in a State’s Internal Affairs used to be a Rule of International Law: is it still?’ at Chatham House on 28 February 2007, Sir Michael Wood, legal adviser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, quoted a declaration made at the UN Assembly in 1970: No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements, are in violation of international law.

He went on to say that although in many cases the terms non-intervention and non-interference are interchangeable, non-interference suggests a wider prohibition. Another concern was the Quai’s uneasiness about the activities of German refugees in France. Their anti-Nazi propaganda and efforts to organise a Volksfront (Peoples’ Front) could have been construed as interference in German domestic politics and used by the Reich as an excuse to meddle in French politics.72 For this reason, a condition of allowing refugees to stay in France was that they should not take part in politics. However, the restriction was at variance with the fundamental Republican right to freedom of speech,73 and of the press.74 A distinction was drawn between domestic and foreign politics and the condition was imposed when it suited the authorities and only in rare cases concerning French domestic politics. For example, while Miinzenberg was not censured, Trotsky, not a refugee from Germany, was expelled for allegedly breaching the condition of his stay that he should not interfere in French politics. Not every official was complaisant about ignor­ ing refugee anti-Nazi activities. The right-wing prefect of police, Chiappe, who viewed the pursuit of foreign politics on French soil as subversive, was reported as having warned that ‘I will not agree to them demonstrating or plotting against the present government of Germany in our country. Any person among them who might be tempted to do so will be expelled beyond our borders within twenty-four hours’.75 The anti-Nazi publications of the refugees differed from the exile press like the Pariser Tageblatt (The Paris Daily Newssheet) and the Pariser Tageszeitung (The Paris Daily Newspaper) that catered for the apolitical German refugee community. And yet despite the threats of Chiappe, who in any case was dismissed as prefect in February 1934, the Quai may have regarded the anti-Nazi activities of the German

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refugees, though officially proscribed, as a proxy to intervene in German politics.76 Münzenberg, with Comintern funding, was at the centre of organis­ ing anti-Nazi propaganda. He founded the publishing houses Carrefour and Prométhée that produced anti-Nazi literature. As mentioned in chapter 3, he published the Braun Buch (Brown Book) for distribution in Germany, to mobilise opinion in defence of Georgi Dimitrov and his co-defendants, Ernst Torgler, Blagol Popov and Vasil Tanev, arrested and accused of complicity in organising the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933.77 The Pariser Tageblatt spoke of 500,000 copies being printed. Babette Gross, Münzenberg’s wife, said the number was at the most 25,000. He also arranged the distribution in Germany of the anti-Nazi newspaper, Der Gegen-Angriff (The Counter Attack) printed in Prague.78 He funded and organised the formation and activity of the Comité Thälmann in support of Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the KPD who was imprisoned in Germany. His agitprop extended to help­ ing the foundation in Paris on 10 May 1934 of the 'The Freedom Library' ('Bibliothèque de la Liberté'), which held copies of the banned books that the Nazis had destroyed in Berlin in the autodafé one year earlier,79 and the 'The Institute for the Study of Fascism' ('Institut pour l’étude du fascisme').30 He remained in the background, but promoted the International Congress for the Defence of Culture in Paris in June 1935, which was attended by 250 cel­ ebrated writers from thirty-seven countries.81 Another of his anti-Nazi cam­ paigns was the call to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games and in 1936 he participated in the Deutsche Volksfront (The German Peoples’ Front)32 Gross, wrote in her biography of her husband,83 that Pierre Comert, an old friend who was Press Secretary at the Quai, supported Münzenberg’s activi­ ties in France, and introduced him to several prominent people such as Gaston Palewski (1901-1984),84 and the politicians Henri Laugier (1888-1973)85 and Pierre Cot (1895-1977).86 Because Comert was close to Léger there is reason to believe that Münzenberg’s anti-Nazi activities were sanctioned and pos­ sibly even encouraged by the Quai. But, if this was so, the Quai was careful to avoid being seen to support the refugee press. Ever wary of the accusation of interference, the Quai refused the request in October 1933 for a subsidy to help restart publishing the German socialist journal Die Freiheit (Freedom) in France:87 ‘The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is very little inclined to sub­ sidise polemic engaged in by German emigrants in France’.88 But the Quai changed its mind five years later in October 1938 when Münzenberg having broken with the Comintern in Moscow started his own independent left-wing newspaper Zukunft (Future), which the Quai subsidised to the tune of 50,000 francs a month, later reduced to 25,000 francs.89 Despite the official police ban on the sale at newsstands of some of the anti-Nazi publications, they were freely available although the only ones that survived tended to be the papers and journals funded with Comintern money.90

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Münzenberg’s activities may have been acceptable to the Quai to offset the Reich’s propaganda in France and its proselytising among French journalists and politicians. The Pariser Tageblatt reported that the German embassy in Paris was very active in promoting Nazi propaganda in France.91 The German Foreign Ministry often sent Otto Abetz, who became the Reich ambassador to France in 1940, to Paris to oversee these operations. Neither side lodged an official protest until 1938.92 Critical of what they regarded as the spineless and inadequate stance of the Quai and the LON on intervention, McDonald and caritative organisations maintained that the violation of human rights in Germany justified an official protest. McDonald’s letter of resignation from the HCR in December 1935 made an appeal for governmental intervention. ‘For intercession in defence of those elementary human rights which are the very foundation-stone of civilization and which constitute a primary condition of continued interna­ tional peace and good will’.93 The appeal also used the argument that the sovereignty of other states was being compromised because of the policy and subsequent actions of the Nazi government: Their immediate effects and working direct in the territory of other states, con­ stitute a series of violations of the rights of those states, as well as a breach of solemn international undertakings and obligations .. . The right of a state to leg­ islate as it pleases regarding those within its jurisdiction is not an unlimited one.94

A fifty-seven-page annex in the form of a petition approved by McDonald and financed by charities followed the resignation letter in January 1936 elaborating the justifications for intervention.95 The authors of the petition, Oscar J. Janowsky and Melvin M. Fagen, also wrote a book, which amplified the argument.96 The petition first traced the history of the right of humanitarian interven­ tion from Grotius to the contemporary time. It then repeated the discussion of the international legal aspects of German policies: ‘The right of a state to legislate towards its own nationals or those within its jurisdiction is not an absolute power the illegal consequences of which other states or the interna­ tional community are obliged to suffer in silence. Nor is it a right unlimited by the prescriptions of international law’.97 If innocent persons were deprived of essential and primary human rights, international law, and sovereign states acknowledged that intervention to uphold these rights was justified. Germany was required to treat minorities within its territory according to the same principles as those set forth in the minority treaties. Furthermore, the forced emigration of thousands of persons violated the territorial integrity of other states by imposing on them the burden of looking after these refugees and this burden was increased by the withdrawal of state protection through the denationalisation of thousands of individuals when they were in the territory

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of neighbouring states after leaving Germany. The petition continued that the French government’s argument that it was the sovereign right of the state to legislate regarding nationality was constrained by the precepts of international law as expressed in the final declaration of The Hague 1930 Conference for the Codification of International Nationality Law, which said that the states were ‘unanimously of the opinion that it is very desirable that states should, in the exercise of their power of regulating questions of nationality, make every effort to reduce as far as possible cases of statelessness’.98 The annex added that the acts of violence and terrorism in neighbouring states directed against German refugees, for which the German government was directly responsible, were violations of the territorial integrity of those states and were an attempt to exercise extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction. It listed nine cases of kidnappings and murders of German refugees that had taken place outside Germany that were flagrant contraventions of the territorial sovereignty of the country of refuge and the right to grant asylum.99 Janowsky and Fagen did not invoke the fight to abolish the slave trade as an example of non-intervention overridden by higher humanitarian principles. They could have cited J. S. Mill’s essay ‘A Few Words on Non-intervention', which described the slave trade as ‘a scandal to humanity’.100 Nor did they cite the LON Committees dealing with slavery, hygiene, children’s rights and narcotics that were authorised to interfere in the affairs of states. The petition was not circulated by the LON. The Quai, on the premise that their action was in line with the refugee policy of the PF, had initially agreed to ask Avenol to do so at the opening of the plenary assembly on 21 September 1936 but then hesitated because of the Blum government’s unilat­ eral declaration of French non-intervention in Spain. Delbos determined that in the interest of consistency the government’s decision not to intervene in the Spanish Civil War meant that the French should not arrange the petition’s circulation. Instead, the American Jewish Committee distributed it. The petition did not change entrenched opinions. Sir Neill Malcolm, McDonald’s successor, reiterated Avenol’s insistence that the LON ‘has nothing to do with the domestic policy of Germany’ and that his office dealt ‘with persons when they become refugees and not before’.101 This had not been McDonald’s attitude. He had travelled to Berlin in February and April 1934 to try to influence the German authorities. Even though his efforts were unsuccessful one of the arguments for establishing the independence of the HCR from the LON was that the High Commissioner could approach the German authorities directly without involving the LON in German domestic politics and the Quai could use the HCR to intervene in Germany. It was under the conservative government of Laval, not the PF, that the nearest the Quai came to berate the German government, without naming it, was over its practice of withdrawing German nationality from its citizens when they left the country, which created hundreds of stateless persons.

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Massigli protested at the LON Council, but even though Germany was no longer a member of the LON he did not name it although it was obvious to which country he was referring. His comments were recorded in the minutes of the LON meeting of 24 January 1936, when it debated the adoption of the report of the Committee on international assistance to refugees.102 As a state­ ment that included the French position it is worth quoting in full:

M. Massigli wished, in approving the report now before the Council, to make, on behalf of his Government, if not a reservation, at any rate a remark. The report did not, in fact, deal with one aspect of the refugee question to which the experts had drawn attention in their excellent report when, describing their preoccupations, they indicated that one of them, and not the least important, was to prevent the refugee problem from becoming worse. Doubtless, at the present stage of its work, the Council was not called upon to take up this question. But it existed, and it was of such significant importance to the French Government that M. Massigli had felt bound to mention it. In making that remark, he had no intention of directly accusing any specific country, still less of interfering in questions of internal policy. He had solely in mind the threat hanging over some countries, in particular France, that the number of refugees supported by them might increase to a dangerous extent. Furthermore, certain practices were unfor­ tunately tending to become general, persons coming from abroad with a visaed passport found themselves, during their stay, deprived by their country of origin of their nationality or at any rate of their passport, and were thus transformed into stateless persons, or de facto refugees. It was doubtless one of the sovereign rights of States to withdraw the nationality of their nationals in specific cases. But there was in everything the right and the abuse of the right. If such practices were to become general, the almost inevitable consequence would be that the Governments would have to adopt a more restrictive policy in granting permis­ sion to reside in their country. In this way those facilities for relations between individuals and States which had now come to be regarded as progress would be restricted. Owing to its effects and its generalisation, therefore, the question came within the province of the League. The French Government intended to raise the problem at the Inter-Governmental Conference to be convened by the new High Commissioner. If, owing to the limited remit of the Conference, it could not be dealt with there, the French Government would ask the next Assembly, either by way of a resolution or through the establishment of a stan­ dard convention recommended to all Governments, to define and limit the use that States might make of the right to denationalise their nationals.103

Nevertheless, and this was so even under the PF, the Quai’s attitude to official intervention was circumscribed by fear of upsetting the German government. When confronted with the argument that humanitarian imperatives overrode

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the principles of non-intervention, it refused to contravene the diplomatic norm that construed official complaints as intervention in German domestic affairs: the logic being that Quai agreed with the German argument that its treatment of Jews and opponents of the regime was an internal affair. It was not until June 1938 after the Anschluss with Austria that the MAE, Georges Bonnet (1889-1973), despite being ‘a hard-core appeaser’,104 lodged a for­ mal complaint with the German government that the Nazi practice of 'dump­ ing' (fde déverser") refugees on France would no longer be tolerated.105 Even then, the Quai complained only of the practice as it affected France; it did not remonstrate against the internal German policy of persecution. Presumably, the dumping of refugees on other countries was acceptable. The Quai’s use of the notion of non-intervention was convenient because it avoided a loss of face. Had the Quai protested, the Nazi government would surely have ignored it. The historian of German Jewry, Peter Pulzer, posits that the Nazis may have been influenced by world public opinion, for example during the period leading up to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, to postpone the next move intensifying its discrimination, but it was not deflected from its long-term goal by protests or the threat of interevention from abroad.106 The Quai was adept at avoiding both international and domestic pressure to intervene given that Nazi Germany was impervious to coercion.

NOTES 1. Joe R. Feagin, Racial and Ethnic Relations (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1984), p. 10. 2. See Giuseppe Motta, Less Than Nations: Central-eastern European Minorities after WW1, vols 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 3. Convention between Germany and Poland relating to Upper Silesia, 15 May 1922: LON 9 LNTS 465-466, 118 BSP 365. See Joseph F. Harrington, Jr, ‘The League of Nations and the Upper Silesian Boundary Dispute, 1921-1922’, The Polish Review 23(3) (1978), pp. 86-101. 4. MAE SDN 446, Note, ‘Le traitement des juifs par l’Allemagne et la protec­ tion des minorités’ (Note. The treatment of Jews by Germany and the protection of minorities). 1 avril 1933, pp. 15-17. See Carole Fink, ‘The Minorities Question at the Paris Peace Conference4, in Manfred Franz Boemeke, in Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Gläser (eds), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1998), pp. 249-74. 5. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, Part 3. 6. Oscar I. Janowsky and Melvin M. Fagen, International Aspects of German Racial Policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 45. 7. Reichsgesetzblatt, vol. 1919, no. 152, Artikel 14 ‘Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs’ (The Constitution of the German Reich) 11 August 1919.

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8. See also Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, pp. 299-316. Carole Fink, ‘Rights as an International Question’, Contemporary European History 9(3) (2000), pp. 385-400. 9. On 30 January 1933. 10. Reichsgesetzblatt, Part 1, no. 34 (7 April 1933), ‘Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtenturns’ (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Servants), p. 175; Gesetz über die Zulassung zur Rechtsanwaltschaft (Law of Admission to the Bar) p. 188. 11. Reichsgesetzblatt, Part 1, no. 34 (25 April 1933), Gesetz gegen die Überfüllung deutscher Schulen und Hochschulen (Law against Overcrowding in German Schools and High-schools), p. 225. 12. See Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, p. 331; Fink, ‘Rights as an International Question’, pp. 385-400. 13. See UN Office at Geneva (UNOG) Library, Registry, Records and Archives Unit, History of the League of Nations (1919-46), at http://biblio-archive.unog.ch/ detail.aspx?ID=l (accessed 12 January 2016). 14. MAE SDN 446, Note signée Fouques-Duparc, ‘Minorités Allemagne, généralités minorités juives’ (Note signed by Fouques-Duparc. German minorities, generalities concerning Jewish minorities) 1 avril 1933, pp. 11-19. 15. MAE SDN 446, Note signée Fouques-Duparc, ‘Note pour le Ministre. Service Français de la Société des Nations’ (Note signed by Fouques-Duparc. Note for the Minister. French service of the LON) 5 avril 1933, pp. 29-34. 16. Bund der Polen in Deutschland. 17. LON Official Journal, 76th Session of the Council, November 1933, Part 1, pp. 1334-36. 18. MAE SDN 446, Note 6 avril 1933, pp. 46^17. 19. MAE SDN 446, Télégramme de Genève 17 mai 1933, p. 106; LON docu­ ment C315. 1933.1, Genève, 19 mai 1933 20. MAE SDN 446, ‘Note pour la direction des affaires politiques et commer­ ciales, signé Basdevant,’ (Note for the Direction of the Department of Political and Commercial Affairs signed by Basdevant), 29 mars 1933, p. 49, et 17 mai 1933, pp. 152-54. 21. MAE SDN 446, Genève, signé Massigli, 18 mai 1933 p. 109. 22. The Bernheim petition, 12 May 1933, LON Official Journal 1933, pp. 929-33. 23. MAE SDN 446, Genève 18 mai 1933, signé Massigli, p. 110. 24. The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments of 1932— 1934. See Melvin M. Fagen, ‘Recourse to the League and the Permanent Court on Behalf of the Jews of Germany’, 17 June 1935 (New York: American Jewish Committee); Thomas Davis, ‘France and the World Disarmament Conference of 1932-34’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 15(4) (2004), pp. 765-80; Maurice Vaïsse, ‘La SDN et le désarmement’, in The League of Nations in retrospect, The United Nations Library, Proceedings of the Symposium (La Société des Nations rétrospective, Bibliothèque des Nations Unies, Actes du Colloqué) (Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 245-65. 25. Sous-directeur d’Europe.

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26. MAE SDN 446, Note, ‘Le sous-direction d’Europe’, 18 mai 1933. Cabinet du Ministre, Note 20 mai 1933, p. 134. 27. MAE SDN 446, Note, ‘Position de la France dans le débat sur la question juive en Allemagne’ (Note, the French position in the debate about the Jewish ques­ tion in Germany) Genève, 21 mai 1933, pp. 144-47. 28. Presented, respectively, by Colonial Secretary William Ormsby-Gore and the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Benes. 29. MAE SDN 446, Note, 26 mai 1933, pp. 158-60. 30. LON C 314. 1933.1,73rd Session of the Council, Minutes of Fourth Meeting, 26 May 1933, Sixth Meeting, 30 May. LON Official Journal, Special Supplement no. 120, 3, 4, 5 October 1933. 31. MAE SDN 446, Télégramme Genève, 27 mai 1933, signé Massigli, pp. 172-73. 32. MAE SDN 446, Télégramme Genève, 31 mai 1933, signé Massigli, p. 194. 33. LON Official Journal, July 1933. 34. LON C 314. 1933.1, 73rd Session of the Council, Minutes of Seventh Meeting, 6 June 1933. 35. LON Official Journal, Special Supplement no. 120, 3, 4, 5 October 1933. 36. MAE SDN 451, Note, ‘La question juive en Allemagne devant les Commissions de l’Assemblée’ (Note, The Jewish question facing the Assembley Commissions) 1 octobre 1933, p. 102. 37. See Philip Noel-Baker, The First World Disarmament Conference, 19321933 and Why it Failed (Oxford: Pergamon, 1979); Ministère des affaires étrangères, Négociations relatives à la réduction et à la limitation des armements', vingt-quatre pièces (14 octobre 1933-17 avril 1934) (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1934). 38. LON R5222 15 6989, Minutes of the Second Committee, seventh meeting, 5 October 1933. 39. MAE SDN 99, Rapport de la Sous-direction de la Société des Nations, signé Bargeton. (Report by the Sous-direction de la, Société des Nations, signed by Bargeton.) 26 octobre 1933. LON Official Journal, Special Supplement no. 120, Records of the Fourteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly, Meetings of the Sixth Committee, pp. 21, 28, 48, 49. 40. MAE SDN 451 Note, ’La question juive en Allemagne’ (Note: The Jewish question in Germany) pp. 102-03. 4L LON Official Journal, Special Supplement no. 120, 3 October 1933, pp 23-24; American Jewish Yearbook 5695 (1934), p. 99. 42. François-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une Ambassade à Berlin, 1931-1938, pp. 184-87. 43. Letter from François-Poncet to Paul-Boncour, 5 April 1933, about the treat­ ment of Jews. Further letters are dated 10 July and 19 November. See Documents Diplomatiques Français 1932-1939, Première Série (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1967). For more examples, see MAE Allemagne Z 787/788 Justice Dossier General that has numerous documents informing the Quai of developments in Germany. 44. See Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Les milieux gouvernementaux français en face du problème allemand en 1936. La France et l’Allemagne 1932-1936 (Paris: CNRS,

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1980). The French chief of general staff overestimated German strength: see Nord, France 1940, p. 11. 45. MAE SDN 446, Télégramme de Berlin (Telegramme from Berlin) 31 mars 1933, pp. 6-7. 46. MAE SDN 449, Rapport de François-Poncet à Laval, sur les Juifs en Allemagne. (Report by François-Poncet for Laval on the Jews in Germany.) 1 mai 1935. Pp 32-39. 47. AN F60 696, Statut des Étrangers 1935-36 (Statute for foreigners, 1935-36) 15 février 1935. 48. Quoted by W. E. Lingelbach, ‘The Doctrine and Practice of Intervention in Europe’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 16 (July 1900), pp. 1-32. 49. The origins of the use of the concept of persecution and its definition are the subject of much debate. See Shimada Yukio, ‘The Concept of Political Refugee in International Law’, Japanese Annual of International Law 19 (1975), pp. 24-38; Jane McAdam, ‘Rethinking the Origins of “Persecution” in Refugee Law’, International Journal of Refugee Law 25(4) (2014), pp. 667-92; Denis Allard and Catherine Teitgen-Colly, Traite du droit d’asile (Paris: PUF, 2002), p. 437. 50. LON, Official Journal June 1934, pp. 496-97. 51. See chapter 9. 52. As shown when France did nothing about the German reoccupation of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936. 53. See Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). He says that after 1990, the United States could intervene militarily for humanitarian reasons because its power was unchallenged. 54. Monty Noam Penkower, ‘Honorable Failures against Nazi Germany: McDonald’s Letter of Resignation and the Petition in its Support’, Modern Judaism 30(3) (2010), pp. 247-98, 252. 55. Reichsgesetzblatt, Teil 1, 16 September 1935, Seite 1146. 56. Penkower, ‘Honorable Failures’, p. 251. 57. Penkower, ‘Honorable Failures’, p. 252. LON C2 M2 1936 XII 18. 58. Penkower, ‘Honorable Failures’, p. 267. 59. LONC2M2 1936X11 18. 60. Andrew E. Shacknove, ‘Who is a Refugee?’ Ethics 95(2) (January 1985), pp. 274-84. 61. Covenant of the League of Nations, Article 15 (8). 62. Chatham House International Law discussion group, 28 February 2007. 63. Luke Gianville is a fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. Luke Glanville, ‘The Myth of “Traditional” Sovereignty’, International Studies Quarterly 57 (2013), pp. 79-90. See also Luke Granville, Sovereignty and the Responsibility to Protect: A New History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). Samuel Moyn’s review of the book is unflatter­ ing. Law and History review, Volume 33, Issue 1. February 2014, pp. 269-271.

Chapter 7

Pressure Groups

If the public and politicians felt the force of pressure groups, it was less evi­ dent that this was so for the Quai. Nevertheless, it did not prevent pressure groups from petitioning the Quai, in particular in favour of German refugees and also all refugees. The petitioners were international and French groups that included lawyers,1 caritative and religious (mostly Jewish) organisations2 and private associations.3 In France, the most vocal and influential were the LDH and the SR. The motivations of the pressure groups varied. The LDH and SR cam­ paigns were driven by their political bias, although in November 1936 the LDH turned down a proposal by the SR that they merge.4 The historian William Irvine has described how the LDH’s stance against Hitler was part of ‘The central issue faced by the LDH: its attempt to balance its dedica­ tion to civil liberties and its commitment to left-wing politics’.5 The SR campaign, orchestrated by the Soviet Comintern, was Communist and anti­ Fascist.6 Even the International Committee of the Red Cross was involved in the politics of the time, as an appeaser. Not wanting to upset the Nazis, it did not condemn Germany publicly for its violation of humanitarian norms. The Quakers, whose altruism was humanitarian, avoided a political stance. International lawyers were interested in promoting human rights. The focus of the caritative and religious organisations was to use humanitarian argu­ ments to help their co-religionists. Although there were exceptions,7 the Catholic church, like the Jewish organisations, tended to favour their own.8 For example, Abbé Grégoire Celier writing some seventy years later sum­ marised the policy, which had not changed, to privilege co-religionists, in his case fellow Catholics: ‘It is legitimate in immigration to privilege persons coming from Catholic countries like Ireland, Poland, Portugal, or Quebec rather than those from countries that are Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, 145

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87. It had been the official paper of Die Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD) from 1917 to 1922. It ceased publication when the USPD merged with the SPD. The newspaper of the SPD was Vorwärts (Forward). 88. 5 October 1933. Quoted by Rita Thalmann, L’Immigration allemande et l’opinion publique en France de 1933-1938. La France et L’Allemagne 1932-1936 (Paris: CNRS, 1980), p. 153. The request probably came either from Rudolf Breitscheid, who had previously been a member of the SPD, or from Rudolf Hilferding, who had been the SPD’s journal Vorwärts (Forward) editor in Germany. 89. Thalmann, L’Immigration allemande et l’opinion, p. 69. 90. Fabian and Coulmas. Die deutsche Emigration in Frankreich, pp. 55-61. 91. The Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt in Berlin kept an extensive archive of reports on the activities in France of the SR and Organisationen des Kommunismus in Frankreich, as well as the secessionist Breton movement: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), RGASPI 458-opis 9. 92. See chapter 3. 93. Joint Distribution Committee, Circular Letter from the American Jewish Committee for release 11 August 1936. 94. Petition in Support of the Letter of Resignation of James G. McDonald, 15 January 1936, pp. i-iii. 95. Petition in Support of the Letter of Resignation of James G. McDonald, 15 January 1936. With McDonald’s approval, it was compiled by the Americans Oscar Janowsky, Assistant Professor of History at the College of the City of New York, and Melvin Fagen, Executive Secretary of the Conference on Jewish Relations, and financed by the American Jewish Committee. Among the organisations sponsor­ ing the petition were the American Christian Committee for German Refugees, the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith, Women’s International League for Peace Freedom, AIU, Comité pour la défense, Israélites, Comité National de Secours aux Réfugiés, Comité Central d’Assistance aux Emigrants and the LDH. 96. Janowsky and Fagen, International Aspects of German Racial Policies. 97. Janowsky and Fagen, International Aspects of German Racial Policies, p. 44. 98. Janowsky and Fagen, International Aspects of German Racial Policies, p. 74. 99. Circular letter from the American Jewish Committee and Annex Establishing the Historical Precedents and Legal Grounds for International Action, addressed to the XVII Plenary Assembly of the LON, 1 August 1936. 100. Quoted by Granville, ‘The Myth of “Traditional” Sovereignty’, p. 84. 101. Penkower, ‘Honorable Failures’, p. 265. 102. LON Official Journal, 90th Session of the Council, Sixth Meeting, 24 January 1936, p. 128. See chapter 9. 103. Petition, Item 7. Quotes Massigli’s statement of 24 January 1935, whereas it was on 24 January 1936. 104. Nord, France 1940, p. 14. 105. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 181. 106. Peter Pulzer, ‘The Nazi Seizure of Power after Eighty Years’, lecture given at the University of Sussex, 30 January 2013 (Centre for German-Jewish Studies).

Chapter 7

Pressure Groups

If the public and politicians felt the force of pressure groups, it was less evi­ dent that this was so for the Quai. Nevertheless, it did not prevent pressure groups from petitioning the Quai, in particular in favour of German refugees and also all refugees. The petitioners were international and French groups that included lawyers,1 caritative and religious (mostly Jewish) organisations2 and private associations.3 In France, the most vocal and influential were the LDH and the SR. The motivations of the pressure groups varied. The LDH and SR cam­ paigns were driven by their political bias, although in November 1936 the LDH turned down a proposal by the SR that they merge.4 The historian William Irvine has described how the LDH’s stance against Hitler was part of ‘The central issue faced by the LDH: its attempt to balance its dedica­ tion to civil liberties and its commitment to left-wing politics’.5 The SR campaign, orchestrated by the Soviet Comintern, was Communist and anti­ Fascist.6 Even the International Committee of the Red Cross was involved in the politics of the time, as an appeaser. Not wanting to upset the Nazis, it did not condemn Germany publicly for its violation of humanitarian norms. The Quakers, whose altruism was humanitarian, avoided a political stance. International lawyers were interested in promoting human rights. The focus of the caritative and religious organisations was to use humanitarian argu­ ments to help their co-religionists. Although there were exceptions,7 the Catholic church, like the Jewish organisations, tended to favour their own.8 For example, Abbé Grégoire Celier writing some seventy years later sum­ marised the policy, which had not changed, to privilege co-religionists, in his case fellow Catholics: ‘It is legitimate in immigration to privilege persons coming from Catholic countries like Ireland, Poland, Portugal, or Quebec rather than those from countries that are Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, 145

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Moslem or otherwise’.9 However, there were Catholic prelates who spoke also in favour of the German Jews.10 The arenas in which the groups operated were both international and local. The LDH and the SR concentrated their activities in France while other groups like the Quakers conducted their campaigns in Geneva at the LON, often sending copies of their petitions to the Quai. The Jewish associations’ focus was both. International lawyers, whose declarations were made at inter­ national conferences, were also in contact with the Quai, especially because several lawyers were French or refugees and foreigners living in Paris. How did the Quai respond? Did the influence of these groups make any difference? This chapter examines the limited extent to which these groups shaped Quai policies and how the Quai evaded and resisted most of their demands.

LIGUE DES DROITS DE L'HOMME The LDH, founded in 1898 as a Dreyfusard pressure group,11 was the pre-emi­ nent intermediary with the Quai and other ministries to defend and improve the refugees’ situation in the interwar years. Its campaigns included the ‘The Addition to the Declaration of the Rights of Man’ in 1936 that called for uni­ versal refugee rights; its legal department challenged orders for expulsion and refoulement; and it made available the columns of its journal, Les Cahiers des Droits de I’Homme, to international lawyers such as Mandelstam.12 After the First World War the LDH renewed its mission as defender of the rights of man, which came to include the rights of refugees. When the French branch of the LDH organised the International Congress of the League of the Rights of Man in December 1932 in Paris, as described in chapter 5, the international lawyers Mandelstam, Rubinstein and Mirkine-Guetzevitch presented the case for the universal right of asylum and for a statute that gave legal expression to what they declared was a human right.13 However, for the first thirty-seven years of its existence the LDH was, in Irvine’s phrase, ‘above politics, outside politics, and unconcerned with politics’.14 He describes how the LDH changed from being apolitical to becoming involved in pacifism and anti-Fascism and how that transformed its campaign for the rights of refugees.15 Combining its new political role with its original mission the LDH played a leading part in the work of the Rassemblement Populaire in 1935. Another consequence was in 1936 when it passed what it called the modernised ‘‘Addition to the Declaration of the Rights ofMan\X(> The Quai could not ignore the LDH, particularly because many influential politicians were members.17 The LDH engaged in frequent contact with the Quai about refugees: there was a steady exchange of correspondence on

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improving the situation of the refugees, their status, the refoulement process and the universality of protection. These concerns were in addition to the work done by the League’s legal department, which corresponded mainly with the Ministries of the Interior, Labour and Justice about papers for refu­ gees, work permits and reprieves from refoulement and expulsion. Between 1935 and 1940 it handled the cases of some 5,000 refugees wanting help.18 Although the Quai had to take notice of the LDH the Quai considered it a nuisance meddling into the Quai’s affairs and resisted most of its demands. For example, as early as April 1933 Basch wrote to the MAE, Paul-Boncour, to call for political refugees from Germany to be given the right to asylum and work.19 Basch also asked the Minister to raise the question at the LON. He pointed out that the Germans’ problems were analogous to the situation of the Russian and Armenian refugees in 1921 when the LON had not shied away from them. The Quai replied that the LON after solving the crisis of the post-war refugees had voted in 1929 to close the Nansen Office within ten years. There was therefore no point in asking the LON to undertake new responsibilities because the request would fail: the best action would be for other countries to follow the French example of generosity and give refugees legal protection.20 Interestingly, the Quai’s reply did not mention the question of a fairer distribution of the refugees to ease the French burden. It appears that in April 1933 this had not yet become a concern. Another letter from the LDH to the Minister dated 17 August 1933 requested an urgent reply to Basch’s letter of 4 July in which he asked that, pending the matter being raised at the LON, the French authorities should issue iden­ tity and travel documents to stateless persons and persons of indeterminate nationality, in particular refugees from Germany.21 The Quai repeated that for the reason given in its letter of 25 April the Nansen Office would not protect refugees from Germany so there was no point in raising the matter in Geneva. However, it now conceded that the policy concerning settlement had changed and that to encourage refugees to emigrate to other countries the Ministry of the Interior, on the advice of the Quai and after careful examination of each case, was willing to issue a certificate of safe conduct that would enable a refugee in France to travel abroad and return to France.22 In November 1933, the Quai wrote to the LDH to explain that the liberal regime of granting visas had been suspended because the danger of a mass exodus from Germany was over.23 Nevertheless, the LDH continued to put pressure on the Quai. In November 1934, the LDH asked that the validity of identity cards and travel permits issued to refugees be extended: the relevant periods were initially one year with authorisation to extend the certificates by a further six months. The Quai refused to yield, citing the 1933 LON Refugee Convention. The LDH doubted that this applied to German refugees and asked the HCR whether it was true.24 There is no record of the Quai having replied to Basch’s complaint

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of October 1934 about the increase in the number of refoulements,25 nor to his letter of 10 March 1935 on the discretionary powers of civil servants.26 The LDH was also involved in the question of a reduction of the cost of identity cards. In November 1935, André Wurfbain, the Dutch Executive Secretary of the HCR wrote to Tetreau at the Quai requesting that the government accept a certificate from the LDH or the Quakers or the International Federation of Trade Unions to certify that a refugee from Germany was indigent and should be issued with an identity card at a reduced price. The Quai and the Ministry of the Interior did not agree.27 Relations between the LDH and the Quai improved under the PF but the LDH having been a prime mover in establishing the Rassemblement Populaire became a hostage to its own success.28 Whereas it had been able to criticise previous administrations, the LDH found it awkward to criticise the PF in which it had had such a large stake in its formation. Evidence of the LDH’s ties with the new government was the invitation in July 1936 from Viénot to Basch to serve on the commission that would screen the legitimacy of refugees.29 However, the government did not change its posi­ tion on the LDH’s major demand that refugees from all countries be granted refugee status, nor on the extension of the validity of the identity card. The LDH did not give up. In October 1937 in preparation for the forthcoming LON meeting to agree the Permanent Convention, it asked the Quai to cam­ paign at the LON for the six months’ extension of LON identity certificates to be prolonged. Delbos wrote a detailed reply that while sympathising with the LDH’s wishes, recommended that agreements already negotiated should not be reopened and that it would be best that the new convention simply repeated the privileges granted to Nansen refugees under the 1933 LON Convention.30 (The 1938 Convention did exactly that.)31 Furthermore, Delbos said the identity certificate that the LON issued, which was valid in many countries, solved the problem of the German refugees not having a statute in France adding that his government refused to entertain the LDH’s plea for a universal refugee statute. The LDH was in contact also with the HCR but its relations with the Governing Board and Advisory Committee were cool. The LDH had asked that delegates from both its French section and the International Federation be appointed to the HCR Advisory Committee as private organisation represen­ tatives.32 In support, Basch wrote to McDonald explaining that the LDH was uniquely qualified to help refugees, to sponsor their applications for status as political refugees and that there had not been even one case of a refugee whom the LDH had sponsored suffering refoulement or being accused of involvement in domestic politics. In addition to obtaining reprieves for unjust orders of refoulement, the LDH also helped refugees with their legal prob­ lems, finding work and their taxes.33 The HCR replied that much to its regret

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it had to refuse Basch’s request.34 The reason was not given but it may have been instigated by Helbronner afraid that the LDH, if on the Board, might encourage more refugees to come to France. Conseiller d’état (a senior mem­ ber of the Counsel of State) and appointed to the HCR’s Advisory Committee by Paul-Boncour’s government, Helbronner had made clear his distaste for the bulk of Jewish refugees and would not have welcomed a LDH campaign on the HCR Advisory Committee in their favour.35 For example in November 1934, Bernard Kahn, European director of the American JDC,36 described his frustration when he asked Helbronner and Louis Oungre, director-general of the JCA,37 how many of the 25,000 refugees that the French maintained were in France (in his opinion there were not more than 15,000-17,000) would be allowed to stay in France, ‘he received no answer except that at least 15,000 refugees or more would have to go’.38 The refusal may also have been because by 1933 the LDH was no longer regarded as non-political. Remarkably, there is no mention of the LDH or of Basch in McDonald’s diaries.

SECOURS ROUGE

The SR International was a Comintern front organisation: Mezhdunarodnaia Organizatsiia Pomoshchi Revoliutsioneram, the International Organisation for Aid to Revolutionaries. It was founded in Moscow in 1922 originally to help victims of capitalism in prison by supplying financial, legal and moral support. By 1932 it boasted sixty-seven national sections. The French branch, the SR set up in 1922, was one of its most active.39 It operated until 1938. The SR International and the SR had to fpllow instructions from Moscow. The Comintern’s sixth world congress in Moscow in 1928 affirmed the Bolshevik party line that after capitalism’s First Period, which it analysed was the cause of the Great War, and capitalism’s Second Period, which saw the failure of the Communist revolutions outside Russia that followed the war, the world had entered the Third Period, which would see the final destruction of capitalism. In preparation, so that the Comintern would lead the final revolu­ tion, Communists in all countries were forbidden to cooperate with political parties and trade unions.40 Under the slogan ‘Class against class’ advocates of a united front such as the social democrats were singled out as ‘social fascists’. They were the enemy and included the LDH. Stalin’s decision in May 1934 that the Comintern abandon the concept of Third Period with its isolation gave the SR in France the green light to engage with the Socialists and other left-wing parties.41 The SR dropped its vitriol against the LDH,42 and in the volte-face worked with it to form the Rassemblement Populaire. Released from restraint, the French SR became a powerful political force; its membership grew from some 35,000 individual members in 1933 to more

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than 100,000 in 1936, 140,000 in 1937 and 160,000 in 1938, added to which were trade unions and sections of political parties that represented more than 400,000 members in 1937 and 900,000 in 1938.43 The commitment of the SR with its funds, its national organisation and its publicity machine brought a decisive impetus to the campaign for refugee rights. In demanding asylum for all victims of Fascism it transformed the campaign for their rights into a political movement.44 The SR did not negotiate with the French government. It knew that its demands would be resisted by the French authorities: rather, the demands were used as a confrontation with the authorities and served as a rallying call to increase the SR’s public support. The PCF did not want to upset its members by backing refugees who would steal the jobs of French workers. Therefore, it kept a low profile in the cam­ paign for refugee rights: the Comintern allocated the task to the SR. Although the SR was free to engage in local politics the Communist party line was still enforced. The SR campaigned for the right of asylum, but this excluded the aristocrats and bourgeoisie who fled to France from the revolution and civil war. The party chose to disregard the inconsistency that the SR claimed the right of asylum as a human right, whereas Marx was critical of the concept of individual human rights, which he and the Bolsheviks regarded as a bour­ geois concept,45 and a tool to ensure the survival of capitalist society.46 The SR’s campaign was aggressive. In November 1934 it addressed a memorandum to the Quai, to other French Ministries and to the LON demanding a 'real' ('veritable'} right of asylum. It was repeated at the International Juridical Conference, a Comintern front organisation closely associated with the SR, which the SR organised in Paris in December 1934.47 It called for statutes to forbid the expulsion or extradition of anti-Fascist refugees and persons who had emigrated for political, cultural, religious or economic reasons; the right to labour equality with workers in the country of exile; the right to be issued with identity papers universally recognised that enabled the holder to reside in the country and locality of their choice; the right for political refugees to participate in the politics, culture and trade union life of their country of asylum; the cessation of police action against refugees, the release of refugees interned for common law offences and free­ dom for refugees to participate in campaigns to return to their countries of origin. The Quai and its fellow ministries dismissed the resolution, which was too extreme for the period. There followed in March 1935 a much milder proposal by the SR branch of German immigrants for a revision of the rules for foreigners in France. Possibly it was an attempt to gain favour with the authorities because the refugees already in France were embarrassed by the provocative conference demands. It called for the definition of political refugee, which included refu­ gees who had emigrated for religious or racial reasons after they had shown

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that they had severed all ties with Germany; in doubtful cases, the refugee was to be represented at a hearing by a French lawyer. Furthermore, work permits should be issued without too much difficulty. Further conditions were that papers should be revoked only in instances of breaches of common law, or for taking part in the politics of the country of exile. Identity cards should be valid for the whole country except in the departments that bordered on Germany, or where the authorities considered there was a security risk. Work permits should be withdrawn in instances where salaries did not conform with union rates. The proposal had the novel suggestion that in companies in which all or part of the capital was provided by German émigrés, German refugees could be one-third of the workers. Naturalisation should be facili­ tated through the obligation of military service.48 Although the authorities did not want to institute these conditions as a statute, many were in fact in force as ad hoc instructions and decrees. The SR at first had demanded amnesty for anti-Nazi refugees and asylum for victims of Fascism; however, when the LDH joined the SR as founder members of the Rassemblement Populaire on 14 July 1935, its campaign developed into the call for amnesty for all clandestine refugees and a uni­ versal right to asylum. It stepped up its campaign when it arranged a large rally in Paris at the Maison de la Mutualité on 28 February 1936 at which it called for amnesty and the right to asylum and social security benefits for anti-Fascist political prisoners in France and its colonies. However, an article on 6 March in the SR newspaper, La Défense, signed by Emile Bureau, the Secretary of the Paris branch of the SR International, which now labelled the anti-Fascist campaign a humanitarian concern followed calling for the rights of all political refugees without specifying that they be German or anti-Fascist to be given identity cards and, in addition, an amnesty for those in hiding to avoid refoulement w In line with the resolutions of the Juridical Conference of December 1934, the call also demanded that refugees be given work permits and be free to choose where they lived, judicial review of expulsion orders and the liberty to take part in the country’s cultural and trade union activities. Again, the authorities were unmoveable. Münzenberg stayed in the background however, together with Perrin, and the SR organised the Paris International Conference for the Right of Asylum in June 1936. The SR provided the funds and an office for Perrin and claimed that the Conference was their idea.50 Its aim was to pressure the governments attending the forthcoming LON July meeting, called to decide the future of the HCR, to adopt a statute for all refugees.51 The SR was a founder member of the Bureau International pour le Respect du Droit et de l’Asile et VAide aux Réfugiés Politiques (The International Office for the Respect of Law, Asylum and for Help for Political Refugees') organised in June 1936 at the Conference for the express purpose of lobbying the LON.

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The SR kept up the pressure. In August 1936, La Défense criticised the LON for being concerned only with refugees from Germany while it should consider events elsewhere, especially in Spain, which were very preoccupy­ ing.52 The Secours Rouge Populaire Français, having changed its name on 1 November that year, held an Extraordinary National Conference at the end of November 1936 at which Bureau congratulated the SR on having achieved recognition of the right of asylum for German refugees and an amnesty for clandestine German immigrants. He then repeated the SR’s rallying cry to demand that the right to asylum and the right to work be extended to refu­ gees from all Fascist and reactionary countries.53 The SR next organised the European Conference for Le Droit et la Liberté (Law and Liberty) on 13-14 November 1937, again at the Mutualité in Paris, to continue the call that France grant amnesty to all anti-Fascist political prisoners not just to those coming from Germany and a new amnesty for clandestine refugees.54 Before the LON Conference of February 1938 the SR wrote to the Quai to put on record its indignation that the proposed draft gave states a greater right of refoulement than those of the 1933 Convention, insisting that the draft for the new convention be amended so that the right should not be at the state’s discretion.55 It added another demand that states should not be allowed to contract out of individual clauses: again, none of these demands was adopted. The SR also canvassed both the Quai and the LON through the BIR, which sent its proposals for the changes to the draft in a printed circular.

THE QUAKERS AND THE UNION INTERNATIONALE DES ASSOCIATIONS POUR LA SOCIÉTÉ DES NATIONS

The Quakers’ condemnation of the discrimination that created refugees was based on the belief in the worth of every human being. This had nothing to do with politics and though they joined Perrin’s apolitical Comité de Liaison (Liaison Committee) the Quakers opted to solicit independently in Geneva to avoid association with any political campaign. They submitted a memoran­ dum to the LON in July 1935, which they copied to the Quai, listing their concerns about the refugees’ situation.56 It urged that the LON’s authority be extended to ensure the legal protection of all refugees based on a well-defined legal statute. The LON should decide the categories of refugees for which it would be responsible, but it should include all persons involuntarily deprived of their nationality. It must also ensure the political arrangements for the transfer of refugees between countries and recommend to governments that in keeping with the Convention of 1933 they would grant residence and work permits. The clauses relating to naturalisation, military service, the police and union rates of pay were identical to the ones proposed by the German branch

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of the SR in March of the same year. In addition, a memorandum called for the LON to introduce a system of quotas that would ensure a more equitable distribution of refugees among countries, a unique demand among the pres­ sure groups and one which the Quai endorsed. The Union Internationale des associations pour la Société des Nations {International Union of Society ofNations Associations) was another authori­ tative international organisation that campaigned for universal asylum. Its Secretary-general, the French historian Professor Théodore Ruyssen, was a prominent pacifist.57 The union’s French branch, the Fédération fran­ çaise pour la SDN (Society of Nations French Federation) had several distinguished liberal jurists and politicians on its Board, including Cassin and Scelle as vice-presidents, and in line with the influential British branch of the Union was careful not to be associated with political parties. Ruyssen and the French branch were in constant touch with the Quai, but their campaign was conducted in Geneva at the LON.58 As with the other pressure groups, the Quai and the LON resisted almost all their proposals. The Quai was inflexible when challenged to modify its position. The only question on which it may have bowed to pressure groups was the amnesty for German clandestine refugees, but even this was an accommodation to the politics of the PF rather than to pressure groups. Although the SR, together with the LDH and the other pressure groups, appeared to have been a formi­ dable force, especially during the government of the PF, it is remarkable that they had so little influence on the Quai.

NOTES 1. See chapter 4. 2. For example, the Jewish ones were the CAR, the American Jewish JDC, the International League against anti-Semitism (LICA) and HICEM, the 1927 merger of three Jewish emigration organisations, the JCA, the HIAS and Emigdirect (HICEM an acronym of the three). Caron describes their operations in detail in Uneasy Asylum. 3. Such as the Quakers and the International Federation of LON Societies. 4. BDIC, F Delta res 798 66. 5. Irvine, Between Justice and Politics, pp. 3-4. 6. See Jean-Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 7. The Saint Raphael Society for the Protection of Czech Immigrants also helped Lutherans and Jews to enter the United States through the National Catholic Welfare Conference. See the article in the Center for Immigration Studies of New York Archive: Too Few Slots for Admission to the United States: Refugees in NaziOccupied Czechoslovakia and Now.

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8. Ralph Schor, ‘Le facteur religieux et l’intégration des étrangers en France, 1919-1939’, Vingtième Siècle, revue d’histoire 7(1) (1985), pp. 103-16. 9. Grégoire Celier, Un regard chrétien sur l’immigration (Versailles: Via Romana, 2007), p. 49. 10. Ralph Schor, ‘L’Eglise de France et les immigrés au XX siècle’, Histoires et Géographes 385 (January 2004), p. 107, explains that senior Catholic prelates spoke in favour of the German Jews. 11. The defenders of Dreyfuss. 12. See chapter 5 for the difference between the rights of man and human rights. 13. See Les Cahiers des Droits de I’Homme, 33 Année (Nouvelle série), no. 220 (janvier 1933). 14. Irvine, Between Justice and Politics, p. 20. 15. See Irvine, Between Justice and Politics, on the LDH’s internal disputes, pp. 20-52. 16. ‘Le congrès national de 1936: compte-rendu sténographique’ (The National Congress, typed minutes) (Dijon, 19-21 juillet 1936), LDH, pp. 418-22. See also chapter 3. 17. Including Daladier, Herriot, Moutet, Henri Guemut, Perrin, Gaston Doumergue, Blum, Paul Painlevé, Cot, Joseph Paul-Boncour and Auriol. 18. BDIC, F Delta res 0798 238-440; LDH. See also Kevonian, ‘Question des réfugiés, droits de l’homme’, pp. 40-49. 19. MAE Z 710, Réfugiés Israélites, lettre (Letter Jewish refugees) 13 avril 1933. 20. MAE Z 710, Lettre au Président, signée Bargeton (Letter to the President, signed Bargeton) 25 avril 1933, pp. 67-69. 21. MAE Z 710, Lettre au ministre (Letter to the Minister) 16 août 1933, p. 240. 22. MAE Z 710, Lettre au président (Letter to the President) 31 août 1933, pp. 258-59. 23. MAE Z 711, MAE à la LDH (Letter from MAE to the LDH) 20 November 1933. 24. LON C 1605 502. Letter from LDH to HCR, 15 November 1934. 25. BDIC, F Delta res 0798 75, Lettre du président de la LDH au Quai (Letter from the President of the LDH to the Quai) 2 octobre 1934, 26. Rahma Harouni, La campagne pour le statut des étrangers en France de 1934-1939 (Centre Jean Bouvier, Université Paris VII, 1996-97), p. 155. 27. LON C 1609, France, no. 1 33-36. Letter from HCR to Tetreau, 28 November 1935. 28. Irvine, Between Justice and Politics, pp. 160-65. 29. MAE Papiers Delbos, Cabinet du ministre 3, Lettre à Basch (Letter to Basch). 27 juillet 1936, pp. 24-25. 30. MAE Papiers Delbos, Cabinet du ministre 3, Lettre à Basch (Letter to Basch) 22 octobre pp. 55-57. 31. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, Article 3 paragraphs 2 (b) (d). 32. Members of the Advisory Committee were representatives of the NGOs responsible for refugee work. 33. LON C 1605 502, Letters from LDH to HCR, 2 and 6 November 1933, 27 March 1934.

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34. LON C 1605 502, Letter HCR to LDH, 6 May 1934. 35. See chapter 8. 36. Kahn, based in Paris, was the JDC director for Europe from 1924 to 1939. 37. See chapter 10. 38. JDC file 601, letter from Bernard Kahn to Paul Baerwald, 6 November 1934. 39. The Secours Rouge changed its name to Secours Populaire Français et des Colonies in 1936. See Axelle Brodiez-Dollino, Le Secours Populaire Français, 1945-2000: du communisme à l’humanitaire (Paris: Presse de la Fondation des sci­ ences politiques, 2006). 40. See Matthew Worley (ed.), In Search of Revolution: International Communist Parties in the Third Period (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004). 41. Officially announced in the speech by Maurice Thorez at Ivry, 26 June 1934. See Serge Wolikow, L’Internationale communiste (1919-1943), Le Komintern ou le rêve déchu du parti mondial de la révolution (Paris: Les Éditions de F Atelier, 2010), Chapter 4; Stephen Anthony Smith, The Oxford handbook of the history of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapter 10. 42. It had been based mainly on the LDH’s pro-colonialist position. See R. Bache, Six mensonges de la Ligue des Droits de l’homme (Paris: SRI, 1930). 43. Jacques Omnes, ‘L’Aide du Secours Rouge puis du Secours Populaire aux réfugiés politiques allemands en France (1933-1939)’, Cahiers d’Histoire de l’institut de recherches marxistes 7 (octobre-décembre 1981), p. 139. 44. See Stéphane Courtois and Marc Lazar, Histoire du Parti Communiste Français (Paris: PUF, 2007); Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996); Pierre Broué, Histoire de l’internationale communiste (1919-1943) (Paris: Broché, 1997). 45. See Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx (London: Allen Lane, 2016), pp. 133— 35; Stephen Anthony Smith, Russia in Revolution, an Empire in Crisis, 1890-1928 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) p. 386. 46. Samuel Moyn, ‘Le retour des droits de l’homme’, in C. Saure and L. Jeanpierre (eds), La vie intellectuelle en France de 1914 à nos jours, vol. 2 (Paris: Seuil, 2016), pp. 684-86. 47. It was formed in 1929 in Berlin to fight anti-Fascism through legal means. It moved to Paris, via Brussels, in October 1934. See Sharon Elbaz and Liora Israel, ‘L’Invention du Droit comme Arme Politique dans le Communisme Français. L’Association Juridique Internationale (1929-1939)’, Vingtième Siècle 1(85) (2005), pp. 31-43. 48. BDIC, Fonds Duchêne, F Delta res 329 1, ‘Rapport sur la question du droit d’asile, Le Comité Central du S.R. Allemand’ (Report on the question of the right of asylum. The Cenrtral Committee of the German SR). Berlin, 27 mars 1935. 49. La Défense, Organe de la Section française du Secours Rouge International 342, 6 mars 1936. 50. La Défense, no. 355, 8 mai 1936. It was at the same address, 33 Rue de la Grange-aux-Belles, as the SR and the PCF. 51. See chapter 10. 52. La Défense, no. 364, 14 août 1936.

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53. BNF Secours Rouge 8-R PIECE 2243. 54. Attended, among others, by the LDH, the CGT, the Association des officiers de réserve républicains, a large British delegation, representatives of the Spanish Republicans, and in their individual capacities, Thomas Mann and Breitscheid. 55. MAE Papiers Delbos, Cabinet du Ministre 3, Centre de Liaison des Comités pour le Statut des Immigrés. Résolution concernant la Conférence intergouvememen­ tale dû à Genève (Office of the Minister. The liaison centre for the statute for immi­ grants. Resolution concerning the Intergovernmental Conference due in Geneva). 2 février 1938, pp. 59-60. 56. BDIC Fonds Duchêne, F Delta res 329 1, ‘Société des Amis. Mémorandum sur la Situation des Réfugiés’, juillet 1935 (Society of Friends. Memorandum on the situation of the refugees). 57. Naquet, ‘Paix, humanitaire et droits de l’homme’, pp. 33-50. In 1935, the officers of the Fédération française pour la SDN were Professor Emile Borel, presi­ dent, and Jean Dupuy, Secretary. Board and executive members were Cassin, Scelle, M. C. Bouglé, Colonel Picot, M. J. Prudhommeaux, Mme G. Malaterre-Sellier, Jean Hennessy, Mme Puech, Jules Rais, Sangnier, Charles Braibant and Charles Brun. The Association Française pour la SDN was a separate organisation that seems not to have played a significant role. Paul-Boncour was appointed president in November 1936. Ruyssen wrote to him congratulating him on his appointment and hoping that he would revive the association: LON P 104, International Federation papers 1935-36, letter, 24 November 1936. 58. There was also the Comité d’action pour la SDN, made up of the Association française pour la SDN, the Union fédérale des mutilés et anciens combattants and the Groupement universitaire pour la SDN. The main concern of the Comité was the reform of the LON.

Chapter 8

The High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany

The LON had been given the responsibility for the international manage­ ment of refugee problems. The Quai’s dilemma was that by the transfer of these obligations France relinquished control of its own refugee policy, thus not only questioning French priorities but more importantly threatening French sovereignty. The Quai’s answer was to use its influence at the LON to adopt the policies and conditions that France wanted. Its two key objec­ tives remained constant during the years 1933-1938 and were played out on the international stage: that LON protection should apply, in addition to the Nansen passport holders, only to the German refugees; and that the inter­ national community should help France achieve what it regarded as a fairer distribution of refugees. The Quai was successful in limiting international protection to the refugees from Germany but getting other countries to share its burden was much more difficult.1 An expression of French frustration with its inability to persuade the LON and its members to help was its disillusion with the HCR. In September 1933, the Dutch Foreign Minister called the attention of the LON General Assembly to the need for the international community to put in place a system for the reception, relief and settlement of the refugees from Germany. It was opportune that the Dutch proposal concerned only the German refugees, which helped the Quai to ward off moves by Norway and pressure groups that wanted the LON to be responsible for the protection and relief of refugees from all countries.2 The French were able to limit its remit to German citizens until the February 1938 Convention when they had to agree to the extension that included those without nationality who had been living in Germany.3 The Quai moved from first wanting an informal clearing house to accept­ ing the idea of an independent organisation under the aegis of the LON 157

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structured along the same lines as the Nansen Office, and in the end having to acquiesce to an HCR that was entirely detached from the LON. And, at first pleading for a well-funded and forceful operation that would help in reset­ tling refugees already in France, the Quai ended up assenting to a blunted and weak one with which it quickly became disenchanted. Indeed, whereas the Nansen Office was a success, the failure of the HCR was in large part due to French disparagement. However, an advantage of a weak organisation was that it would not interfere in French refugee policy and, as an afterthought, the Quai subscribed to the argument that an independent HCR was better able to talk to and put pressure on the German government.4 The clumsy title of the HCR, the High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and Other) coming from Germany, was evidence of the fight to agree to its establishment. Bérenger was an important figure in this story. He iterated the French position at the LON and on the HCR’s Governing Board that other countries should relieve France of the burden of giving asylum to so many German refugees and insisted that France had no funds to allocate for the HCR or for refugee relief. His bombast and bluster were no more successful in achieving the desired result than the Quai’s more tactful approach. He lost interest in the HCR when he understood that it would not help the refugees already in France to leave.

SETTING UP THE HCR The LON bodies that dealt with refugee matters were the General Assembly, the Council, the Second and Sixth Committees, the Nansen International Office for Refugees5 and the Intergovernmental Advisory Commission for Refugees.6 From November 1933 to December 1935 the HCR, established by the LON, operated independently. It was reconstituted in 1936 as the High Commissioner for Refugees under the aegis of the LON.7 In 1938, it took on the work of the Nansen Office and of the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees (IGCR).8 The LON Council also appointed ad hoc committees to advise on special ques­ tions, such as the Norwegian proposal regarding the status of refugees coming from Germany, which prepared the way for the LON Provisional Agreement of 1936, the future of the HCR after McDonald’s resignation at the end of 1935, and the Nansen Office after its closure by the end of 1938. The Nansen Office was required to report annually to the LON Assembly. The Intergovernmental Advisory Commission reported biannually to the Council, which adopted or rejected the Commission’s proposals before pass­ ing them to the Assembly. The HCR reported to its Governing Board, not to the LON, until reconstituted as the High Commission for Refugees in 1936 after which, it reported to the LON.

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The French representation on these international bodies were Quai dip­ lomats, politicians from the parties in government and public servants. For example, de Navailles was president of the Nansen Office’s Governing Board and the Intergovernmental Advisory Commission for Refugees until his retirement in May 1935. The Quai appointed de Reffye his successor. It appointed Helbronner and Charles Corbin, the French ambassador to London, as delegates to the London meetings of the HCR Governing Board at which Helbronner substituted for Bérenger, who did not attend after the HCR moved to London.9 Massigli was a representative at most of the LON Council and Sixth Committee meetings, while the French delegate to the Special Committee in November 1935 was the civil servant, Roland-Marcel. Politicians generally wanted to be in Geneva to attend the LON General Assemblies. The French delegation to the 14th Assembly in September 1933, by far the largest of all countries, included ten politicians,10 reflecting the political make-up of the Daladier government, which was a coalition of five parties.11 Politicians also attended LON Council and Committee meetings.12 Quai officials, exasperated by the presence of so many politicians, advised the Minister that diplomats could perfectly well handle matters.13 The resolution that the LON should protect the refugees from Germany was proposed by Andries de Graeff, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the LON General Assembly on 29 September 1933.14 Reflecting the urgency that something be done for these refugees the LON had moved with unusual speed to resolve that a High Commission be established. The discussions were held over six days from 7 to 12 October in the Second Committee, its recommendation that the HCR be set up was adopted by the Assembly on 11 October15 and it was established the next day. However, the negotiations for its structure took another two months. The original initiatives that the LON should protect the German refugees in the same way as it had done with Nansen for the Russians and Armenians came mainly from Jewish caritative agencies and also from non-Jewish organisations such as the Quakers and individuals like James McDonald at that time through the American Foreign Policy Association. Their plan was taken to the General Assembly by De Graeff, who had the support of the British delegate William Ormsby-Gore.16 According to Freda White, infor­ mation officer of the British League of Nations Union, De Graeff’s speech was ‘applauded terrifically’ in the Assembly’s press gallery which was filled almost entirely with Jews17 and in the Jewish press in all parts of the world.18 The idea of the High Commission was not the Quai’s: Daladier’s speech, as vice-president of the Assembly, did not mention refugees. Initially, the Quai had opted for an unofficial clearing house composed of countries bordering Germany and countries that were open to receiving refugees for settlement. The Quai was apprehensive that a formal organisation under the aegis of

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the LON would oblige France to honour statutes that it preferred to avoid and there was the danger that an official organisation would encourage the Reich to expel more Jews and opponents of the regime.19 However, the French changed their position from wanting an informal arrangement and Jean-Louis Paul-Boncour (1873-1972) was instructed to support the Dutch proposal.20 In preparation for the September meeting of the General Assembly, the Dutch delegation circulated their draft resolution with proposals that sum­ marised the central role to be played by the LON.21 Its six points were that the countries to which most of the refugees had come should coordinate their efforts to establish an international organisation to handle the question under the aegis of the LON; the LON should give this organisation all facilities to enable it to collect donations; that countries which were members of the LON and had received only a few or no refugees should help in the settlement of refugees; that the mandate power be persuaded to allow greater numbers of refugees to enter Palestine; that the LON Council ensure the application of the resolution; that the Secretary-general write to all non-members of the LON to request their help in the settlement of refugees.22 The proposal was made in the collective names of countries border­ ing Germany, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg and Czechoslovakia. But, showing how difficult it was to get international agreement, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland and Austria did not join.23 Henri Carton de Wiart, the Belgian Chairman of the LON Second Committee, who was reputed by the American Consul in Geneva, Prentiss Gilbert, to be an antiSemite,24 had persuaded Paul Hymans, the Belgian Foreign Minister, not to give his open endorsement to the proposal. Hymans abstained also because of Belgian financial negotiations with the Reich, which was the same rea­ son for the Swiss abstention. Poland did not concur because its delegate, Count Edward Raczynski, said it had only a few refugees and it wanted to avoid association with a proposal that seemed to have a political character. The Danish delegate, Ole Bjorn Kraft, had not received instructions from Copenhagen, and Austria did not want to be involved.25 The Dutch plan was that the Assembly should debate their resolution and then the Sixth Committee which dealt with mandates, Palestine and minori­ ties would work out the details. The Dutch preferred this Committee to the Second Committee because its Chairman was De Wiart and to the Fifth Committee because it had too many women in it.26 The Assembly adopted the resolution but decided that it should be sent to the Second Committee. (The First Committee dealt with legal questions. The Second Committee dealt with the work of technical organisations: it was the Committee that dealt with the formation of the HCR. The Third Committee dealt with reduction and limi­ tation of armaments, the Fourth Committee with budgetary questions. The

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Fifth Committee dealt with social questions. The Sixth Committee dealt with political questions and minorities.) The Quai had shifted its position to endorsing an official organisation for clearing but was anxious that it should not become a permanent solu­ tion to what it saw as a temporary problem.27 French guidelines were that the only refugees protected were German citizens, that they be distributed fairly between various countries, that French sovereignty be safeguarded and that this non-governmental organisation be encouraged to put pressure on Germany to stop its persecution.28 They differed from the Dutch proposal because the Quai wanted refugee distribution to be the prime function of the new body.29 A central office would deal with documentation, sorting (tri­ age) and relief; it would classify the refugees according to their skills, allo­ cate them to different countries and, if necessary, advance the cost of their journey. According to Bérenger, the French plan was to use existing LON machinery, but it was unclear whether this included the costs: the French were explicit that that they would not pay.30 The Dutch plan was that the HCR should be tied closely to the LON, maybe even be part of the Nansen Office.31 Only if it were related to the LON could it have the authority and prestige to ensure its success. An international organisation outside the LON would be taken by the world as a signal of lack of faith in the LON’s methods and would, De Graeff feared, be harmful to its future development.32 The French delegate on the Second Committee, Lucien Hubert,33 supported the Dutch: he concurred that a separate HCR would mean a loss of face for the LON.34 However, Bérenger thought that the Nansen Office should be allowed to liquidate itself and not be saddled with new responsibilities and besides, its administrative systems were not equipped to deal with this new problem.35 But the main obstacle was that the project had to deal with the Germans’ objections. The Dutch had been forewarned that their proposal would be opposed by Karl Ritter, the German delegate on the Second Committee.36 Ritter declared that Germany would not veto the appointment of a High Commissioner on condition that he would be entirely independent of the LON, unlike the Nansen Office, which although an independent body reported to the LON. De Graeff had to give ground. A compromise technical solu­ tion was suggested by Giuseppe Motta, the Swiss delegate, that the LON’s involvement be limited to appointing a commissioner, inviting delegates to become members of its Governing Board, to which the High Commissioner would report, and advancing up to 25,000 Swiss francs for set-up costs.37 The French did not immediately agree to the separation of the HCR from the LON although Motta’s solution was supported by the Dutch and the British and it was expected that the Czechs and Italians would also approve. The reason behind the French objection, Gilbert suggested, was that the Quai wanted

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to isolate and embarrass Germany by provoking the Germans into declar­ ing their opposition and thus exposing them to the opprobrium of the other delegates.38 Gilbert’s interpretation was in keeping with the Quai’s tactic in the Bernheim minority case, which was to humiliate the Reich in front of the international community.39 The Quai may also have prevaricated because it genuinely did not want the HCR to be independent of the LON. Nevertheless, in the end, the French did agree to the German terms.40 Grumbach, correspon­ dent of the French left-wing weekly newspaper La Lumière, countered the criticism that the Quai had given in to the Germans by consoling his readers that this was no compromise, because Germany had been isolated.41 It then remained to determine the location of the HCR. To underline its separation from the LON, Germany, backed by Avenol, insisted that its headquarters should not be in Geneva. Lausanne, only 64 kilometres east of Geneva, separate but still near, was chosen instead. However, it relocated to London in October 1934. The move to London was to accommodate the Board’s Chairman, Viscount Cecil. Paris had been considered and rejected, mainly because Bérenger vetoed it on the grounds that its presence would attract even more refugees to France.42 Avenol’s opinion throughout his tenure as Secretary-general was that the LON as a non-political organisation must not take sides, that the LON could not be involved in internal German matters and it should be concerned with refugees only after they had left Germany.43 The British Foreign Office adopted a similar position that intervention inside Germany should be the sole responsibility of Jewish organisations.44 There was a rationale to this with which the Quai could agree but acceptance of the arrangement of the HCR’s physical separation from the LON was interpreted by the political left and caritative organisations as appeasement of Germany, which Grumbach’s article did not mention. In Paris, these issues were discussed at the fourth meeting of the Interministerial Commission for German Refugees on 13 November 1933. Blanchet, defending the Quai’s most recent stance in Geneva, argued that the Nansen Office and the new HCR were not comparable. The former was charged with establishing a statute for refugees and their protection, whereas the latter was concerned only with the relief and settlement of refugees in countries which could receive them and provide work. Attaching the HCR to the Nansen Office risked introducing Nansen status for German refugees, encroaching on French sovereignty and encouraging more refugees to come to France.45 The Commission agreed that the French delegate to the HCR should be a figure of consequence because of the exceptional effort France had put into helping the victims of the Hitler regime and because there might be complex diplomatic negotiations to handle.46 The meeting expressed the opinion that

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the organisation must not impede French sovereign rights in respect of the issuance of passports and expulsions. It also noted that because the exodus of German refugees was likely to continue (in contradiction to Bérenger’s claim that the refugee problem was not long term), the Quai must not allow inter­ national bureaucracy to take the line of least resistance and dictate to France instead of putting pressure on Germany to moderate its policy and stem the flow. The Commission still recommended, despite the decisions made in Geneva, that the HCR, although separated from the Nansen Office, be under the aegis of the LON to give the new organisation a powerful moral stand­ ing. It further resolved that the responsibility of the HCR should be limited to refugees bom in Germany who were in possession of German passports, and exclude naturalised Germans who had become stateless because they had been deprived of their citizenship by the Reich government and Jews living in Germany who had Polish, Hungarian or Romanian passports who could take refuge in the countries of their citizenship.47 It was agreed that the HCR should have a governing body of representatives from countries that had given asylum to the largest numbers of refugees, and that the president of the organisation should be a person of stature from a neutral country, preferably the United States. The session concluded that under these conditions France would of course act generously and liberally, a statement in variance with the French refusal to allocate funds. In any case, events in Geneva had overtaken much of the debate in Paris. The French and British both supported the idea of an American High Commissioner. The French wanted to encourage American private donations and persuade the US government to relax its entry quotas for refugees. The British feared that the appointment of a British High Commissioner might expose them to pressure to take more Jewish refugees into Palestine.48 Article 2 of the HCR’s statute reflected the French concern that the new organisation’s primary purpose was to help with the resettlement of the refugees already in France. ‘The High Commission is established for solv­ ing by international action economic, financial and social problems that have arisen in consequence of the fact that a large number of persons, Jewish and other (hereinafter called “refugees”), have left Germany and taken refuge in various countries’.49 According to this, the arrangements for refugees to leave Germany were secondary but it was not how McDonald, the newly appointed High Commissioner, saw his task. His priority was to persuade the Germans to ease their restrictions on emigration and to arrange for overseas settlement of refugees wanting to leave Nazi Germany. However, McDonald was discouraged because he did not have the author­ ity of LON backing or the status of a LON official for his discussions with the authorities in Germany and the countries designated for settlement.50 McDonald, Bentwich and Cecil blamed Avenol for refusing the High

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Commissioner a title of officer of the LON, Avenol’s justification being that the HCR was set up to be independent from the LON. The Quai, maybe to compensate for the humiliation of agreeing to Germany’s terms that the HCR be separated from the LON, argued that McDonald’s independence would enable him to intervene directly with the German authorities, an approach that the Germans would deem interference if undertaken by the Quai. Article 14 of the HCR statute said that: ‘Regarding questions within his province, the High Commissioner may communicate with the Governments or any other bodies or persons likely to be able to assist in his work’.51 The Quai appears to have discounted the remote possibility that should McDonald come to an arrangement with the German government about facilitating the departure of its unwanted citizens, there would be pressure from other countries, espe­ cially in Central Europe, who would clamour that the LON set up a commis­ sion to take responsibility for their unwanted citizens. When Germany gave notice of its withdrawal from the LON on 19 October 1933 the LON could have ignored the German objections to the separation of the HCR from the LON and reformulated the HCR’s structure, but this did not happen.52 Avenol did not want any change because he hoped that Germany would reconsider its decision to leave the LON.53 The Quai seemed to go along with this.54 McDonald wrote in his diary after meeting Avenol on 23 August 1934: ‘Under no circumstances would Avenol or his colleagues risk the slightest jeopardy to the League’s relations with Germany in order to help us’.55 Avenol directed that documents should continue to be circulated to the Germans even though they had left the LON. McDonald, notwithstanding that he was not obliged to, refused to send the minutes of High Commission meetings to the LON Council because the Germans would see them and compromise his work. It is puzzling that, given the Nazis’ ambition to rid their country of its Jewish population, it might have been in their interest to help McDonald by supporting a closer tie between the LON and the HCR. This may have reflected the Nazis’ ambivalence during the first years of their rule about what to do with the Jews, whether to encourage them to leave or intern them.56 Instead, when McDonald went to Berlin to discuss the emigration restrictions he was cold-shouldered.57

THE QUAI'S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE HCR

The HCR’s relations with the French were conducted in the HCR Governing Board and Advisory Committee and in private meetings with Quai officials in Paris, between McDonald, Bentwich and Wurfbain and for the Quai, Léger, Tetreau, responsible for relations with the HCR, and Fouques-Duparc.58 The

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High Commissioner was required to report to the HCR Governing Board and because he sat on both the HCR Governing Board and Advisory Committee, McDonald and his team had also to deal with both Bérenger, representative of the French government on the Governing Board, and Helbronner, on the Advisory Committee and as substitute for Bérenger on the Governing Board. At the first meeting of the HCR’s Governing Board in December 1933, McDonald wanted to examine six issues: work to retrain refugees; passports and resident permits; relations between the HCR and the LON; work permits; the extension of national social service benefits to indigent refugees; and the resolutions of the Advisory Committee because it could only advise, not enforce. The Quai had been instrumental in setting up the HCR’s restricted structure and it had not taken the opportunity to give it more weight when Germany left the LON. The Quai agreed with Avenol that a powerful HCR would compromise the LON’s relations with Germany.59 There were added reasons for the Quai’s lack of support. As well as the realisation that the HCR would not serve French interests because McDonald did not consider his primary role should be the distribution of refugees - indeed he believed that the coun­ tries of first refuge should absorb the refugees,60 - it considered the HCR a pressure group that would attempt to influence French refugee policy. It may also have been an early example of French appeasement of Nazi Germany. McDonald asked the Quai several times to request the French government to adopt a more liberal refugee policy as well as to contribute funds to the HCR. The French were uncooperative: the Quai, while polite, refused McDonald’s requests. The first occasion was on 25 April 1934,61 when he wrote to the Quai asking that German refugees be granted the same status as Nansen refu­ gees regarding, for example, non-refoulement and the easing of restrictions on issuing work permits, which the Quai had agreed when it signed the LON Convention of 28 October 1933 relating to the International Status of Refugees.62 The Quai took its time to reply. When it did nearly two months later, Léger was firm: ‘the right to asylum can override no national rights’.63 He explained that while France was generous in granting asylum, checks had to be made to exclude undesirable applicants who were a danger to public order and those who did not have German nationality. This took time and it was not correct that the French were being obstructive. McDonald then met Léger at the Quai on 28 August 1934.64 Léger, while admitting that Bérenger might be disappointed in the HCR, was complimentary about McDonald’s work and promised to see whether funds could be made available to the HCR. McDonald now appealed also to French national pride by pointing out that a positive reply would increase French prestige. The meeting seems to have been amicable but McDonald was fobbed off and there is no record of

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Léger asking his Minister. McDonald also approached Herriot in his posi­ tion as President of the Chamber of Deputies (^Chambre des Deputes) in the National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale), stating that France’s prestige in world opinion for its generous welcome of refugees from Germany would be jeopardised if France introduced restrictive decrees.65 Herriot’s reply was polite and non-committal.66 When McDonald again pressed the French for support at the third meeting of the HCR’s Governing Board in November 1934, the minutes67 and the entry in McDonald’s diary68 show how far rela­ tions had deteriorated. Helbronner, who deputised for Bérenger, egged on by Oungre, took exception to two resolutions proposed by McDonald that were not on the agenda, the extension to poor refugees of relief facilities and of work permits issued by governments. He angrily objected to their inclusion and what he saw as the aspersion on France that it had not done its utmost for the refugees. Helbronner also insisted that the Board pass a resolution that its resolutions were non-binding. ‘The Governing Board desires to submit to the Governments its view that a resolution passed by it does not engage the responsibility of these Governments unless and until they approve it’.69 A month later, Léger stressed the reason for the Quai’s behaviour in another let­ ter to McDonald. France would not allow an international organisation, pre­ sumably referring to the HCR, to dictate to it. ‘It judges that the resolutions adopted by the Board do not engage the responsibility of the Governments represented in it’.70 It was no surprise that the Quai did not want to be bound by the Governing Board’s resolutions and was another example of French emasculation of the HCR. Furthermore, as the Quai was to remind the Ministry of Labour, France needed to be careful because it had to abide by what it signed.71 For instance, when the HCR recommended that the extension of identity and travel docu­ ment issued to refugees should be valid for a period of one year and mention ‘good for return’,72 Corbin replied that extending identity cards for longer than six months would constitute de facto immigration and refused to sign.73 McDonald’s relations with Bérenger and Helbronner were fractious. McDonald spoke of Bérenger as ‘much interested in refugee matters’, after their first meeting on 3 October 1933 but then found him increasingly dif­ ficult.74 Indeed, in his diary McDonald, generally impartial about every­ one, even Avenol, did eventually lose patience with both Bérenger and Helbronner,75 and found Oungre ‘slippery’.76 Bérenger and Helbronner did not hide their low opinion of the HCR. Bérenger sent McDonald copies of the activity reports of the CNSRA,77 presumably to show him how much France was doing for the refugees and how ineffectual McDonald was.78 Helbronner complained in the French Interministerial Committee in February 1934 that the HCR had done nothing during the two months since McDonald had arrived in Geneva.79 In the November 1934 meeting of the Governing Board,

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Helbronner emphasised that France could not accept a situation in which humanitarian sentiments encroached on national sovereignty and the author­ ity of the police.80 Indeed, Helbronner said that he saw no point in the HCR continuing.81 However, despite all his complaints, there were times when he seems to have been well disposed towards McDonald. McDonald’s diary records that at a meeting in Paris on 19 May 1934, Helbronner had come to McDonald’s defence when Robert de Rothschild82 told McDonald that he was a charming person but had achieved nothing.83 Helbronner wrote McDonald an effusive letter on his resignation saying that despite his untiring effort and goodwill, his mission was a ‘semi-failure’ because his organisation did not have authority.84 Since Helbronner had doubtless agreed with Avenol and Bérenger to refuse this authority the letter was disingenuous, to say the least. Bentwich was intolerant of the French.85 In their turn, the French were critical of Cecil’s Chairmanship of the HCR Governing Board.86 Their ani­ mosity surfaced during the debate about who should succeed McDonald when they accused the British of manoeuvring to isolate the French in the HCR, and both Bérenger and Helbronner blamed the HCR and the British for what in fact were the shortcomings of French policy.87 An important British figure was Lord Cranbome, Under-secretary of State at the Foreign Office, a nephew of Viscount Cecil. He specialised in the affairs of the LON and functioned as alternate head of the British delegation when Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, was not present. He agreed with Bérenger and Helbronner when he said that the LON should not sign a blank cheque on the future to demands which the budget would not bear.

THE ROLE OF BÉRENGER

Bérenger, a key figure in refugee affairs, was an influential politician. He was first elected to the Senate in 1912 as a radical socialist representing Guadelupe. An expert on reparations, Briand had sent him as French ambas­ sador to Washington in 1926 to deal with the problem. On his return in 1928, he was re-elected to the Senate for Guadeloupe, appointed Vice-chairman of its Foreign Relations Committee and then its Chairman from 1931 to 1939.88 With it came nomination as a permanent French delegate to the LON where he applied his interest in refugee affairs. He also had a seat as the French representative on the Governing Board of the HCR. He was elected presi­ dent of CNSRA. In July 1938, Daladier asked him to chair the International Evian Refugee Conference.89 While Bérenger did not serve in any of the governments in the 1930s he probably had more influence in refugee affairs than many foreign ministers, his long service as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee contrasting with the instability of interwar

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governments. His position, experience and reputation as a skilled negotiator meant his opinions counted and he could claim and expect important assign­ ments in Paris and Geneva. Initially, Bérenger took a hard line towards the Nazi regime but he had become a pacifist by the late 1930s and in 1938 joined the radical Socialists who approved the Munich settlement.90 Bérenger retired from politics in 1940. He did not attend the Assembly when it voted in July 1940 to grant Marshall Pétain full powers. Bérenger’s personal papers for the period, if they still exist, have not been found and his biographers are concerned with his service as Senator of Guadeloupe. Caron describes him as competent, irascible and unpopular: the heads of Jewish organisations who sought a more generous refugee policy disliked him, especially Bernard Kahn,91 and he was not well regarded by dip­ lomats like Fouques-Duparc, who considered him too outspoken.92 According to Ivan Krno, a Czech working for the LON Secretariat,93 Bérenger was not the first choice to be the French delegate on the HCR’s Governing Board. When presenting a humanitarian stance Bérenger did not talk about tri­ age. In his speech in Paris on 18 November 1933 entitled, 'Hitler et Israel, la bataille des races’ ('Hitler and Israel, the Battle between the Races’), he roundly condemned the Nazi government’s treatment of Jews and empha­ sised the Third Republic’s values:94 ever in the avant-garde to defend rights and tolerance, France has honoured itself by accepting, generously and without even desiring to measure the danger that this could entail from a political or social point of view, more than 35,000 German Jews, or nearly half of the 80,000 refugees driven from their country, offering them hospitality and the right to asylum, that age-old right that already the Christian Church . . . this duty of asylum is at the foundation of our civili­ sation and France, proud of accomplishing it at her risk and perils, agreed to maintain it. We have no doubt that, in the end, this will prove a blessing and a benefit to her.95

This overt criticism of Germany was out of tune with the Quai’s diplomatic approach. Perhaps Bérenger wanted to deflect the political left’s disap­ proval that he had been the only French delegate at the recent LON 14th General Assembly to talk at length to Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda.96 And he was disingenuous about his claim of French benev­ olence towards the refugees from Germany. He must have been aware that on 18 October 1933, a month before his speech, the Quai had instructed its consuls to stop the liberal issue of visas using the justification that the newly established HCR would ensure a more equitable international distribution of the refugees.97 An aide-mémoire from the Quai on 22 November 1933

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made clear that France could not take in any more refugees and that the solution was for other countries to share the burden.98 However, he did then fall into line. As the French delegate to the Sixth LON Committee99 and on the HCR’s Governing Board Bérenger, while not shy in declaring his condemnation of the Reich and calling for pressure to be put on Germany to change its discriminatory policy and to stop the denaturalisation of its citizens when they were abroad, now insisted that France could no longer bear the burden of harbouring more refugees. He went even further in his understanding of the Quai’s revised policy by asserting that refugees should be kept out of France and the ones already in France should be settled per­ manently elsewhere: other countries had to be pressured into taking their share and France would not contribute funds for the HCR. At the Governing Board meeting on 8 December 1933 Bérenger explained that France could not take in any more refugees than the 30,000 it already had and that the situation would get worse because Germany was becoming a concentration camp for the 500,000 Jews who lived there. The LON had passed the torch to the High Commissioner to solve the problem. There could be no delay. The duty of the HCR was to issue the refugees with an international iden­ tity card that would serve as a travel document so that the refugees could move on. Bérenger highlighted what he called the generosity of French policies in his interview with Agence Havas in December 1933 but the point was to stress that France could do this no more.100 He then wrote an article for the Pariser Tageblatt in which he gave a résumé of the Lausanne Board meet­ ing and added that McDonald had achieved a lot, given the brief time he had for preparation.101 At the January Board meeting his behaviour had become confrontational.102 His essential point was that France should be a 'sorting station' ('voie de triage') and in no circumstances a 'parking lot' ('voie de garage'). He named the USA, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay as countries that had not played their part in taking in refugees and, contradicting what he had said to the Pariser Tageblatt, criticised the High Commissioner’s efforts to raise sufficient funds in the United States even though McDonald had received assurances that at least three-quarters of the HCR’s expenses would be met and was confident of raising the balance.103 Bérenger appeared intentionally to ignore the French consent to the condition that the HCR be separate from the LON. After that meeting, he appears to have determined that the HCR would not help to achieve his goals and lost interest in attending its Committee meetings. He affirmed the French policy of either controlling or emasculating international organisations whose activities might be inimi­ cal to French interests or otherwise compromise French sovereignty. In this case it was French jurisdiction over its management of the refugee problem that was threatened.

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Bérenger’s also directed his hostility at the Anglo-Saxons.104 Avenol reported: ‘Senator Bérenger had spoken of the High Commission as an English institution, serving primarily English purposes, and of scant use to France’.105 Bérenger accused the HCR of being an Anglo-Saxon organisa­ tion - the British grumbled that it was a Zionist one - even though he and the Quai had been instrumental in setting up the HCR. Furthermore, he had proposed Cecil as chairman of the Governing Board presumably in the hope that Cecil would persuade the British Colonial Office to increase the quotas for Palestine.106 Bérenger had also agreed that the High Commissioner be American and his deputy British. He had preferred that the seat of the HCR should be moved from Lausanne to London rather than to Paris.107 Maybe his annoyance was frustration because the consequence of the French refusal to contribute money for the HCR was that the Anglo-Saxons funded it and therefore could call the tune. Since France had little say in the HCR’s policies the best reaction was to ignore it. McDonald did not pressure the UK and the US governments, both having effectively closed their doors to the German refugees, because he relied on the HCR being funded from private British and American sources. And while Bérenger thought that the HCR should have done more to persuade the Anglo-Saxon countries to take in new refu­ gees, the British and the Americans were content that the refugees already in France should stay there. Bérenger’s frustration boiled over in the September 1935 meeting of the LON Sixth Committee when his ad hominem attack on McDonald was so hostile that Giuseppe Motta, its Swiss Chairman, asked permission not to have the statement translated into English.108 McDonald wrote in his diary that when they met afterwards, Bérenger said to him: ‘I think this is not a matter for dictation by Americans. There are no American refugees, they are European refugees, and we are big enough to look after ourselves. Goodbye’.109 The editors of McDonald’s diaries say that Bérenger was a close friend of Avenol. An additional explanation for his attitude might have been the influence of Avenol’s refusal to support McDonald.110 When the LON Sixth Committee in September 1935 discussed the Norwegian proposal for a LON convention, Bérenger was again outspoken, voicing his views with increased belligerence.111 The minutes report him having repeated that France could not increase the burden on her taxpayers, who were already crushed by the weight of tax upon tax, and again insisted that the private sector provide the funds for refugee relief and settlement. He introduced a new argument, disdainful of the refugees, that while France did not wish to evade its moral obligations, worthless exiles whom he described as outlaws, stateless persons and antis, the veritable flotsam and jetsam of recent revolutions, were being imposed on the French. France knew from experience the difficulties of the refugee problem. Since 1914 it had received more than 300,000 refugees from Italy, Russia, Poland, Germany, Austria,

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even from the Far East, and faithful to its century-old tradition of hospitality it had received and treated them as if they had been its own citizens. That work had been accomplished by the joint action of private initiative and the public authorities and the money collected, amounting to several tens of mil­ lions (of francs), had been used not on administrative costs but exclusively on feeding, housing, sheltering and transporting the hapless refugees themselves. He hoped that the LON would follow the French example. He went on seem­ ingly to contradict his point about private initiative by warning the LON to be careful of public generosity because it would create more refugees, adding that nothing could be more undesirable than that the LON should encourage the proliferation of these 'Pleaides' (‘Pleiades'} of unattached individuals, whose real need was 1 reclassification' {'reclassement') and gradual reintegra­ tion into their original surroundings.112 French opinion, he said, held that the refugees represented a 'disorder' {'désordre') which should not be perpetu­ ated by the creation of a permanent bureaucracy to deal with it. It should, on the contrary, be regarded as transient and be managed by allowing private charity (which had shown itself fully equal to the task and deserved the grati­ tude of the LON) to play its part. The French delegation, he continued, would therefore vote in favour of the recommendation to the council to nominate a small committee of enquiry, subject to the express reservation that no fur­ ther large sums should be budgeted for, and that the decision to liquidate the Nansen Office be maintained according to plan.113 His philippic played into German hands. The Berliner Börsen Zeitung highlighted Bérenger’s speech to point out that the refugees France wanted to protect were a danger for the law and order in France.114 In contrast to its own oblique diplomatic language, Bérenger’s forthright approach often embarrassed the Quai. This appears to have been such an occasion.115 As a politician, he often took it upon himself to speak bluntly in a way that diplomats avoided. For example, he wrote to the Polish ambassa­ dor in Paris that France would not accept refugees with Polish passports and that the ambassador should plan for their repatriation to Poland, something the Quai, which was anxious not to offend Poland and drive it into an alli­ ance with Germany, would have avoided putting in such brusque and explicit terms.116 However, Bérenger’s views were not as extreme as those of the xenopho­ bic French Jews. Bentwich complained that the French Jewish community ‘wearisomely spoke, in the name of La France, on behalf of restriction’.117 Helbronner was an example. As vice-president of the Consistoire central israélite de France {French Jewish Consistory) the official federation of the individual Jewish communities and delegate of the Alliance Israélite Universelle {Jewish Universal Alliance) on the HCR Advisory Committee, he presented himself to the authorities as representing the main body of

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French Jews. His attitude to refugees was uncompromising: except for a few celebrated intellectuals, the rest must be kept away. Caron quotes Helbronner asking in June 1933 at a meeting of Jewish organisations118 ‘What are you going to do with these masses (of refugees)? We are in a period of unemploy­ ment, we cannot throw people out of jobs, there is no room in our factories or in our businesses for this flood of labourers’. And three years later in 1936 his attitude was even more extreme: ‘The run of the mill, the rejects of society, elements incapable of any activity whatsoever in their own country . . . Nonentities, unusable in any kind of human agglomeration’. In contrast, Raoul-Raymond Lambert, the Secretary of CAR, welcomed the refugees and helped with their relief. Basch, the Jewish, president of the LDH, was a tire­ less campaigner for the rights of refugees, as was Grumbach. McDonald put Bérenger and Helbronner in the same camp when he noted that any proposals he might suggest about the possibility of a change in the government’s attitude towards refugees remaining in France would be coun­ terproductive because the ministers would check with both of them and their answers would be negative, while affirming France’s humanitarian stance and insisting that France had done more than any other country to protect the refugees.119 Nevertheless, despite its indifference to the HCR, and Bérenger’s and Helbronner’s dislike of refugees, France was providing a refuge, unlike the other large democracies, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The French problem with the HCR lay in France’s policy that ref­ uge on its territory should be temporary whereas McDonald held that his job was to find destinations for settlement of refugees from Germany, that France was one and that he should not be concerned with helping the refugees to leave France. Underlying this was the concern that the HCR was a threat to French sovereignty and that since the Quai could not control the HCR the best policy was to weaken it.

NOTES 1. LON C 59-53 506 HC, Memorandum about German refugees in France, undated, probably November 1934. 2. LON 20 A 1858 186, Proposal by Norway added to the agenda of the Assembly, 17 May 1935. 3. See chapter 10. 4. See Caron, Uneasy Asylum. Chapter 1 5. From 1930 to 1938. 6. Created in December 1930 after the death of Nansen. It could only advise. It was active to 1935.

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7. Existed from 1936 to 1946. 8. Existed from 1938 to 1947. 9. 5 December 1933, 30 January 1934 in Lausanne, 2 May 1934 in London. 10. There were seventeen delegates in all: assistant delegates Jean Mistier, André Marie, Georges Salvador, Cassin, Basdevant, Jules Gautier, François de Tessan, Paul Bastid, Marcel Plaisant, Jouhaux and Massigli; delegates Daladier, Bérenger and Jean-Louis Paul-Boncour; substitutes Delbos, Louis Germain Martin and Lucien Hubert. 11. Alliance Démocratique (droite); Parti Républicain Radical et RadicalSocialiste (radicaux-socialistes); Parti Républicain Socialiste (gauche); Fédération Républicaine (droite); Républicains indépendants (droite). 12. For example, Barthou, Joseph Paul-Boncour and Longuet. 13. See chapter 10. 14. LON C 586, 1933. Jonkheer Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff was Foreign Minister from 1933 to 1937. 15. LON 1933 A 53 II, Report by Second Committee, 10 October 1933. 16. Pro-Zionist politician, he was Colonial Secretary from 1936 to 1938. 17. According to Freda White; W. Ormsby-Gore, ‘The Fourteenth Assembly of the League of Nations’, International Affairs 13(1) (1934), pp. 47-61. 18. According to Israel Cohen, Secretary of the World Zionist Organisation; W. Ormsby-Gore, ‘The Fourteenth Assembly of the League of Nations’, pp. 47-61. 19. MAE Z 710, ‘Allemagne Note’ (German note) 24 août 1933, pp. 248-51. 20. Jean-Louis Paul-Boncour, a career diplomat, was a nephew of Joseph Paul-Boncour. 21. MAE SDN 451, ‘Note pour le Ministre. Réfugiés allemands’ (Note for the Minister. German refugees) 26 septembre 1933, pp. 76-77. 22. MAE SDN 451, ‘Réfugiés allemands. Projet de résolution’ (German refugees. Proposal for resolution) 4 octobre 1933, pp. 116-17; ‘Résolutions sur les Réfugiés allemands’ (Resolutions concerning German refugees) 5 octobre 1933, pp. 118-19. 23. MAE SDN 451, ‘Note. La proposition néerlandaise concernant les réfugiés’ (Note. The Dutch proposal concerning the refugees) Genève, 28 septembre 1933, pp. 88-89. 24. Prentiss Gilbert was US consul general in Geneva 1930-1937: US Department of State/Foreign Relations of the United States diplomatic papers 1933, vol. II, at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1933v02 (accessed 12 January 2016): The consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State, 9 October 1933. 25. The Austrian delegate was Emerich von Pflügler. See Silvia Stiedl, Emmerich von Pflügler (1873-1956): Leben und Werk eines österreichischen Diplomaten (Vienna: VWGO, 1990). 26. US Department of State/Foreign Relations of the United States diplomatic papers 1933, vol. II, at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1933vO2 (accessed 12 October 2015): Consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State, 9 October 1933.

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27. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Note pour Monsieur le Sénateur Henry Bérenger’ (Note for Senator Henry Bérenger) 12 septembre 1935, pp. 72-74. 28. MAE SDN 451, ‘Projet de résolution’ (Proposal for resolution) 4 octobre 1933, pp. 116-17; ‘Résolution sur les réfugiés allemands’ (Resolution of the German refugees), 5 octobre 1933, pp. 118-19. 29. MAE Z 710, Lettre de Bargeton à la LDH (Letter from Bargeton to the LDH) 25 juillet 1933. 30. Report by McDonald of his meeting with Bérenger, 3 October 1933: McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 122. 31. It was presented to the Subcommittee appointed by the Second Committee. Minutes were published only of ‘public’ meetings. No minutes were published of the ‘private’ meetings of the Subcommittee. However, there were reports of the proceed­ ings in the LON Official Journal. 32. LON Official Journal, Special Supplement no. 117, 4 and 7 October 1933. 33. Vice-president of the Senate in the National Assembly 1933-1938. 34. US Department of State/Foreign Relations of the US Diplomatic Papers 1933, vol. II, at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1933v02 (accessedl4 February 2016): Consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State, 9 October 1933. 35. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 122. 36. Nazi diplomat sentenced to four years’ imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. 37. Giuseppe Motta was president of the LON General Assembly in 1924 and 1925, and president of the Swiss Confederation in 1932 and 1937. 38. US Department of State/Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers 1933, vol. II, at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1933v02 (accessed 12 January 2016): Consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State, 9 October 1933. 39. See chapter 5. 40. LON R 5722 no. 50 7100, ‘Proposal for the Organisation on an International Basis of Assistance for Refugees (Jewish and others) coming from Germany’, Report by the Second Committee to the Assembly, Geneva, 10 October 1933; LON Official Journal Special Supplement no. 117, Records of the 14th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, Meetings of the Committees, Minutes of the Second Committee, pp. 29, 30, 47. 41. La Lumière, 12 octobre 1933. 42. Bentwich, Wanderer between Two Worlds, p. 235 43. MAE Papiers Léger, carton II, Note, 1 avril 1935. 44. NA FO 371 1936, Memorandum from Makins, 8 January 1936. 45. MAE SDN 446, ‘Note. Sous-direction des chancelleries’, de Navailles au Service français de la SDN (Note. The Sous-direction des chancelleries’, from de Navailles to the Service français de la SDN) 28 avril 1933; MAE Z 710, ‘Lettre à la Ligue des droits de l’homme’ (Letter to the LDH) 31 août 1933. 46. MAE SDN 451, ‘Procès-verbal de la 4e séance tenue par la Commission interministérielle des réfugiés allemands’ (Minutes of the 4th session of the Interministerial Commission for German Refugees), 13 novembre 1933.pp. 142-45.

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47. Gilbert, Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, maps 15-16, p. 10. For example, between 1933 and 1938 about 25,000 Jews left Germany for Poland and 3,000 for Hungary. 48. See Tommie Sjoberg, The Power and the Persecuted. The Refugee Problem and the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees (Lund: Chartwell-Bratt Publishing & Training, 1991). 49. LON Official Journal, C 586 12 (LXXVII), pp. 1616-17: Resolution of General Assembly, 11 October 1933. 50. LON R5722 no. 50 11748 P.V.l, High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and other) coming from Germany, Governing Board, Minutes of the first session, 5 December 1933. LON R5686.50, Directors’ meeting 322, ‘Compte Rendu d’une Réunion des Directeurs’, novembre 1933. 51. LON Official Journal, C. 586 12 (LXXVII), pp. 1616-17, Resolution of General Assembly, 11 October 1933. The Statutes of the International High Commission were adopted by the Governing Board on 5 December 1933. 52. LON Official Journal. C605.M282. 1933.V, January 1934, Letter from Auswärtiges Amt, Konstantin von Neurath, an dem Sekretär General des Völkerbundes (Letter from the Foreign Office, Konstantin von Neurath, to the Secretary-general of the LON), Berlin, 19 Oktober 1933. Reply from the Secretary-general, Geneva, 21 October 1935, stating that according to the League of Nations Covenant, Article 1 paragraph 3, two years’ notice was required. 53. When De Brinon asked Hitler when they met on 16 November 1933 whether Germany would return to the LON, he was told 'nous ne retournerons pas à Genève' (‘we shall not return to Geneva’): De Brinon, France-Allemagne, p. 222. The news­ paper Le Matin published the interview on the front page of its issue no. 18144 on 22 November 1933. 54. See MAE P 6718 PA AP 217 vol. 91, Papiers Massigli, lettre 6 septembre 1933 de Massigli à Avenol,(Letter of 6 September from Massigli to Avenol) pp. 114-15. 55. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 458. 56. See Peter Pulzer, Chapter 6. 57. He went to Berlin on 20-21 April 1934. McDonald et al., Advocate, pp. 365-8. 58. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 158. 59. LON C 59 53 506, HC Memorandum about German refugees in France, undated, probably November 1934. 60. MAE Z 711, ‘Procès-verbal de la 4e séance tenue par la Commission inter­ ministérielle des réfugiés allemands’ (Minutes of the 4th sitting of the Commission interministérielle des réfugiés allemands’), 13 novembre 1933 61. LON C 1609 59 5 506, France no. 1, 33-36. 62. LON Treaty Series, vol. CLIX, no. 3663, 1933. 63. LON C 1609 59 5 506, France no. 1 33-36, 1934. 64. LON C 1608 505, High Commission files; McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, pp. 452-63. 65. LON C 1609 59 5 506, France no. 1 33-36, letter from McDonald to Herriot, 22 November 1934. According to McDonald’s diary, this line of argument was sug­ gested by James Rosenberg, the American lawyer who was a founder of the JDC and its Vice-president.

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66. LON C 1609 59 5 506, France no. 1 33-36, letter from Herriot to McDonald, 24 November 1934. 67. LON C 1609 59 5 506, France no. 1 33-36, ‘Procès-verbal de la séance (privée)’ (Minutes of the session: private) 2 novembre 1934. 68. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, pp. 536—39. 69. LON C 1609 59 5 506, France no. 1, 33-36 Séance (privée) (Session: private) 2 novembre 1934, p. 11. 70. LON C 1609 59 5 506, France no. 1. 33-36, Lettre de Léger à McDonald (Letter from Léger to McDonald) 13 décembre 1934. 71. MAE SDN 1812, ‘Lettre au Ministère du Travail’ (Letter to the Ministry of Labour) 25 novembre 1936, p. 190. 72. LON Cl616, Minutes of HC 513 Annex III to PV3, 6 December 1933. 73. LON C1616, Corbin in the Governing Board meeting, 2 May 1934. 74. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, pp. 122-23. 75. McDonald et al., Refugees and Rescue, pp. 28-30. 76. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 392. 77. LON C 1608 505, HC files, November and December 1935. 78. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 123. 79. Seventh session of the Interministerial Commission, 5 February 1934. McDonald had arrived in Geneva on 11 November 1933 to take up his appointment. 80. LON C 1616 5, Meeting of the Governing Board, 1 November 1934. 81. LON C1616 5, Meeting of the Advisory Committee, 15 October 1934; PRO FO 371 18464, Record of conversation with Cecil, 2 September 1935. He urged its abolition: Cecil, A Great Experiment, pp. 252-54. 82. Banker, philanthropist, representative of the Jewish community in France. 83. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, pp. 388-89. 84. LON C 1609 59-5 506, France no. 1 33-36, letter from Helbronner to McDonald, 29 December 1935. 85. Bentwich, Wanderer between Two Worlds. 86. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, 2 November 1934; pp. 538-39. 87. LON R524 no. 15 29682PV, Sixth Committee, September 1936. 88. Jean Jolly, Dictionnaire des parlementaires français 1889-1940; vol. II (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, Assemblée Nationale 1960) pp. 547-48. 89. Called by President Roosevelt to help Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. See chapter 11. 90. The agreement was concluded in Munich on 29 September 1938 between Germany, the UK, France and Italy to cede the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Germany. Among many studies, see Igor Lukes, Czechoslovakia between Stalin and Hitler: The Diplomacy of Edvard Benes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 91. Email exchange with Vicky Caron, 4 April 2015. These views are evident from the JDC and other Jewish archives: for example, see letter from Bernard Kahn to Paul Baerwald, 6 November 1934, JDC file 601. 92. MAE SDN 1806, Note de Fouques-Duparc à Massigli (Note by FouquesDuparc to Massigli) 24 septembre 1935, pp. 91-92.

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93. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 194. 94. At the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs. 95. Henry Bérenger, Hitler et Israël: la bataille des races: conférence (Paris: Editions des Ambassadeurs, 1934). 96. Article by Solomon Grumbach in La Lumière, 14 October 1933. 97. AN F7 13431, MAE au Ministère de ITntérieur (MAE to the Ministry of the Interior) 19 octobre 1933; MAE SDN 448, Télégramme de Léger à Berlin (Telegram from Léger to Berlin)18 octobre 1933; MAE Z 711, Lettre du Contrôle des étrangers à LDH (Letter from Contrôle des Étrangers to the LDH) 20 novembre 1933, pp. 84-86. 98. MAE SDN 448, Aide-mémoire, 22 novembre 1933, pp. 76-84, sent with the offer to Bérenger of appointment as French delegate to the Governing Board of the HCR. 99. MAE Z 711, Lettre de Paul-Boncour à Bérenger (Letter from Paul-Boncour to Bérenger), 3 novembre 1933. 100. MAE Z 711, ‘Discours’ (Speech) 8 décembre 1933, p. 131. Also Paix et Droit, Organe de I’Alliance Israélite Universelle 10, décembre 1933, pp. 8-11. See chapter 4. 101. See chapter 3. 102. Pariser Tageblatt, 28 Dezember 1933 (Bd. 1, Nr. 17: 3). 103. From the Joint Distribution Committee of America, the Jewish Colonization Association and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. 104. Bentwich described Bérenger as supporting HCR initiatives, as opposed to the different matter of getting things done by French civil servants: Bentwich, Wanderer Between Two Worlds, p. 238. 105. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 458. 106. NA FO 371 W 10548 172 98, Memorandum concerning the Refugee Question, 1 September 1936. 107. Leo Baeck Institute, High Commission for Refugees from Germany; AR 7162 MF 895, Minutes of Governing Board meeting, 2 May 1934, p. 989. 108. McDonald et al., Refugees and Rescue,tpp. 28-30. 109. McDonald et al., Refugees and Rescue, p. 30. 110. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 122. 111. See chapter 10. 112. His use of the expression Pléiades is strange. The usual definition is a tal­ ented group. Did he mean a disreputable group? The word reclassement implies the latter. 113. LON Official Journal, Special Supplement no. 143, Minutes of the Sixth Committee. Seventh meeting, 20 September 1935, pp. 53-54. 114. MAE SDN 1806, Télégramme de François-Poncet (Telegram from FrançoisPoncet) Berlin, 22 septembre 1935. 115. MAE SDN 1806, Note de Fouques-Duparc à Massigli (Note from FouquesDuparc to Massigli). 24 septembre 1935, pp. 91-92. 116. LON Cl605 502, ‘Lettre du Service social du comité d’accueil aux émigrés allemands à Monsieur l’Ambassadeur de Pologne’ (Letter from the Social Service of

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the Reception Commitee for German émigrés to the Polish Ambassador). 4 janvier 1934, p. 18. 117. Bentwich, Wanderer Between Two Worlds, p. 239. 118. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 102-03. Caron’s book, Uneasy Asylum, explores in detail the cleavages in the French Jewish community. 119. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, pp. 441-42.

Chapter 9

Resettlement and Transit

While until late 1938 emigration to the United States and the United Kingdom was effectively closed, France was a natural and obvious destina­ tion for refugees from the Reich. It was the largest democracy in Europe in which refugees could enjoy the freedoms they were denied in Germany and it shared a border with Germany, which made France easy to enter. The Quai and Bérenger stressed their complaint that the substantial number of German refugees in France was too heavy a financial and social burden to bear. The Quai campaigned for a more equitable distribution among European countries. It also campaigned that refuge in France should be a first haven for the refugees from Germany, a temporary stop on the way to permanent settlement overseas. Among other solutions, repatriation against the will of the refugees was inimical to Republican values and in any case unworkable, and mass integration into French society was unacceptable to public opinion. However, there were few qualms in the French government about repatriation of non-German refugees. This chapter discusses how the Quai tried and failed to achieve resettlement.

FORLORN MULTI- AND BILATERAL EFFORTS

Resettlement was a preoccupation at the Interministerial Commission set up by Chautemps in May 1933 to coordinate the policies of the ministries con­ cerned with German refugees.1 Bérenger, a vocal advocate of resettlement, emphasised in an interministerial meeting in May 1934 what had become a central plank of French refugee policy: ‘We must not keep German refugees in our territory but divide them up and send them to the different countries willing to accept them’.2 179

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Although the Quai’s efforts to arrange settlement overseas were unsuc­ cessful, nevertheless about half of the 80,000 refugees who came to France between 1933 and 1938 left to settle elsewhere. According to Martin Gilbert, of the 40,000 who remained in France, 30,000 were Jewish.3 Hope-Simpson estimated that of the 80,000 German refugees who arrived in the five years 1933-1938, 40,000 left to settle elsewhere.4 It was the Jewish agencies, not the Quai, who had the most effective ways of arranging resettlement. Throughout the period the authorities looked to the agencies to provide the guarantees, the funds for transportation and settlement, as well as informa­ tion about destinations with advice how to get there, using official and clan­ destine channels.5 The agencies also helped ensure an additional reduction in the number of refugees in France after the United States and the United Kingdom eased their entry restrictions so that by 1 July 1939 according to the JDC, the estimated number of registered refugees in France from the Reich, including Austria, had fallen to 27,000. By then, France was no longer the country that had the largest number of refugees: 60,000 refugees from all origins had settled in the United States, 48,000 in Palestine and 29,000 in the UK.6 The Quai used multilateral and bilateral strategies to try to persuade other countries to share the burden. It also explored solutions within the French empire. Multilaterally, it hoped that the international organisations - the LON and the HCR - would help, but it soon became disillusioned with the HCR.7 The responses to its bilateral feelers were discouraging. Efforts to shame the Anglo-Saxon governments into changing their policy were unsuccessful and, in any case, were half-hearted because the Quai did not want to upset the caritative organisations in the United States and the United Kingdom that France relied on to help with the refugees’ relief and settlement. It had meagre results when approaching the South American countries, introducing the German refugees as desirable future citizens. If that was so, the South Americans might have asked why France was so keen to be rid of them and why they were unwelcome in France’s own colonies. Of other bilateral strategies the ideal solution would have been mass emigration to Palestine but this was constrained by the number of entry visas made available by the British and the Quai’s attempt to persuade the British authorities to allow more immigra­ tion into Palestine was muted because the French had their own problems in Syria where they were careful not to upset the Arab population. Within the French empire, governors of mandates and colonies vetoed German refugee colonisation afraid, they alleged, that the refugees would upset the delicate social and economic balance of the local communities. The exile of excess and undesirable German refugees to colonies that were considered suitable dumping grounds and penal settlements was rejected because of the cost of transportation.8 When refugee numbers arriving in France increased because

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of the Anschluss, a consequence of the authorities’ failure to settle them over­ seas was the expedient to lodge them in camps in France. The first meeting of the Interministerial Commission on 27 May 1933 made clear that France would not provide refuge to non-German refugees and the Quai was instructed to arrange repatriation to their countries of ori­ gin. Having dealt with this, the Commission discussed ways to resettle the German refugees. It dealt only with North Africa, which the Commission rejected because settlement in the Maghreb would provoke anti-Semitism and turn the indigenous population against France. The second meeting on 15 October 1933 instructed the Quai to ask the French ambassador in London to approach the British government about increasing the immigration quota for Palestine.9 At the third meeting later that month, Helbronner complained that refugees from Germany continued to come to France while the LON was setting up the HCR. He confirmed that the Quai had taken the initiative of talking to the British Foreign and Colonial Offices to propose that the British transfer Arabs from Palestine to Syria to make room in Palestine for German immigrants.10 He suggested that the possibility of sending refugees to Canada and South Africa should be explored, an initiative that the Quai had already taken four months earlier.11 It seems that Helbronner wanted not only to rid metropolitan France of these refugees but also not permit them to settle in its colonies. Settling them in the British empire was a better solution. These were unrealistic expectations, not only because they needed the cooperation of the Mandate and Dominion governments, but also because Helbronner talked of moving the refugees as if they had no say of their own. The rejection of his proposals added to his frustration with the British for what he considered their indifference to the French refugee problem. An upshot of the Commission’s wish that the Quai work to distribute refu­ gees was a discussion in the Quai about whether it was a promising idea to press the Reich, unofficially, to allow refugees to take their capital and pos­ sessions, such as furniture, with them.12 If they could do so they would be less of a burden on the public and private charities’ purses but it might encourage them to settle in France and enable them to buy land on which to settle. The discussion noted that the Reich allowed the transfer of capital to Palestine through the Haavara agreement.13 The Commission asked Bargeton for his opinion but there is no record of his reply.14 By the time of the Interministerial meeting of 23 May 1934, most of the Commission’s resolutions had become as much wishful thinking as real­ istic propositions.15 The Quai elicited vague unsatisfactory replies when it followed up the resolution to urge the ambassadors of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil in France that their countries admit more German refugees. The resolution that the Quai should press the British Colonial Office to allow greater settlement in Palestine was downplayed because of the French refusal

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to allow settlement in Syria and Lebanon. The resolution that the HCR use the funds at its disposal to pay for the transport and guarantee the expenses of refugees in the countries of settlement and that the HCR channel funds to local associations that supported German refugees was chimerical. The HCR itself was dependent on charitable donations to pay for its administrative expenses and had no extra funds for refugee relief or settlement. Meanwhile, the Quai had taken the initiative in bilateral action as early as 22 May 1933, a few days before the first Interministerial meeting. Maybe Léger had already been asked to sound out the possibilities of resettlement by Chautemps or Léger anticipated the request. The initiative was unlikely to have come from Barthou, the MAE, who appears not to have been much concerned with refugee affairs. Léger sent a circular telegram to the French ambassadors, ministers and chargés d’affaires in Ottawa, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago da Chile, Lima, Addis Ababa, Cairo, Teheran and Peking with the preamble that France true to its traditions had given German refugees a generous welcome but that its economy was now suffering from the weight of their presence. He asked the diplomats to enquire discreetly what the possibilities were of these countries taking in some of these mainly Jewish emigrants.16 A key question was who would pay for the cost of the refugees’ passage and settlement.17 Other considerations in the countries targeted for settlement were anti-Semitism, the perception that Jews were Communists, the jealousy of local professions and unions and the unsuit­ ability of most German refugees for agricultural work. The sector of greatest promise was agriculture for which most German Jewish refugees, middle class, urban, and before emigration relatively well off, had little experience or appetite. The opinion of the JCA was that they were not suited to be colonial pioneers. The replies were almost entirely negative, an indication of how difficult it would be for the French - and the HCR - to persuade overseas countries to participate.18 In order not to implicate the Quai in an official capacity and to avoid the ignominy of a refusal, French representatives in most of the countries did not approach the governments directly, preferring instead to sound out the leaders of the local Jewish communities. This could be compli­ cated because often there were three: Sephardic, Zionist and East European Ashkenazi, who tended to be polarised and ignore each other. The Canadian government had already clarified its attitude to refugee immigration when it refused entry to Russian refugees from Siberia.19 The French legation in Ottawa reported that it had spoken to the President of the Jewish community who promised to approach the Canadian government to ease immigration restrictions.20 A letter from the chargé d’affaires in Ottawa reported that Jews in Canada were ostracised because they were associated with radicals and Communists so there was not much hope that the Canadian

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government would relax its immigration laws for German refugees.21 In 1936, a proposal to settle Jewish refugees in Labrador was rejected as imprac­ ticable.22 Between 1933 and 1939 only 5,312 German Jews out of a total immigration of 101,720 persons were admitted to Canada.23 Peking replied that due to the current state of the economy the only pros­ pect of settling refugees was to send them to Shanghai, a free port that did not require a passport for entry.24 The outlook in the Middle East was no better. The French legation in Cairo reported that the Jewish community was trying to get the Egyptian government to give asylum to a certain number of German Jewish refugees. The government had replied that there were enough doctors, bankers and traders in Egypt, but there might be possibilities for technicians, especially qualified workers in the textile industry.25 The reply from Teheran was that apart from jobs for a few railway technicians the prospects were poor.26 Ethiopia, the only country in Africa which was willing to accept 1,000 refugees, was unattractive for the settlers. The situation in South America was slightly more hopeful. The French ambassador to Brazil reported that he had consulted Dr Isaias Raffalovich, head of the Jewish community in Rio de Janeiro, who told him that even though there was not much anti-Semitism the chances of many immigrants being allowed to enter were slim, given the jealousy of local liberal profes­ sions and the current surge in nationalism.27 The embassy left the delicate negotiations to Raffalovich. A few days later the ambassador sent a telegram to the Quai saying that a group of refugees had arrived in Rio de Janeiro and would be taken care of in the state of Rio Grande do Sul by a Jewish com­ mittee.28 In September 1933, he wrote again to report on the negotiations that Raffalovich was having with the government. It was willing to permit the immigration of agricultural workers without a financial guarantee that they would not be a burden on the state, but it wanted a hefty guarantee of 4,000 francs each for all non-agricultural immigrants. The chargé’s note confirmed the purpose of the task, ‘which attempts to relieve our country (France) of the congestion created by the presence of refugees who cannot remain here indefinitely’.29 The reply from Buenos Aires was that the JCA had the funds to allow 150 families to come to Argentina, ostensibly to work on the land, but they would probably be able to move to the cities once they had arrived.30 There was correspondence between the Ministry of the Interior and the ship­ ping company Chargeurs Réunis about the cost of the journey from Paris to Buenos Aires, for which it quoted 1,800 francs per person.31 The legation in Chile said there was no chance of asylum.32 The French Minister in Peru replied on 12 July 1933 that the Union of Jews in Peru had passed a motion to accept and find work for twelve refugees, preferably bach­ elors, but could not pay for their passage.33 A year later the French legation in Central America commented on an article in the newspaper Nuestro Diario,

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which reported the attitude of the government in Guatemala.34 The country needed scientists, technicians and experts in all spheres and would welcome German refugees who had these skills. By contrast, office workers, traders and labourers were undesirable and not welcome. The legation pointed out that Guatemala was a small poor country, so one should not be under any illu­ sions about the number of refugees to whom it would give asylum. The Ministry of the Interior’s scant knowledge of the situation in South America was revealed in an internal note of 31 January 1935 from Tetreau to Massigli. It said that the Quai had been asked by the Ministry of the Interior what the reactions of Paraguay and Bolivia would be if France sent them undesirable refugees, that is, the unemployed, common law criminals or those with unpatriotic opinions.35 Massigli’s terse reply distinguished between voluntary emigration and forced emigration: there were no objections to the former, whereas the latter was out of the question for reasons of national and international law and not least because of the Chaco war between Paraguay and Bolivia.36 Another solution suggested by the Ministry of the Interior was to send clandestine refugees who had been apprehended to an island in one of the colonies but the Interior Minister, Régnier, excluded French Guyana, New Caledonia and New Hebrides as too expensive and inhospitable.37 The JDC produced two reports in June 1938, ‘A Survey of Countries into which Jews from Germany have immigrated during the last Five Years', and 'The Possibilities of Land Settlement in Overseas Countries' .38 The reports, while not distinguishing between German refugees who transited via France and those who emigrated directly from Germany, show that while it was difficult officially to find countries to accept refugees, the private caritative organisations were more successful than the Quai and the HCR.39 Despite the Quai’s concern that the refugees be settled overseas there are no records in the Quai’s archives that give the numbers and destinations whereas there are lists from Jewish sources. The inclusion of estimates of clandestine refugees may explain the large variations in some of the numbers.40 Apart from Palestine, the countries that took in the most refugees were in South America:41

Argentina: between 1933 and 1939, some 20,000.42 Martin Gilbert gives the much larger number of 63,500.43 Brazil: 7,000 by 1937. After that, although immigration had been almost completely barred, another 3,000 had managed to enter by June 1939.44 Bolivia: ‘Owing to difficult circumstances, Bolivia had not admitted as many immigrants as it actually requires’, but about 3,000 were granted asylum. Gilbert again gives a higher number of 7,000.45 Chile accepted 3,000. South Africa: 4,500 German Jews by 1937, but from 1 February 1937, when the Aliens Act became effective, immigration became strictly limited.

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The estimated figure for 1938 was 500, although the American Jewish Yearbook puts the figure higher than the JDC, at 7,051 between 1933 and 1939,46 and Gilbert even higher at 26,100 between 1933 and 1938.47

PALESTINE: INCONVENIENT

Potentially, Palestine presented the obvious and most suitable destination for the overseas settlement of German Jewish refugees and because of Jewish funding it was the cheapest.48 However, the Quai failed to persuade the British to allow the emigration of more German refugees, either those already in France or those still in Germany intending to transit through France. A note from Fouques-Duparc dated 30 August 1933 referred to a rare instruc­ tion concerning refugees from the 'Conseil des Ministres' (‘Council of Ministers’)'. ‘To bring before the LON the question of German refugees in France, and to study the ways of encouraging their settlement in Palestine’.49 However, he recommended the most effective approach would be directly to the British government because a discussion at the LON of a more equitable distribution would not be effective and might be ‘inconvénient’ (‘have draw­ backs’). Fouques-Duparc enlarged on the problem suggesting that in general it would be still better to approach the labour offices in the countries that could take refugees. Although it was not relevant to the question of persuad­ ing the British to allow more Jewish settlement, he said that the Quai was hoping that pressure could be brought on the Reich by invoking the question of minorities. He concluded by pointing out that the approach at the LON was supported by the Office Permanent de VAgence juive pour la Palestine auprès de la SDN (The Permanent Office at the League of Nations of the Jewish Agency for Palestine) which had written to the Quai that preference should be given to Germans as opposed to immigrants from Poland and other countries, that Palestine could take many more immigrants and that the man­ datory power (Great Britain) agreed.50 He appeared to be hedging his bet on a direct approach to the British. In this as with many of his notes, his suggestions were neither straight­ forward nor concise. In the mould of Quai correspondence, he tended to equivocate, qualifying his proposals with circumlocutions, recommending one course of action and then suggesting other possibilities. An example was the Quai’s frequent use of the adjective ‘inconvénient’ (‘have drawbacks’) to express disapproval of actions or policies whose likely outcome would have ‘conséquences fâcheuses’ (‘regrettable consequences’). This contrasted with the Ministry of the Interior that employed blunt words such as ‘impla­ cable’ and ‘impitoyable’ (‘implacable’ and ‘ruthless’). ‘Impitoyable’ was a favoured adjective in Ministry of the Interior instructions. It is striking how

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often the Ministry used this word. The Quai’s language was more restrained and circumspect. On 8 September, following his recommendation and before being asked to do so by the Commission Intermini stérielle, Fouques-Duparc instructed Cambon on behalf of the Quai to raise the matter with the British authorities adding that the British had the same tradition of hospitality towards refugees as France. He was to request the British to allow more German Jewish refu­ gees who had taken refuge in France to settle permanently in Palestine. Given that the number of German refugees was already over 40,000 and likely to increase, France was bearing an unfair burden. Fouques-Duparc pointed out that even if the British were to allocate a certain number of visas for Jews already in France, only about 300-400 would want to go to Palestine so that this could in any case be only a partial solution. He said there also was the problem of each country wanting to protect its domestic labour force but again the issue of a few visas would not be a mass solution. The ILO had been able to find work for most of the Russian refugees but the economic situa­ tion had been different in the 1920s and Russian refugees were more adept at working in factories and on the land than the Jewish refugees who were bank or commercial employees, or intellectuals or ‘semi-mtellectuels'> semi­ intellectuals") . When exploring these avenues Cambon might ask the British for their opinion about German behaviour and whether the British would support an initiative by the countries bordering Germany in a joint action to protest the flow of refugees.51 Fouques-Duparc ended with the statement that of course the solution would be to persuade the Reich to change its policy of dumping its excess population on the countries bordering Germany.52 However, by the Interministerial Meeting of 15 October 1933,53 the Quai’s position had changed.54 A new note recommended caution regarding Palestine and prudence in endorsing Zionist pressure for more immigration in Palestine because, like the British, France had to be careful not to pro­ voke Arab objections in its mandates. The Quai’s subsequent approaches to the British were half-hearted because the French had their own troubles in Syria, which became acute after a general strike that started in Damascus in January 1936 forcing concessions to the local population.55 The Quai doubt­ less sympathised with the British Colonial Office that relations with the Arabs required skillful handling. The Quai may also have been embarrassed that while it was asking the British for an increased quota to Palestine, France was refusing to admit any refugees to Syria. For example, in April 1935, the Turkish government agreed to naturalise 2,000 of the Russian refugees who had remained in Turkey, except for 200 who they said they would expel. The Nansen Office asked France’s High Commissioner to the Levant, Comte Damien de Martel, whether these refugees could be sent to Syria.56 He refused, citing economic and political reasons for the doors to be closed to all

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foreigners,57 and he refused again in September when asked to reconsider by the French ambassador in Istanbul.58 Also, the French were afraid that Zionist irredentism would spread to Lebanon, another French mandate, where they discouraged Jewish immigration. The British authorities rebuffed not only the French but also the HCR. They ignored the resolution of the Permanent Committee of the Governing Board of the HCR59 that the British authorities allow more immigration to Palestine.60 In fact, the Foreign Office had not wanted a British High Commissioner for the HCR because it would make requests for a larger allo­ cation of entry permits for Palestine difficult to refuse and it made sure that McDonald did not visit Palestine.61 The quota system in Palestine operated by allocating a certain number of blank immigrations permits to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which then decided on their distribution. According to the Colonial Office, it might be politically difficult for the agency to increase the allocation of certificates for German Jews because the keenest Zionists were the Poles while Germans were less welcome.62 For example, according to the French consul in Jerusalem, out of the quota of 32,977 immigrants to Palestine for the year from 1 April 1933, only 1,000 places were reserved for refugees from Germany.63 The proviso in the allocation for Germans was that they should emi­ grate directly from Germany to Palestine (many transiting through France), whereas the French wanted an allocation of visas for German Jewish refugees who were already in France.64 The official published figures for immigration to Palestine were based on the country of previous abode, but it is not clear whether Jews from Germany, holding French identity cards, were classified as coming from France or Germany.65 In 1936, out of the number of immi­ grants to Palestine from Europe, only‘556 were from France, compared with other origins that were higher: 11,365 from Poland, 7,738 from Germany, 1,866 from Romania, 866 from Greece, 818 from the Netherlands and 787 from Lithuania. French numbers for the following years were smaller. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that because the emigrants categorised as coming from France were less than 2 per cent of the overall emigration, the figure of French emigrants was for French citizens and did not include German refugees who had sought refuge in France and had residence permits. No figures were found of how many of the 40,000 refugees who left France between 1933 and 1938 settled in Palestine. The Quai’s request to the British authorities to increase the quota for Palestine seems to have been based on general principle rather than detailed figures. Up to 1936, the British Colonial Office’s policy was that the increase in Jewish immigration should be in line with the economic capacity of Palestine to absorb new entrants, but since 1929 British had tempered this policy because of Arab riots protesting about excessive Jewish immigration and the

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purchase of land by Zionist organisations. The Commission of Inquiry into the riots published the Passfield White Paper which recommended a curb on Jewish immigration.66 The governor of Palestine, Sir John Chancellor, attempted to restrict immigration but there was so much opposition from Zionists, public opinion in the UK and from the Permanent Mandates Commission of the LON, coupled with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s need to maintain internal unity in the Labour Party and cross-party support that the government reversed the policy, forcing Chancellor into a humiliat­ ing backdown.67 And whereas until 1933, Jewish immigration to Palestine had been the positive free choice of Zionists, now the persecution of Jews, first in Germany and then in Central European countries, led to a dramatic increase in numbers. Registered immigrants totalled 11,289 in 1932, 31,977 in 1933, 42,349 in 1934 and 64,147 in 1935. These figures did not include the substantial number of illegal immigrants.68 By 1935, British officials had become increasingly concerned that the growth of Jewish immigration to Palestine was damaging the UK’s relations with the Arab states, borne out by the new Arab revolt in Palestine, which started with a strike in the spring of 1936, and was finally suppressed in 1939.69 As a result, from 1936 British policy’s aim changed to cap Jewish immigration so that the Jews remained a minority.70 The Colonial Office’s target was to reduce the figure for immigra­ tion in 1936 to 40,000. In fact, in 1936 it was down to 31,671, and in 1937 to 12,475, though the numbers increased in 1938 and 1939 to 15,263 and 18,433, respectively.71 Historian Zara Steiner suggests that one of the reasons for the change in British immigration policy to the UK was to compensate for the changed policy regarding immigration to Palestine.72 In view of the new restriction, after 1936 there was little prospect of settle­ ment in Palestine for refugees already in France. The Quai did not pursue its case after its initial approach to the British authorities to ease the quota restrictions for Palestine, and the Jewish Agency for Palestine was concerned exclusively with the Jews in Germany.73

THE HCR As explained in chapter 8, the Quai originally wanted to use the LON for informal discussions about the distribution of the German refugees. The idea was that an unofficial clearing should be arranged with countries willing to give asylum. The Quai did not want to be tied down by formal international agreements, which would lead to the introduction of statutes and obligations that France would have to honour.74 There was the danger also that an official organisation to help refugees would encourage the Reich to expel more Jews and political opponents.

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A meeting of countries bordering Germany was held in Geneva in September 1933 in preparation for the LON General Assembly.75 The French set out their aims in a memorandum.76 They were: to examine an increase in the quota for Palestine and outlets for refugees, in England and its dominions, Spain, the United States and South America; to examine whether a central organisation should be set up to coordinate the work of the bordering coun­ tries, such as collecting information, negotiating with the British government and negotiating with Germany; and to coordinate what to say at the LON Assembly. However, the Quai had to abandon its initiative when the Dutch govern­ ment, supported by the Norwegians, proposed the establishment of the HCR. The Quai’s intention then was that the HCR should not become a permanent solution to what it saw as a temporary problem and that the HCR should concern itself only with refugees from Germany and not extend its remit to other nationalities.77 Although the Quai changed its position about informal discussions, it still wanted a fair distribution of refugees and expected the HCR to help achieve it. Fouques-Duparc wrote a note on 1 October that pointed out the importance of adopting the same lines of argument in the separate debates that would take place in Geneva: the questions of Palestine and minorities that would come up in the debates in the Sixth Committee and the question of refugees that would take place in the Second Committee.78 He suggested that the distribu­ tion of refugees to countries that had yet to receive any was less unrealistic than it seemed. The problem, he said, was due not to ill will but to a lack of administrative arrangements for which a central organisation was essential.79 Realistically, however, there was little prospect of help for France from the HCR. The Quai wanted the HCR to arrange a fairer distribution of refugees, but it was not willing to provide the HCR with funds. The HCR considered its mission was to search for countries of settlement for refugees wanting to leave Germany, not France. The British and other delegates on the Governing Board thought that the French should keep the refugees who were already in France. The coun­ tries represented on the Governing Board were Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, the United States and Uruguay. Argentina, Spain, Brazil and Belgium did not send delegates to the first Board meetings. There was also an Advisory Committee composed of representatives of nineteen principal relief organisations and NGOs concerned with German refugees. The minutes of the meetings of the HCR Governing and Advisory Committee show how the French wanted the HCR to help in the redistribu­ tion but at the same time refused to give it financial support. And instead even of moral support both Bérenger and Helbronner, the French delegates, vented

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their frustration by bullying the HCR.80 At the meeting of the HCR Governing Board on 5 December 1933, Bérenger used hyperbole to stress his point. He warned of more refugees to come, that the problem was only just beginning and ‘France finds itself, once more, the frontier of liberty’ and it was helping refugees with charity by settlement in French colonies (which was not true). He said that French hospitality and the number of refugees in the country were becoming overextended and too great to support. Other countries had to help. Hard times were universal as was the problem of the refugees and whereas France had taken in almost half the refugees from Germany, the United States and other countries in the American continent had received hardly any. He urged them to take their share adding, curiously, that financial aid was secondary. He concluded that one of the original intentions of setting up the HCR was that all member countries that could offer work to refugees should support it.81 The Quai was not alone in wanting a fairer distribution.82 The idea was sup­ ported by Norman Bentwich, McDonald’s deputy, and the Quakers who had recommended the imposition of a quota system for the distribution of refugees among several countries. Unsurprisingly, apart from the Quai it received no support.83 The other delegates expressed concern but avoided commitments. Cecil stated that broadly speaking the European countries were full. Palestine had done and would continue to do what was reasonably possible. However, it was small and tightly controlled by its own administration. He could not commit the British dominions. Alberto Guani, the Uruguayan representative on the Board, hoped that Brazil and Argentina, both countries having been nominated to sit on the Board, would send delegates to the next meeting and that Latin America was ‘passionately attached to the principle of liberty and equality’.84 He continued that although Uruguay was too small to receive any refugees he anticipated that Brazil and Argentina would ease their immigra­ tion restrictions. The US representative was Joseph Chamberlain, who said that shunting refugees from one country to another was not the solution.85 The economic depression in the United States had created a difficult internal situa­ tion. Work on behalf of refugees must be based on reconstructing their lives, not charity. The task was to help countries to absorb the refugees and to this purpose his country would look favourably on raising funds through private organisations. His speech summarised his government’s position: it wanted the problem to be resolved, but that others should do it. The next day, Bérenger said that it was the responsibility of the HCR to take the distribution in hand, especially on the American continent.86 He complained that the American reaction to the problem was slow and inad­ equate. Americans had made some financial contribution but repeating the point made by Chamberlain he agreed that charity by itself was not enough and insisted that a constructive programme was required to settle families in

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areas in which they could establish colonies and earn a living. He accused the Americans of not having offered any land for colonisation. In preparation for the next Governing Board meeting in May 1934, McDonald wrote a memorandum to the French government in which he said he was planning to visit South America to find more work opportunities, but in the meantime the refugees had to be helped and protected while they waited. He pointed out that the French issue of work permits was ‘miserly’ and that unless France became more accommodating such behaviour would be adopted by other countries. He also complained of the harsh use of refoulement and of the refusal to extend the initial period of residence permits beyond six months.87 He made the point that HICEM, not the French government, had arranged the emigration of 250 refugees in France in transit to Palestine.88 The memorandum made clear that not only was it not a priority of the HCR to help France to resettle refugees in other countries but that McDonald considered France a country of refuge and in that respect it should behave more generously than had been the case. McDonald then reported to the Governing Board that he had made little progress regarding emigration and settlement and that it was not possible to organise big schemes of settlement.89 There were several plans for largescale settlement in Angola, Brazil, East Africa, Southwest Africa, Ecuador, Mexico, Turkey and Soviet Birobidzhan (in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast) but none had been carried out because there was no finance. The JCA had land available in Argentina but it was awaiting better economic conditions for agricultural and industrial settlement. According to McDonald, Palestine was the only country that offered an immediate opportunity for ‘colonisation’ on an appreciable scale.90 The meeting discussed Chamberlain’s theme of charity when McDonald explained that the question of resettlement involved more than simply moving refugees from one country to another. It meant dealing with governments for passports and identity papers. It meant specifying the conditions of immigration and the issue of work permits. He said that the HCR had to coordinate the work of the private organisations in all their func­ tions: relief, retraining, emigration and settlement, and fund-raising.91 At the Interministerial Commission meeting in Paris in June 1934, Helbronner stated that while the British were fully in agreement with the French position that the HCR should concern itself with the fair redistribution of refugees, the Zionists and the Americans believed that the French should keep the refugees who were already in France and that they were unwilling to help.92 He was wrong about the British. For example, a memorandum from the Home Office Aliens Department dated 11 September 1935 said that the proposal for redistribution should be resisted.93 However, the British did sup­ port the French position that LON protection should apply only to German refugees.94 Helbronner continued by repeating Bérenger’s attack on the HCR, that it had made hardly any progress in redistribution, whereas France had

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behaved diligently and done its duty in acting on the recommendations of the Governing Board. Expulsions were now subject to review by a special committee. Meetings had been arranged with the representatives in Paris of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. France could count on 400 certificates for immigration to Palestine and hoped that more would become available. He told McDonald in the subsequent meeting of the Advisory Committee in June 1934 that the HCR was set up to arrange a fair distribution of refugees and that it was simplistic to ask the countries to keep the refugees who had landed on their territory. Nor, as McDonald had wanted, was France prepared to take the lead in providing funds to pay for the administration of the HCR. He added that McDonald should concern himself only with the refugees and not with all the Jews in Germany.95 In the October 1934 Advisory Committee, Helbronner again lectured the meeting this time stating that France was ‘absolutely opposed to colonisation’ in southwest France, declaring that ‘the idea of colonising France must be abandoned’ - a statement that contradicted the position of the Ministry of Agriculture.96 The question of finance continued to be an obstacle. Clear instructions were given to Helbronner, who was to represent France at the HCR Governing Board meeting on 1 November 1934.97 In reply to McDonald’s proposal that that all the countries on the Governing Board contribute 600,000 francs each to cover the running costs of the HCR, the Quai’s note said that this must be declined because based on the meagre results that the HCR had so far achieved it was not deserved. The international community did not appreci­ ate the cost to France of giving asylum to so many refugees. Moreover, the HCR’s original terms of reference said that private or other voluntary sources were to meet its expenses. In addition to the administrative costs of running the HCR, the question of who should pay for the journeys and resettlement in South America or Africa was also a concern. A further note confirmed that private organisations should also bear these costs.98 McDonald visited South America in the spring of 1935. As with the Quai, the results were disappointing and from the French viewpoint provided little encouragement for resettlement. Whereas the Quai had preferred to use unof­ ficial approaches, McDonald as High Commissioner approached the govern­ ments of countries directly but had no more success than the Quai. The only positive reply was from Ecuador. He was fobbed off by other South American countries, which usually told him that his requests were being passed to the appropriate departments and that meant that they were being shelved. It was the same in other parts of the world. When approached by the HCR, the Italian, Portuguese, Belgian and Dutch refused access to their colonies while the United States said it was difficult to allow refugee settlement because of the economic crisis.

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McDonald approached the British, whose response was that their domin­ ions and colonies would permit settlement providing the immigrants had employment contracts and that the jobs could not be filled by British nation­ als, which was their way of saying that they were cool to the prospect of German refugee emigration to the dominions. E. N. Cooper had noted that the British must resist any proposal for a more equal distribution of refugees and that, in any case, given world unemployment, refugees who had jobs in France were unlikely to cooperate in resettling in other countries." Neither was the LON Council willing to help. Settlement was discussed at the March 1935 session of the LON Intergovernmental Advisory Commission at which the rapporteur complained that the LON Council was ignoring the advice of the Sixth Committee that it should approach overseas countries which might be willing to take in refugees.100 After McDonald’s resignation and the reorganisation of the HCR, the fun­ damental problem of the different interpretations of what the HCR was meant to be doing remained. The French continued to press for a fairer distribution of refugees. This was not Erim’s view. In May 1936 in preparation for the July LON Conference, Roger Makins, the British Foreign Office representa­ tive at the LON, reported a conversation with him: ‘The main object of the HCR’s work, at present, was to induce governments to keep the refugees in their territories and not to endeavour to get rid of them. The prospects of emigrating any considerable number of refugees were very bad; South American countries, due partly to fear of communists, were most unreceptive and money was very slow in coming in’.101 The British attitude was that even though the status of the refugees required an international solution, the HCR should not be responsible for settlement and relief, both of which depended on the economic situation of the countries of, refuge.102 Furthermore, the HCR should intervene with governments only when asked to do so; it should on no account undertake direct negotiations with the German government nor should private organisations be given official recognition.103 This was in opposition to the French, who wanted the HCR to intervene directly with governments to explore the possibilities of the distribution of refugees. The reconstituted HCR continued to work at cross-purposes to the aims of the French, not helping the refugees to leave France, which it continued to regard as a terminal destination. The HCR report to the 18th LON Assembly in September 1937 declared that the Commission would persist in its efforts to find countries willing to give asylum to Jews wanting to leave Germany while noting that it was becoming more and more difficult.104 And the recently formed Liaison Committee of the HCR passed a resolution also in September 1937,105 requesting the HCR work together with the Secretary of the Committee to achieve it.106

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SUPPORT OF CARITATIVE ORGANISATIONS CAR’s first circular in August 1933 aligned its policy on settlement with the Quai and Bérenger: Tn close collaboration with the HICEM, we propose to send overseas all refugees who may be able to settle there. We are aware that craftsmen, and industrial and commercial professionals may be able to find jobs in Brazil, or Uruguay where, despite the crisis, the possibilities of settle­ ment are quite real at present’.107 The Comité National’s Secretary-general Raymond-Raoul Lambert, who represented the liberal faction of the French Jewish community, was more sympathetic to the refugees than Helbronner.108 Nevertheless, Lambert’s evidence in Geneva to the LON’s 'Committee for International Assistance for Refugees' {'Comité pour l’Assistance Internationale aux Réfugiés') in December 1935 revealed that he thought that the refugees could not subsist in Europe and that the task of a new refugee office should be to open fresh possibilities for emigration to Latin America and Palestine where priority should be given to the Germans.109 The evidence given at the hearings, which disregarded the offence to Latin American selfesteem of being treated as a colony,110 reiterated the widely held opinion that Latin America provided the best opportunity for settlement.111 At the same hearing, Oungre, representing the JCA, explained yet again that German Jews tended to be urban citizens who were less suited to agricultural work than Jews from Central Europe. He said that refugees were aware that their stay in France was temporary and that the majority wanted to emigrate to countries in which they could find permanent establishment. Argentina pre­ sented immense opportunities. Brazil had allowed the entry of 200-300 refu­ gees a month. Other underpopulated countries included Australia and Canada. These countries opposed the entry of unemployed immigrants, but private Jewish associations would support their co-religionists so that they would not be a burden on the state. Despite these arguments, countries continued to refuse admission even to refugees who would set up businesses that would employ locals and contribute to the wealth of the country. The main problem, he said, was public opinion.112 However, no doubt with Palestine in mind, Sir Horace Rumbold, the British member of the Comité pour l’Assistance (The Relief Committee), was insistent that it was not the Committee’s job to tell countries how many refugees they should take in.113 And Nahum Goldman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine contradicted Oungre by pointing out that most of the refugees preferred to stay in Europe.114 Bérenger may have judged the position correctly when he insisted that pri­ vate organisations should and could bear the costs of resettlement, were best placed for this and bullied them to perform. He intended his rhetoric as much for them as for the international community. As of July 1938 the JDC reported that the amount spent by private charitable organisations on colonisation and

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emigration was £2,875,544.115 Jewish caritative organisations were better able to arrange for overseas settlement than the HCR or indeed the French government. Jewish groups were well funded and well organised in the overseas countries chosen for settlement. Indeed, constrained by the French government’s refusal to provide funds the Quai probably understood that its work to resettle refugees in overseas countries was ancillary and it treated the instructions to its embassies and legations as pro forma.

COLONIES The Quai’s proposals that German Jewish refugees, as a group, might be settled in French colonies were rejected for a variety of reasons either by other ministries in Paris or by the local administrations. Political refugees as individuals, many not Jewish, were not part of these debates. In a letter with instructions to its London ambassador who was to attend the forthcoming May 1934 meeting of the Governing Board of the HCR, the Quai said that a way could be found of interpreting the conditions of the 1919 Versailles Treaty to allow German Jews residence in Morocco whereas Jewish settlement in other French mandates and protectorates was not possible.116 For example, Jewish settlement in Syria and Tunisia was rejected because it would provoke anti-Semitic hostility and for the same reason the Moroccan proposal was not followed up. The JDC study reporting on the possibilities of settlement in the French colonial empire confirmed that French North Africa had received very few Jewish immigrants and there was no immigration to French West, Equatorial and East Africa. The Commissioner of New Hebrides issued a report that settlement was possible provided the colonists possessed enough means, but this was an exception. Other colonial administrations resisted the pressure from the central government to use their territories for settlement, pointing out there was no money to house the refugees, there was no work for them and large-scale immigration presented social problems.117 Paris rejected other proposals. In 1935, the government considered Inini in French Guyana but abandoned the proposal as being too far away, too inhospitable and too expensive because public opinion would not accept the cost. New Caledonia offered opportunities for settlement but also rejected it as too expensive because it was very far from Europe.118 Although not a colony the Quai had suggested Corsica but this time the Ministry of the Interior objected.119 The French, Germans, Poles, Japanese and even the British all investi­ gated Madagascar as seeming to have good possibilities for settlement, par­ ticularly for Jews. In the 1870s, the German nationalist Paul de Lagarde’s120 proposal for ridding Germany of its Jews by sending them to Madagascar was endorsed by some Jews because of their supposed ancestry with the

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Malagasy.121 Because its governors vetoed every suggestion it is surprising that other delegations were allowed to prospect the island. In 1926, when the Polish ambassador to France, Count Alfred Chlapowski, sounded out the pos­ sibility of sending some of Poland’s surplus population to Madagascar, the Governor-general, Marcel Olivier, told him that the island was not suitable for colonisation.122 The Japanese sent a commission to the island in 1927 with the same result. In 1937, there were projects for the settlement of German refugees from France and Jews from Germany, Poland and central Europe. Léon Cayla, Governor-general from 1930 to 1939 and again in 1940 having sided with the Vichy regime, vetoed all of them. An article in Le Petit Parisien of 16 January 1937 reported that Moutet, by then Minister of Colonies in the PF, had had talks with the Jewish community about settlement in the French colonies. The article pointed out that Jews were excellent colonialists as had been shown in Palestine and despite the need for funds, the risk of political tensions and the inhospitable climate, the project was worth investigating. There were good possibilities in the Madagascan highlands, perhaps also in New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and even Guyana. Finance could be made available.123 The article was circulated in Poland where it created a stir, again raising the question of Polish settlement, this time more seriously.124 Josef Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, told the French ambassador in Warsaw, Léon Noel, that Poland might send some of its three million Jews to Madagascar. Noel relayed this to Léger, who replied that Moutet’s idea was still being investigated and that there were, as Moutet had said, financial, political and climatic difficulties to be overcome.125 Léger also wrote to Moutet to tell him of the excitement the report had caused in Poland and warning him that it might provoke German intervention.126 Moutet promised to investigate carefully pointing out that the main problem was that considerable funds were required.127 The discussion now included Jewish colonisation not only from Poland but also from Romania and other Eastern European countries as well as from France itself. Almost one year later, in December 1937, Moutet informed the Quai that the Polish commis­ sion, which Beck had sent to investigate, identified one area in Madagascar that could be colonised and that 30,000 Poles could be settled there.128 Moutet had meanwhile been replaced by the new Minister of Colonies, Theodore Steeg (1868-1950), who asked the Quai for a detailed report. It said that the colonisation of Madagascar presented problems, one of which was adaption to the climate. Another was the likelihood that immigrants would not remain in the countryside because they were not manual workers, had insufficient capital and might move to urban areas. Failure would be the responsibility of the administration and invite bad press; therefore, it was better to concentrate on South America. In the end, Cayla also vetoed this project.129

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The British, although they had the largest empire in the world, had also become interested in Madagascar for diverting Jewish settlement from Palestine. In April 1938, the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax, sounded out the Quai.130 The Quai passed the enquiry to Steeg’s successor at the Ministry of Colonies, Georges Mandel (1885-1944), who replied that it was a bad idea. It was expensive; he questioned where the immigrants could go if the settlement were unsuccessful and who would pay for their repatriation and upkeep. There were also political problems. By granting the Jewish emi­ grants a special status, France would be agreeing with the governments of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Romania that the Jews were an alien population, which would encourage more persecution and contribute to a greater exodus. France had an obligation to interest itself in the destiny of the oppressed and in addition to provide them with a livelihood to enable them to prosper. Madagascar did not fulfil these requirements. Finally, there was the danger that if the colonisation were successful Poland and Germany might make claims on territory occupied and developed by their ex-citizens.131 De Lagarde’s idea was revived by the German government in June 1938 when Alfred Rosenberg proposed Madagascar as a place for the settlement of Jews.132 It was developed as the Madagascar Project in July 1940 by Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.133 Further elaboration by Adolf Eichmann134 planned that over four years four million Jews would be sent to the island to be governed as a police state.135 The project was not executed because there were no ships available for transport and in 1942 the British seized the island. Madagascar, a large underpopulated island some 400 kilometres from the East African coast, was considered as a suitable dumping ground for excess Jewish populations. And yet none of the projects came to fruition due, in the last resort, to the veto of the island’s all-p’owerful governors. In 1940, the French colonial governors had the absolute authority to decide whether to align their colony to De Gaulle or Vichy. Cayla sided with Vichy. In 1946, he was tried for collaboration, found guilty and imprisoned for five years.

NOTES 1. ANF7 16079, 27 mai 1933. 2. AN F7 16079, Procès-verbal de la réunion interministérielle (Minutes of the Interministerial meeting), 13 juin 1934. 3. See Introduction and chapter 1. Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p. 10. 4. See the Introduction. Hope-Simpson estimated that of the 80,000 German refugees who arrived in the five years 1933-1938, 40,000 left to settle elsewhere.

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5. See the report for the JCA by Georges Aronstein, La Colonisation en Argentine (Paris: Jewish Colonial Association, mai 1935), p. 455. 6. AN AJ 43 13 OIR 28, Report by the American Joint Distribution Committee, 11 July 1939. 7. See chapter 8. 8. AN F7 14823, Police Générale, ‘Note sur l’application de l’article 2 Alinéa 2 du Décret du 2 mai 1938 (Accueil des Réfugiés Politiques)’ (Note on the applica­ tion of Article 2 Paragraph 2 of the Decree of 2 May 1938). (Reception of Political Refugees). 9. AN F7 16079, 15 octobre 1933. 10. There is no evidence that the Quai did, in fact, propose this. 11. AN F7 16079, 23 octobre 1933. 12. This is a confused question. The author’s parents emigrated from Germany to the UK in 1933, with their furniture and his paternal grandmother followed in 1935 also with her furniture. His maternal grandparents emigrated in 1938 without their furniture. 13. See chapter 3. 14. MAE Z 710, ‘Note de la Sous-direction des Unions à la Direction Politique’ (Note from the Sous-direction des Unions to the Direction Politique). 6 juillet 1933, p. 166. 15. AN F7 16079, 23 mai 1934. 16. MAE SDN 446, 29 mai 1933, pp. 148^19. 17. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Réponse au Président de la Commission des Affaires Étrangères de la Chambre’ (Reply to the President of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chamber). No date but probably November 1935, p. 211. 18. LON R5628 20A, August-November 1935. 19. In January 1932. 20. MAE SDN 431, ‘Réfugiés allemands’, télégramme (German refugees, tele­ gram) 25 mai 1933, p. 21. 21. MAE SDN 431, lettre, 14 June 1933. 22. NA FO 371 1936, Letter 25 March 1936 from the Governor of Newfoundland. 23. American Jewish Yearbook, vol. 42 (1940/41), Table XXV. Gilbert gives the number as 6,000 in The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p. 10. 24. MAE SDN 431, letter, 1 June 1933, p. 30. Gilbert states that by 1940, as many as 20,000 German Jewish refugees went to Shanghai. The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p. 10. 25. MAE SDN 431, Télégramme, 27 mai 1933, p. 22. 26. MAE SDN 431, Télégramme, 30 mai 1933, p. 29. 27. MAE SDN431, Lettre, 29 mai 1933, pp. 27-28. 28. MAE SDN431, Télégramme, 13 juin 1933, p. 35. 29. MAE SDN431, Lettre, 16 septembre 1933, pp. 71-73. 30. MAE SDN431, Télégramme, 2 juin 1933, pp. 31-33. 31. MAE SDN 1819, Lettre, 26 janvier 1935, pp. 29-31. 32. MAE SDN 431, Télégramme, 11 juin 1933, p. 34. 33. MAE SDN 431, Télégramme, 11 juin 1933, p. 46.

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34. MAE SDN 1806 M, ‘Questions Sociales Réfugiés’ (Social questions with reference to refugees) 13 juin 1935, pp. 57-58. 35. MAE SDN 1819, note 21 janvier 1935, p. 28. 36. MAE SDN 1819, Lettre, 12 février 1935, pp. 40-42. 37. MAE SDN 1819, Lettre du Ministère de l’intérieure au MAE (Letter from the Ministry of the Interior to the MAE) 22 décembre 1934, pp. 24-27. 38. AN AJ 43 13 OIR Reports JDC, June 1938. The JDC stated that ‘The reports were based on the declarations made by the representatives of various govern­ ments, chiefly of South American Republics, the Conference on Immigration and Colonisation held under the auspices of the LON in February and March 1938, as well as summaries of investigations into the possibilities of settlement carried out by officials of the International Labour Office, and finally, various projects submitted to Jewish bodies during recent years, and reports of experts appointed by those bodies.’ 39. Some estimates vary considerably between the JDC and the American Jewish Yearbook. 40. Herbert A. Strauss in Jewish Emigration from Germany Nazi Policies and Jewish Responses (II) gives a detailed analysis of Latin American countries’ attitudes to the refugees. However, he says that ‘reliable data on the integration of immigrants and of their children are absent’. At https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article-abstract/ 26/1/343/939841/. Accessed on 28 July 2019, p 363. 41. Gilbert has compiled figures for the emigration of German refugees between 1933 and 1938 which, for some countries, are much greater. For example, Argentina 63,500, Bolivia 7,000, South Africa 26,100. See Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p. 10. 42. American Jewish Yearbook, vol. 42, 1940/41. Table XXIX gives the figure of 17,835 Jewish immigrants between 1933 and 1938. 43. Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p 10. 44. American Jewish Yearbook, vol. 42, 1940/41. Table XXVII gives the figure of 15,070 Jewish immigrants between 1933 and 1938. 45. AN AJ 43 13 OIR Reports JDC, June 1938; Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p. 10. 46. American Jewish Yearbook, vol. 42, 1940/41, Table XXX. 47. Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p. 10. 48. The Department of Statistics of the Jewish Agency for Palestine gives the number for Jewish immigration into Palestine from Germany during 1933-1938 as 45,089, meaning 24 per cent of the total immigration. This figure includes the esti­ mate that 5,028 were registered travellers and immigrants via other places: JDC file 766, Bulletin no. 3, February 1939. There is a big discrepancy with Gilbert, who says that 33,377 German refugees emigrated to Palestine between 1933 and 1938: The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust, map 16, p. 10. 49. MAE Z 710, ‘Réfugiés Israélites 1933-1939’ (Jewish refugees 1933-1939) 30 août, p. 256. 50. MAE Z 710, Note, 30 août 1933, pp. 255-58. 51. MAE SDN 451, ‘Réfugiés allemands. Questions qui pourraient être envisagés dans la réunion des pays limitrophes de l’Allemagne’ (German refugees. Questions

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that could come up in the meeting of countries bordering Germany) 26 septembre 1933, pp. 79-80. 52. MAE SDN 1819, Letttre du Service Français de la SDN à Roger Cambon, Paris (Letter from the Service Français de la SDN to Roger Cambon), Paris 8 septem­ bre 1933, pp. 15-20. Copies were sent to Berlin, Brussels, The Hague, Copenhagen, Berne, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, The Vatican, Oslo and Stockholm. 53. AN F7 16079, 15 octobre 1933. 54. MAE SDN 451, Lettre, 28 septembre 1933, pp 84-88. 55. See Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Chapter 5. 56. MAE SDN 1800, ‘Note à la Sous-direction de la SDN’ (Note to the Sousdirection de la SDN). 8 mai 1935, pp. 172-78. 57. MAE SDN 1899, Lettre du Haute Commissaire (Letter from the High Commissioner), 8 mai 1935 pp. 184-85. 58. MAE SDN 1800, Lettre de M. Kammenger à M. de Martel (Letter from M. Kammenger to M. de Martel), 6 septembre 1935, pp. 191-93. 59. The Governing Board had a subcommittee, the Permanent Governing Board. 60. NA FO 371 1935, Letter from Wurfbain to the Foreign Office, 25 October 1935. 61. See Sjoberg, The Power and the Persecuted. 62. NA CO 323, LON 1936, The Assistance Internationale aux Réfugiés’ deposi­ tion to the Interministerial meeting, 15 January 1936. According to Aviva Halamish, of the total Jewish immigration into Palestine during the period 1932-1938, 46.2 per cent were from Poland and 19.7 per cent from Germany and Austria: Aviva Halamish, ‘Palestine as a Destination for Jewish Immigrants’, in Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore (eds), Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States (New York: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 122-50. 63. Plus 800 for tourists who decided to stay; MAE Z 711, Lettre du Consul Général de France à Jérusalem à Monsieur le Ministre des Affaires Étrangères) (Letter from the ‘Consul General of France in Jerusalem to the Minister of Foreign Affairs’) 28 avril 1933, pp. 89-90. 64. MAE Z 711, Lettre du Ministre des Affaires Étrangères à Monsieur Corbin, Ambassadeur de la République Française à Londres (Letter from the Minister of Foreign Affairs to M. Corbin, French Ambassador in London) 17 octobre 1933, p. 32. 65. Immigrants to Palestine who transited through France on their way from Germany to Palestine were classified as immigrants from Germany. The assumption was that the interministerial instruction meant the German Jewish refugees in France, not Jews in Germany. 66. Cmd 3530 1930, Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929. 67. Carly Beckerman-Boys, ‘The Reversal of the Passfield White Paper, 1930-1: A Reassessment’, Journal of Contemporary History 51(2) (2016), pp. 213-33. See also Penny Sinanoglou, ‘British Plans for the Partition of Palestine 1929-1938’, The Historical Journal 52(1) (2009), pp. 131-52.

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68. See the tables in A Survey of Palestine, prepared by the British Mandate in December 1945 and January 1946 for the information of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, vol. I, Chapter VII (London: HMSO, 1946). 69. Pedersen, The Guardians, Chapter 12. 70. Matthew Hughes, ‘Palestinian Collaboration with the British: The Peace Bands and the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939’, Journal of Contemporary History 51(2) (2016), pp. 291-315. 71. See the tables in A Survey of Palestine. These numbers differ slightly from those given by Aviva Halamish. 72. Zara Steiner, ‘Refugees: The Timeless Problem’ in Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch. Refugees in Europe 1919-1959 (London: Bloomsbury Academic 2019), p. 27. 73. The British White Paper of 17 May 1939 effectively put a moratorium on Jewish emigration to Palestine. 74. MAE Z 710, Note, ‘Allemagne’, 24 août 1933, pp 248-51. 75. 14th General Assembly, 23 September-11 October 1933. 76. MAE SDN 451, ‘Réfugiés allemands. Questions qui pourraient être envisagés dans la réunion des pays limitrophes de l’Allemagne’ (German refugees. Questions that could come up in the meeting of countries bordering Germany) 26 septembre 1933, pp. 79-80. 77. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Note pour Monsieur le Sénateur Henry Bérenger’ (Note for the Senator Henry Bérenger) 12 septembre 1935, pp. 72-74. 78. MAE SDN 451, Note, 1 octobre 1933, pp. 98-108. 79. See chapter 8. 80. For example, see the entry for 15 October 1935, in McDonald et al., Refugees and rescue, pp. 48-50. 81. LON C16165135 12 1933, Minutes of the HCR Governing Board. 82. MAE Z 711, Rapport de Massigli (Massigli’s report) 5 décembre 1933, pp. 10-12. 83. JDC AR 344000516, Meeting of the Governing Board, Lausanne, 5 December 1933. 84. Uruguayan ambassador to France and representative at the LON. 85. Professor of Public Law at Columbia University, 1923-1950. 86. LON C 1616 513 6 12 1933, Minutes of the HCR Governing Board. 87. The French government’s position changed in March 1938. Chautemps and Serre were prepared to grant longer residence permits to refugees already in France who were willing to be useful to the country by working in agriculture in the South West. The offer applied only to refugees already in France so as not to attract a new influx from abroad. 88. LON C 1609 59-53 506, HCR, ‘Draft Memorandum for the French Government Concerning the Refugees from Germany’, 24 April 1934. 89. LON C 1616, ‘Report to the second meeting of the Governing Board’, held in London, 2-4 May 1934. 90. Colonisation, to mean settlement, was the expression often used by Eurocentric administrators.

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91. LON C 1616 2-4 5 1934, Minutes of the HCR Governing Board, London, attended by Corbin and Roland de Margerie from the London Embassy of France. 92. AN F7 16079, Procès-verbal de la réunion de la commission interministéri­ elle (Minutes of the Interministerial Commission meeting). 13 juin 1934. 93. NA FO 371 19678 1935, Note, 11 September 1935. Signed by E. N. Cooper, principal in the Aliens Department of the Home Office. 94. NA FO 371 19678 1935, pp. 279-89. 95. JDC AR 334400056754, High Commission for Refugees (Jewish and Other) coming from Germany. Minutes of the Extraordinary Meeting of the Advisory Committee, Paris, 18 June 1934. 96. LON C 1616 5, Meeting of the Advisory Commission, 29-30 October 1934. 97. MAE Z 711 Copie d’une lettre adressée à M. Helbronner (Copy of a letter addressed to M. Helbronner) 27 octobre 1934, pp. 241-46. 98. See MAE SDN 1806, ‘Réponse au Président de la Commission des Affaires Etrangères de la Chambre’ (Reply to the President of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chamber). No date, but probably late October 1935, pp. 187-210. 99. NA FO 371 20480, Conversation, 14 May 1936, p. 143. 100. LON C 200 1935.XÜ, 16 May 1935. 101. NA HO 213 1631, Home Office, German Refugees general instructions, 1936; Note, Refugee Conference, 14 May 1936. 102. NA FO 371 W 10548 172 98, Memorandum concerning the Refugee Question, 1 September 1936. 103. NA FO 371 20482 1936, Report of Viscount Robert Cranborne’s (Joint Parliamentary Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) conversation with Malcolm, 24 September 1936. 104. LON A 17 1937 XII, 17 September 1937. 105. Information Service issued by the International Bureau for the Right of Asylum and Aid to Political Refugees. Minutes of the meeting of the Liaison Committee of the High Commission of the LON for Refugees coming from Germany, 22 September 1937, Annexe 2. The Committee was set up in 1936. 106. Nathan Katz, European Secretary of the JDC. 107. Comité national de secours aux réfugiés allemands victimes de l’antisémitisme, Circular no. 1, 13 août 1933. 108. See Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 106-07. 109. LON CAIRPV1, 18 December 1935. 110. McDonald et al., Advocate for the Doomed, p. 381. 111. LON CAIRPV1, 18 December 1935. 112. LON CAIRPV1, 18 December 1935. 113. LON CAIR PV1, 18 December 1935. 114. LON CAIR PV1, 18 December 1935. 115. In today’s value about £141,000,000. From 1933 to 1938, the JCA spent £800,000 on the emigration of Jews from Germany. See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org (Accessed 31 July 2017).

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116. MAE Z 711 Copie d’une lettre à l’ambassadeur de la France à Londres (Copy of a letter to the Ambassador of France in London), 30 avril 1934, pp. 197— 202. The Versailles Treaty concerning Morocco was in Part IV Section V Articles 141-46. 117. Anne Hugon, ‘Les colonies, un refuge pour les juifs? Le cas de la Gold Coast’, Vingtième Siècle 84 (octobre-décembre 2004), pp. 23-41. 118. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Réponse au Président de la Commission des Affaires Etrangères de la Chambre’ (Reply to the President of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chamber) no date but probably November 1935, p. 211. 119. MAE Z 711, Allemagne. Note pour le Sous-direction d’Europe (Germany. Note for the Sous-direction d’Europe), 12 juin 1934, pp. 220-21. 120. See Hans Jansen, Der Madagaskar Plan: Die beabsichtige Deportation der europäischen Juden nach Madagaskar (The Madagascar Plan: The Potential Deportation of European Jews to Madagascar) (Munich: Langen-Mueller Herbig, 1997), pp. 43-51. 121. Eric Jennings, ‘Writing Madagascar Back into the Madagascar Plan’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 21(2) (Fall), pp 187-217. 122. This may have been a part of the Polish colonial vision. See Piotr Puchalski, ‘The Polish Mission to Liberia 1934-1938: Constructing Poland’s Colonial Identity’, The Historical Journal 60(4) (December 2017), pp. 1071-96. 123. Le Petit Parisien, 62éme année, 01.672, 16 janvier 1937. 124. MAE SDN 453, Télégrammes de Léon Noel (Telegrams from Léon Noel) 17 janvier 1937, pp. 13-17; lettre (Letter) 18 janvier 1937, pp. 18-19. 125. MAE SDN 453, Télégramme de Léger (Telegram from Léger) 19 février 1937, p. 20. 126. MAE SDN 453, Lettre, 22 janvier 1937, pp. 21-23. 127. MAE SDN 453, Lettre, 16 février 1937, pp. 24-25. 128. MAE SDN453, Lettre, 23 décembre 1937, pp. 42^3. 129. MAE SDN 453, Lettre du gouverneur-général de Madagascar à Henri Guernut (Letter from the Governor General of Madagascar to Henri Guernut). 22 janvier 1938, pp. 56-58. Also, Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 309. 130. NA FO 371 21876 2570. He was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from February 1938 to December 1940. 131. MAE SDN 450, ‘Minorités en Allemagne’, Lettre (Minorities in Germany, Letter) 25 mai 1938, pp. 93-94. 132. Nazi party ideologue and racial theorist. In 1934, he became the Fuehrer’s Delegate for Spiritual and Ideological Training (Ideologischer Beauftragter von Hitler). In 1941, he was appointed Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Leiter Das Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete). 133. See ‘The Nazis & the Jews: The Madagascar Plan’ (3 July 1940), Jewish Virtual Library, at https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-madagascar-plan-2 . See also ‘Der Madagaskar-Plan’ at http://www.ns-archiv.de/imt/ps2401-ps2600/2586-ps. php/ (accessed 15 April 2017). 134. SS-Obersturmbannführer. In 1938, he was appointed head of the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung).

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135. Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler in History (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1984), p. 49. See also Magnus Brechtken, Madagaskarfür die Juden: Antisemitische Idee und politische Praxis 1885-1945 (Oldenburg: Wissenschaftsverlag, 1998); Jansen, Der Madagaskar Plan-, Leni Yahil, ‘Madagascar: Phantom of a Solution for the Jewish Question’, in George Mosse and Belga Vago (eds), Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918-1945 (New York: Wiley, 1974), pp. 315-34.

Chapter 10

International Agreements

The narrative in Geneva was that the LON set up the HCR in October 1933 as the agency responsible for the German refugees.1 When it became clear that the HCR was unable to fulfil its mission and that McDonald was intent on resigning, and he duly did so on 31 December 1935, the LON designated a committee of experts to advise on the future structure of the HCR and the Nansen Office. Following its report, McDonald was replaced by Sir Neill Malcolm and by February 1936 the new High Commissioner of the restruc­ tured HCR was operating.2 Malcolm called a Conference in Geneva in July 1936 to agree a convention for refugees from Germany. There followed the LON resolutions concerning the status of refugees coming from Germany, the Provisional Arrangement in July 1936 and the Convention in February 1938.3 The Quai used its authority at the LON to ensure that the Arrangement of 1936 and the Convention of 1938 concerned only the refugees from Germany and that both the Arrangement and the Convention included in their Articles that the distribution of the refugees should be shared on an equitable basis between the member countries.4 The Quai achieved both its goals. However, the latter, to be effective, required the cooperation of the other SDN members, which was not forthcoming. Nevertheless, the failure of the strategy did not detract from French insistence and public opinion in the United Kingdom and the United States eventually came to the rescue when both countries opened their borders from the second half of 1938. Although the PF was more concerned for the plight of the refugees than previous governments, their fate was secondary to more important problems that preoccupied Blum’s government and the Quai continued to dictate refu­ gee policy. The Quai suggested the amnesty of August 1936 as a gesture to the politics of the new government,5 but it did not satisfy the political left and the caritative organisations who criticised the PF for not introducing more 205

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liberal measures.6 While the PF gave a higher profile to French refugee policy than the previous governments it did not substantially change it.

THE NORWEGIAN PROPOSAL TO EXTEND LON PROTECTION TO ALL REFUGEES

As noted, the Quai succeeded in rejecting the proposal that the LON should extend Nansen protection to all refugees and this was confirmed by the Council in May 1934.7 Although the Quai had been able to ward it off, the pressure persisted. A year later, Avenol issued his opinion which matched the Quai’s position.8 He maintained that it was the memory of the work of the Nansen Office that was at the origin of the idea to extend protection to all refugees. That work had been accomplished during a period of prosper­ ity and generosity and was completed when Nansen died. Although the Assembly decided that the Nansen Office was to continue its operations until the end of 1938, in the interim Avenol’s opinion was that it would be better not to raise the hopes of the refugees because the cost of helping them was beyond the means of the member states. Furthermore, the political situation in the countries from which refugees fled was an internal matter: the LON could not compromise its neutrality. Countries like France which harboured a disproportionate number of refugees would not see any advantage in hav­ ing their sovereignty further compromised by restricting their right to expel. Avenol concluded that it would be inopportune to ask the LON to adopt an international statute for refugees. The debate about whether the LON should protect refugees from all ori­ gins by extending the remit of the Nansen Office or by establishing a new office continued. Massigli wrote in August 1935 in preparation for the LON September General Assembly that the initiative to reform and strengthen the LON’s refugee organisation came from McDonald himself because his mis­ sion had failed. Together with Cecil, McDonald was pushing for the revival and extension of the Nansen Office with the remit to protect all categories of refugees. The British Foreign Office, Massigli said, could not ignore the pres­ sure of public opinion and Jewish associations that were disappointed with the performance of the HCR.9 Norway, which considered itself the successor to Nansen’s legacy, assumed the torch. Even though there was no Norwegian delegate on the LON Advisory Commission,10 the newly elected Norwegian Labour govern­ ment decided to press the LON to protect all refugees.11 On 17 May 1935, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Halvdan Koht, circulated his ‘Tentative propos­ als for the Establishment of a Central League Organisation for Refugees’.12 The proposal identified the inadequacy of both the Nansen Office and the

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HCR to provide minimum legal protection for refugees, which discouraged the private organisations that provided the funds for the relief and settle­ ment. It said that any solution of the problem was impossible without a fair distribution of the refugees: France and Czechoslovakia were forced to bear too heavy a burden. The current piecemeal arrangements caused confusion and were a threat to world peace. The solution was to establish a ‘Central League Organisation for Refugees and Stateless Persons’ under the auspices of the LON, which would deal with the needs of refugees by providing legal protection (identity papers, residence and work permits) and facilitating secu­ rity for migration. This was to be done by the appointment of a LON High Commissioner for Refugees, the establishment of a special fund for settlement and relief known as the Nansen Refugee Fund, and machinery to coordinate the work of the LON and private bodies. He attached an explanatory memo­ randum, ‘Assistance to International Refugees’.13 The memorandum repeated the call for a central organisation that would solve the following problems: first, the closure of the Nansen Office in 1938; second, the HCR not being under the control of the LON and receiving no assistance from governments; third, the absence of any provision for the many refugees that did not come within the scope of the existing international organisations; and fourth, the fact that no provision was being made for some 100,000 stateless persons. Koht followed this up on 27 June with a formal request to the Secretary­ general to include the matter in the agenda of the sixteenth Ordinary Session of the LON Assembly.14 In the meantime, on 18 June, Cecil had arranged a meeting in London attended by Eden, Cranbome and Helbronner to impress on the British gov­ ernment the advantages of the Norwegian proposal.15 Cecil told the meeting that he had talked to Erik Colban, the Norwegian envoy in London, who confirmed that the Norwegians would 'bring the question up in the next Assembly.16 Eden and Cranborne wanted a reassurance that it would not involve a request for new funds. Helbronner in accordance with his instruc­ tions said that given that France was already accommodating too many refu­ gees it would support the proposal provided a third country raised it at the next Assembly, it had British support and there was no financial obligation. A note written by the Quai dated 11 July confirmed that Sweden supported the Norwegian proposal and that Cecil was the instigator.17 In August, Edmond Frick, formerly Nansen’s assistant, visited the Quai to make sure of French support.18 The Norwegians now proposed that an enlarged Nansen Office adminis­ ter protection for all refugees to which the Quai repeated its insistence that protection should apply only to German refugees. In September, a note ini­ tialled by Fouques-Duparc gave the French delegation to the 1935 General Assembly the Quai’s instructions.19 Fouques-Duparc’s course of action was

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to offer qualified support for the Norwegian proposal. He worried that it would change the Nansen Office from a temporary arrangement into a perma­ nent one because it would delay the assimilation of the refugees, which was the ultimate solution to the problem. Politically, there would be objections from countries that had withdrawn nationality from some of their citizens for well-defined reasons: they might be Italian anti-Fascists, Polish deserters, Bulgarian comitadji (rebels), or conspirators in Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia. The LON ran the risk of conflating such undesirables with ordinary refugees. Another problem was that this proposal would not help the refugees in France to settle elsewhere. The Nansen refugees already had Nansen pass­ ports, while it was the economic situation in other countries rather than the refugees’ legal status in France that constrained the resettlement of German refugees. The only advantage of a reorganisation could be that it might be easier to raise funds if the new organisation were under the aegis of the LON. However, neither the Assembly nor the Sixth Committee were the appropri­ ate forum for discussion of the best way forward, which should be done by a specially appointed Committee of Experts. An unsigned note for Bérenger confirmed the department’s general atti­ tude.20 Subject to the reservations that Nansen protection should not be extended to all refugees and a temporary arrangement not become permanent, there was merit in the Norwegian proposal in view of the need to protect German refugees and the expected closing of the Nansen Office. France might therefore accept an Assembly resolution to extend a statute to German refugees. An added reason for Bérenger to insist that no funds were available was the concern that if the LON were to finance the relief of refugees, dona­ tions from private organisations might dry up. The Sixth Committee discussed the Norwegian proposal on 21 September,21 and adopted the draft proposed by the French delegation that for political and financial reasons the examination should be limited to existing categories of refugees and that no new categories be considered without the Assembly’s permission.22 Nor should the LON incur additional expenditure for relief and settlement without explicit permission from the Assembly. The Committee also agreed the French proposal that a small task force of experts - the Special Committee - be appointed to consider the reorganisation of the refugee ser­ vices of both the HCR after McDonald’s resignation on 31 December 1935 and the Nansen Office after its closure on 31 December 1938. The Quai had achieved all its objectives. As for the French expert on the Committee, an unsigned letter from the Quai to Bérenger pointed out that the LON Council had decided that its members should not have already served on any of the refugee commit­ tees.23 This would exclude Cecil, whose liberalism the Quai and Bérenger disliked, but was probably aimed at Bérenger and Helbronner, who had

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been proposed by Bérenger. Relations between the Quai and Bérenger were strained. Another cause of friction was the trouble caused to the Quai by the requirement to respond to interventions from politicians on the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Assemblée because, as the Quai was reminded by the Foreign Minister’s Chef du Cabinet, Rochat, it had to reply within eight days of receipt of a written question. Probably Fouques-Duparc was behind this condition as a way of keeping both Bérenger and Helbronner off the Special Committee.24 Fouques-Duparc wrote to Massigli recommending Roland-Marcel: ‘Even while defending French interests, he [Roland-Marcel] would also bring to the debate a little of that positive mind-set that had rarely been manifested by France’s representative to the Sixth Committee, and cor­ rect the deplorable impression that we must have left’.25 In a further letter the Quai produced the additional reason that a prefect who had experience on the ground would counter the excessive idealism of the Norwegian Foreign Minister.26 Roland-Marcel had been a reactionary prefect. In an interview with the conservative newspaper Le Matin in August 1933,27 he called his department a ‘bassin de décantation’ {‘sedimentation tank’) for refugees, a remark that Barbier considers an insult to the refugees.28 Barbier identified a bureaucratic culture of arbitrary behaviour in Alsace during Roland-Marcel’s appointment that was far removed from accountability to ministers. As Rémond had pointed out, Roland-Marcel’s conduct was an example of the gap between the texts of ministers’ decrees and their application and between the law and its practice. At times, the application was excessive and at other times it ignored the decrees.29 The situation of the Jews in Germany had become even more desperate after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted on 15 September 1935. At their annual party rally, the Nazis announced new Laws that revoked Reich citizen­ ship for Jews and prohibited Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of German or related blood: ‘Racial infamy’, as this became known, was made a criminal offence. The Nuremberg Laws defined a Jew as a person with three or four Jewish grandparents. Consequently, the Nazis classified as Jews thousands of people who had converted from Judaism to another religion, among them even Roman Catholic priests and nuns and Protestant ministers whose grandparents were Jewish.30 François-Poncet informed the Quai of the developments, as did pressure groups, and Jewish and non-Jewish associations and yet there was no mention of the Laws in the archival records of the Quai’s briefings of Roland-Marcel. Fouques-Duparc warned him against allowing himself to be buttonholed in Geneva by asso­ ciations concerned with refugees, ‘which saw only their own small picture and ignored the larger context’.31 He also gave Roland-Marcel a copy of the aide-mémoire that had been sent to Avenol with observations to be put before the Committee.32 It said that France had become host to about 300,000

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refugees, of whom about 200,000-250,000 were Russian, 50,000 Armenian and 8,000-12,000 German. The current state of the labour market meant it could not take in more refugees. France was the country that relied most on the LON for international help in settling the refugees in less populated coun­ tries. Forced allocation was not possible, but a fair distribution should be. The note pointed out that because relief and humanitarian aid for German refugees were provided to a significant extent from private funds administered by the Comité National, the Quai’s opinion was that the Committee should con­ centrate on arrangements for settlement, rather than on charity. These were reiteration of the Quai’s usual positions. However, a significant new one was that an extension of Nansen status to other categories could be considered on a case-by-case basis, not as an open-ended commitment, nor could it compro­ mise French sovereignty by restricting the right to expel. Probably, it was an olive branch which the Quai never intended to fulfil. Helbronner, Director-general of the Sûreté Nationale Charles Magny,33 and from the Quai Massigli, de Reffye, Blanchet, Fouques-Duparc and Paul Bringard attended the meeting to brief Roland-Marcel. Bérenger excused himself from attending, maybe because his recommendation of Helbronner as French delegate to the Special Committee had been turned down, even though Helbronner attended the briefing.34 Interestingly, Tetreau, who was McDonald’s contact at the Quai, also was not present. Helbronner explained that the initiative for the Norwegian proposal came from Cecil. In February 1935, Cecil had said in the House of Lords that the international system of refugee aid had to be revised: it had been built up in response to circum­ stances without there being a general plan. Helbronner concluded that the HCR was powerless, mainly because of the personality (McDonald) at its head, the Nansen Office could not be a replacement and that the LON should put in place a new structure. Massigli emphasised that a statute must not be an open-ended commitment that would cover all political exiles and include those who did not want to submit to their national authorities. He pointed out that ratification of the 1933 LON Convention would mean very strict obliga­ tions concerning expulsions to which Magny replied that the instructions he had already given to prefects were good enough and that there was no need for international conventions. Fouques-Duparc proposed that Nansen status should be granted only to Germans who had been stripped of their passports. Magny wanted the LON to agree to a convention forbidding the withdrawal of nationality. Roland-Marcel recommended that while the German govern­ ment continued its practice of withdrawing nationality no German be awarded the Nobel Prize. He suggested that the prize be given to the new office for refugees and that the funds that came with the prize would solve its finan­ cial needs. The thrust of the briefing was that Roland-Marcel should avoid commitments that were too generous. But there was also an air of unreality.

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After the meeting, Fouques-Duparc wrote to Roland-Marcel suggesting he propose that private donors be asked for annual donations to the new refugee organisation that would replace the HCR: they would be divided according to the amount given into categories, such as benefactors, founders and so on.35 The first meeting of the Special Committee was scheduled for 28 November 1935.36 Judging by Roland-Marcel’s comments recorded in its minutes he turned out to be a business-like no-nonsense choice who abided by the Quai’s instructions and was well regarded by McDonald.37 His preoccupations were that the Committee should restrict its discussions to the refugees covered by the Nansen Office and the HCR, and that no new categories were considered. He also worried that the withdrawal by foreign governments of the passports from holders already abroad was creating a new class of stateless refugees. The other members of the Committee were Hansson (President), Giuseppe de Michaelis of Italy,38 Stefan Osusky of Czechoslovakia39 and Horace Rumbold of the UK.40 The Committee’s work was comprehensive. It heard presentations by the Nansen Office, the HCR, its Advisory Committee, as well as Avenol, and listened to verbal and written reports from fifty-eight non-governmental agen­ cies involved with refugees. However, it excluded political pressure groups including the LDH because in the opinion of the Committee it belonged to this category. On 7 December after fifteen sessions, the Committee agreed by four votes to one, de Michaelis dissenting, the resolutions that were to be recommended to the council. They were that either a highly qualified person be put in charge of the Nansen Office with responsibility also for an annexed organisation to deal with German refugees or that the Nansen Office be liquidated as planned and that a separate autonomous organisation to deal with German refugees be established under the auspices of the LON, with a High Commissioner to run it.41 The dissenting opinion was that private organisations should take over all the responsibilities for dealing with refugees in liaison with the LON. A final unanimous resolution was that a convention be agreed so that all the refugees who were protected by the LON enjoyed a uniform legal status.42 This was reaffirmed by the Sixth Committee when it met later that year on 3 October 1936, stating ‘the importance of ensuring as soon as possible a uni­ form regime of legal provision for the refugees’.43 The Quai had secured that the LON should continue to be concerned only with German refugees, but it was still nervous regarding an international statute that might compromise French sovereignty.44 The LON Council recognised the deficiencies that McDonald’s resignation letter and the recommendations of the Special Committee of experts had high­ lighted. On 24 January 1936 it resolved that a High Commissioner reporting this time to the LON Assembly be appointed to deal with questions connected

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with refugees coming from Germany.45 The Quai, ignoring Bérenger’s pre­ vious criticism of the HCR being an Anglo-Saxon organisation, favoured the appointment of an Englishman as High Commissioner in the expecta­ tion that he would continue a good relationship with British and American philanthropic associations and possibly arrange an increase in the quota for Palestine. The council duly appointed Malcolm on 14 February 1936.46 Myron Taylor, the US representative at the Evian Conference, thought that the Quai had favoured the appointment of Malcolm because he was inexperi­ enced in refugee matters and more manageable than his predecessor. Taylor reported that ‘Malcolm does the work of the League Commission in time which he can spare from his duties as head of the North Borneo Company . . . Sir Neill’s chief virtue is that he obeys the orders of the British Foreign Office and of the League Secretariat without question and does not even attempt to act independently’.47 Malcolm’s duties included preparation for an intergovernmental conference that would arrange a system of legal protec­ tion of refugees from Germany, consulting with different governments on the most suitable method for the possibilities and conditions of placing refugees and finding employment for them. Massigli addressed the concern of both the French Ministry of the Interior and the Quai that the practice of governments withdrawing the citizen­ ship of their nationals when they were abroad was swelling the number of stateless persons. The Quai’s assessment was that although the LON could not persuade the German government to stop this practice that should not prevent the LON from putting pressure on other governments not to do the same.48 Massigli made this point in the council when he said that at the next Intergovernmental Conference or at the September General Assembly, France would propose a convention to stop this practice.49 However, it was the firm opinion of the French and British that any direct approach to the Reich had to be made by the HCR and private Jewish organisations.50 At the same council meeting the comment of Nicolae Titulescu, the Romanian delegate, that his country ‘was not able to receive one single foreigner more in its territory’ was a typical example of the international community’s refusal to help with a fairer distribution of German refugees.51

THE POPULAR FRONT, REFUGEES AND AMNESTY

The final month of the negotiations for the 1936 LON Provisional Arrangement coincided with the accession of the PF to power. There is debate about the extent to which the new government eased the situation of the refugees and whether its measures fell short of expectations. Ideologically, the PF was more favourably inclined to help the refugees than the previous governments of Laval

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and Sarraut yet it seems, as suggested by Languet’s speech at the LON when signing the Provisional Arrangement, that the Quai blunted its initiatives.52 The PF’s refugee policy judged by its introduction of the amnesty was criticised for not going far enough while ministers considered it a bold innovative measure.53 The inclusion of the amnesty in the LON 1936 Provisional Arrangement was an innovation. The PF had adopted the Quai’s proposal to grant an amnesty to clandestine refugees from Germany already in France whose papers were irregular or non-existent. The Quai considered it advisable to include the same condition into the LON Arrangement and acceding to the French demand the 1936 LON Provisional Arrangement included the clause that an amnesty was available providing the applicant reported to the authorities within a time limit.54 The Quai was not directly involved in the administration of the amnesty, which was coordinated by Salengro, who gave prefects instructions in his note of 14 August explaining that the French government had signed the Agreement 'dans un esprit de haute solidarité humaine' ('in a spirit ofgreat human solidarity') in order to stabilise the present situation.55 Nevertheless, with the agreement of High Commissioner Malcolm and the Minister of the Interior, Salengro, Viénot set up the 'Consultative Committee' ('Comité Consultatif) to manage the amnesty. Also called the 'Consultative Commission' ('Commission Consultative') or 'Interministerial Commission' ('Commission Interministérielle'), its members were Fouques-Duparc of the Quai, Grumbach and Longuet of the PSF, Basch of the LDH, Perrin of the Centre de Liaison, Raoul-Raymond Lambert of CAR, Germaine Mellon representing the Quakers and the Service International d’Aide aux Réfugiés, the Germans Albert Grzesinski, President of the 'Fédération des Emigrés Allemands en France' ('The Federation of German refugees in France') (formed in January 1936 by twenty-one cultural and social refu­ gee associations under the Presidency of Grzesinski),56 the journalist Georg Bernhard, editor of the Pariser Tageblatt, Theodor Tichauer, Socialist law­ yer representing the German Human Rights League (Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte), and Münzenberg of the KPD.57 Its first meeting in Paris on 3 August 1936, to discuss how to screen applicants, included a discussion of the criteria for defining a German refugee because Viénot considered the defini­ tion in the LON July Provisional Arrangement too vague for an amnesty. The Committee decided to divide the applicants into persons who were legally still German citizens who might have been in possession of a valid German pass­ port but in fact were no longer protected by their government; Germans from whom the Reich had withdrawn their citizenship for political reasons; German nationals who were Jewish; foreigners resident for a long time in Germany; naturalised Germans who had had their citizenship revoked; and stateless per­ sons, both Jews and non-Jews, who had been long-term residents in Germany. It resolved that all applicants were entitled to apply for amnesty providing they had fled from Germany, not from any other country.58

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The French decree of 17 September 1936 expanded the articles of the LON Provisional Arrangement to include the additional guidelines.59 The amnesty now included stateless persons, but it remained consistent with Quai policy that it concerned only refugees from Germany and since it dealt with the past there were no open-ended commitments that might restrict the Quai’s room for manoeuvre in the future. By 31 December 1937, when the amnesty office closed, it had received 6,200 requests for amnesty, accepted 4,958 and refused 275: the Committee declared it was not competent to decide on the remaining 967 requests from refugees from the Saar, Austria, Poland, and Eastern Europe.60 An estimate of clandestine refugees in France, exclud­ ing the Spanish, in January 1939 was 42,000, a sevenfold increase on the applications for amnesty two years earlier.61 This suggests, considering the increase due to the Paris exhibition and the Anschluss that the number of clandestine refugees in December 1937 was very much higher than the 6,200 who requested amnesty. While the Quai was not directly concerned with the new regime’s more liberal attitude to the grant of identity and work permits to refugees - previ­ ously the Ministry of Labour did not distinguish between immigrants seeking a job and refugees seeking a job - it initiated the introduction of the amnesty. The Quai’s position was that the PF in adopting a more liberal attitude should be pragmatic and accept the fait accompli of clandestine German refugees already in the country and that they should be granted an amnesty. However, it insisted that this be available only to German refugees and that there be no commitment to amnesty for the future. At the same time, to stress that the amnesty did not signal an invitation to come to France, it instructed French consuls to continue their strict issue of visas to Germans. A practical advan­ tage of the amnesty, which was not publicised, was that it would be easier to move refugees whose papers had been regularised to settle permanently elsewhere. The idea of an amnesty was not new. In 1934, the Ministry of Justice had warned of the danger that it would include undesirable refugees.62 The idea was revived by Lambert when he gave evidence to the LON Special Committee in 1935.63 He argued that an amnesty would grant the refugees permanent legal status and solve the problem of the stateless refugees. The same argument was made to the Committee by Oungre on behalf of the JCA,64 and the idea was taken up by the SR when La Défense published arti­ cles in January 1936 by the director of the SR, Jean Chauvet,65 and followed them with a circular to its members appealing for amnesty for all political refugees.66 When the Quai suggested that an amnesty was an appropriate gesture for the PF, it was adamant that it should apply only to German refugees, and that France should not sign up to an open-ended commitment. Longuet67 was

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the politician on the French delegation to the July LON Intergovernmental Conference and, given his left-wing sympathies, would have been expected to argue that asylum be extended to all refugees.68 Nevertheless, he endorsed the Quai’s position in his speech to the Conference before adding his signa­ ture to the Provisional Arrangement.69 Livian explained that Longuet had to settle for this restricted outcome because it was the best that he could obtain.70 Dewhurst Lewis talks of a trade-off, although she does not say with whom: ‘that Popular Front policy makers secured a more liberal policy toward already present refugees in exchange for the promise to limit the arrival of new ones’.71 According to Livian, in an additional measure taken by the PF, Longuet persuaded Salengro to withdraw the authority of prefects in fron­ tier departments to make arbitrary decisions on refoulement; in future, the Minister himself would decide.72 As seen in chapter 5, Vienot also urged that officials’ power be curbed. Nevertheless, the PF’s refugee policy was not the radical break that many on the left had hoped for.73 The contrast with the attitude of the British Foreign Office is worth not­ ing. The FO was reluctant to ratify the 1933 Convention or to sign the Provisional Arrangement because it wanted the right to refuse admission to all aliens, whatever their origin, whether or not they came within a category protected by the LON, whereas the French were willing to accept the LON Arrangement that excluded all except refugees from Germany.74 The FO also worried that the grant of amnesty in France was likely to have a knock-on effect in other countries who were harbouring refugees, which would be obliged to do the same. And the British expected the HCR to persuade gov­ ernments to keep refugees in the countries of first asylum and not endeavour to get rid of them, a view diametrically opposed to the French.75 Not wishing to expose itself the FO’s instruction to its delegate to the 17th Assembly was to voice sympathy while precise action would depend on the course of the debate, without specifying exactly what this meant. However, the British did agree with the French to reject the Polish proposal that Polish nationals who had not lived in Poland for many years be included in the category of refugees covered by the Provisional Arrangement. Whereas previous French governments, although several politicians attended the annual September Assembly LON meeting in Geneva, had tended to leave the Quai to formulate and conduct refugee policy at the LON, the Quai was wary of interference by the PF. The Quai wrote to the Minister that, as a rule, France was politically represented at the LON Assembly by three delegates and three deputy delegates, plus assistants and technical advisers.76 It proposed that because of the shortened agenda for the forthcoming extraor­ dinary meeting on 2-4 July 1936 (second part) France should send only three delegates, and the Minister complied.77 Longuet, who was described in a British Home Office note as ‘well known for his left-wing progressive

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views’,78 joined the Quai’s diplomats, de Reffye and Fouques-Duparc, as the French representation. However, the suggestion to limit the number of politi­ cians attending the assemblies was consistently overruled, maybe because the politicians did not trust the diplomats, but more likely because the politicians used the LON to make grand speeches and the government had to satisfy the demands of the parties that made up its coalition. The politicians delegated to attend the extraordinary Assembly of 16 June 1936 (first part) as principals were Blum, Delbos and Paul-Boncour, and three politicians were appointed as deputy delegates, Paul Faure (1878—1960),79 Bérenger and Jean Mistier (1897-1988)80 plus Jouhaux as an assistant delegate.81 The appointees to represent France in the Sixth Committee (dealing with refugees) in addition to Delbos, were five politicians, Viénot, Grumbach, Mistier, Bérenger and Paul Bastid (1892-1974).82 The number of French delegates sent to the 17th General Assembly in September 1936 again greatly exceeded the number rec­ ommended by the Quai. In addition to the three principal delegates, Delbos, Paul-Boncour and Charles Spinasse (1893-1979),83 there were four deputy delegates, Bérenger, Mistier, Viénot and Bastid, plus ten assistants. In another instance the following January, the Quai again wrote to the Minister that a politician need not attend the next Intergovernmental Conference for German refugees and this time the presence of the Quai’s Adrien Thierry,84 and Fouques-Duparc would suffice.85 The Minister agreed but the PF then sent twenty-one delegates to the extraordinary LON Assembly meeting in May 193786 and seventeen to the 18th General Assembly in September 1937.87 Despite left-wing disappointment that the PF did not in addition to the amnesty do more for refugees, there were other less publicised instances of its liberal attitude. For instance, Viénot called an Extraordinary Interministerial meeting in April 1937 to examine certain aspects of the application of the Provisional Arrangement.88 It was agreed that anomalies between the treatment of Nansen refugees according to the LON Convention of 1933 and of German refugees according to the Provisional Arrangement of 1936 be smoothed out by granting German refugees the equivalent of Nansen privileges, a greater concession than the Geneva undertakings. The government rejected Dobler’s suggestion, still consul in Cologne, that refugees discovered working illegally be handed penal sentences because the Assemblée Nationale would not pass it.

THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE RIGHT OF ASYLUM AND THE JULY 1936 PROVISIONAL AGREEMENT

One of Malcolm’s first jobs was to call a Conference in Geneva in July 1936 to agree on a Convention for Refugees from Germany. The German refugees

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in France led by the Socialists Grzesinski and Breitscheid formed a commit­ tee to draw up their demands for the Convention,89 which coincided with the similar campaign being planned by the SR and Perrin’s Centre de Liaison?0 The German refugees agreed to join in a united front that was elaborated in February at a Mutualité meeting at which the speakers, who included Perrin and Bureau, called for a general amnesty for political prisoners, to include political refugees, the right to asylum and integration into French social legislation of all anti-Fascists, the issue of identity papers to all political refugees, a guarantee against refoulement, a guarantee of work permits and freedom to choose where to reside. After careful vetting by the SR, political refugees were defined as persons who had to leave their country because they had been condemned, or were in danger of being condemned, to several years in prison, or because their lives were in danger.91 The front’s next steps were for Bureau, Perrin and Henri Levin92 to meet Malcolm at the Hotel de Crillon in Paris on 13 March to put forward these resolutions,93 and on 25 March with Sarraut, the President of the Council, who promised his support but did nothing.94 The idea of a conference had first been aired by the militant left-wing journalist Magdeleine Paz,95 in the January editions of La Défense?0 After the inconsequential meeting with Sarraut the SR together with Perrin decided to promote Paz’s idea as an additional way to intensify the campaign to influ­ ence the LON Convention. They developed it and on 18 April the SR sent a circular letter announcing that the International Conference for the Right of Asylum was to be held in Paris in June.97 The PF victory in the election of 3 May98 and the merger of the Bolshevik ''Confédération générale du travail unitaire’ ('The Unitary General Workers Confederation’) with the main trade union the CGT, from which it had broken away in 1924, further encouraged the organisers so that the Conference developed into an interna­ tional celebration of the victory of the political left. The Honorary Presidents were George Lansbury," de Brouckère, Marcel Cachin and Daladier, with Daladier and Blum presiding.100 Levin was appointed its Secretary-general. The participants,who numbered about 900, included 226 delegates with mandates from their respective organisations, Communists, trade union­ ists, Socialists and émigrés.101 French names on the Conference’s 'Honour Committee’ ('Comité d’Honneur) included Daladier, Herriot, Auriol and Léon Jouhaux.102 French speakers were a roll-call of the political left, includ­ ing Perrin, Longuet, Bureau, Paz, Marc Sangnier,103 Marcel Willard,104 Levin and Cachin;105 letters of support included one from Delbos. The three points on the agenda were the definition of political emigration, the issue of an international passport in the countries of asylum and political refugees’ right to work. In addition, the Conference provided a platform for a wide range of left-wing declarations.106 Perrin’s address to the Conference compared the secret process to determine a foreigner’s desirability to be

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allowed refuge in France with the lettre de cachet (a warrant issued person­ ally by the king providing for imprisonment without trial, exile or other punishment) of the absolute monarchy. He accused the previous Laval gov­ ernment of allowing the police draconian powers arbitrarily to refuse asylum and to expel illegal refugees.107 Leo Lagrange (1900-1940), Under-secretary of State for Sports and for the Organisation of Leisure in the PF, said that although he could not vouch for the Minister of Justice or the Minister of the Interior he was sure that both were ready to introduce a statute for political refugees and that he would give the project his full support. Against the backdrop of the fight against Fascism, the Conference defined the status of political refugees and their right of asylum, which were set out in a resolution of twenty-four clauses to be presented to the governments and their delegates attending the July LON.108 The first clauses offered an extensive definition of refugee status.109 The next concerned their political rights. Political refugees had the right to admis­ sion into the country in which they sought asylum from which the authorities could not expel or extradite them for political activity. They had the right to a renewable identity card even if they could not produce an identity document, to be issued with a passport, to be allowed the freedom to live anywhere in the country of asylum, to be entitled to the same social benefits and legal rights as enjoyed by citizens of the country of asylum and not to be subject to restrictions on the exercise of their profession. Political refugees had the right to pursue political activity in the country of exile unless its purpose was to support the regime of the country from which they had fled. They had the right to request naturalisation after eighteen months of residence in their country of asylum. The country of asylum also had rights: it could tax political refugees in the same way as it did its citizens and tax wealthy politi­ cal refugees to subsidise poorer ones. The proposals set out the procedures. An interministerial commission, which would consider the recommendation of the Liaison Committee of refugee organisations, would decide whether a person qualified as a political refugee. If there was a hearing the refugee had the right to appear with a lawyer and call witnesses. Appeals to the Conseil d’État (Council of State} could be lodged within eight days of a refusal. A change of regime in the country of origin after due consultation with the inter­ ested parties might revoke the status of political refugee. An amnesty would benefit political refugees who had been condemned because they had faulty or no proper papers. The Legal Commission of the International Office for the Respect of the Right of Asylum and help for Political Refugees (Commission juridique du Bureau International pour le respect du droit d’asile et I’aide aux réfugiés politiques} was set up at the end of the Conference with Perrin as its Secretary-general to ensure the follow-up in Geneva and with individual governments.

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Immediately after its formation, the Office sent Longuet with the Belgian socialist Louis de Brouckère to Geneva to follow up the Conference’s reso­ lutions for the LON July meeting to agree a Provisional Arrangement con­ cerning refugees from Germany. The only concession they managed to have included in the Arrangement was that the refugees had the right to a work permit if they had been resident in the country of refuge for not less than three years.110 When Longuet and de Brouckère reported back to the Office they complained that other countries’ official delegations were functionaries instead of politicians and lawyers.111 The Swiss and Dutch delegates were policemen and especially awkward, who worried that too generous an agree­ ment would encourage the German government to expel more Jews. The French delegates had even proposed what they considered the relatively ano­ dyne clause that to qualify for asylum a refugee had to have been living with legal papers in the country of exile and this arrangement should exclude those whose nationality had been revoked, which the meeting also did not adopt. A point emphasised at the debriefing and already aired in French Assembly debates was that without a right to work the right to asylum remained mean­ ingless.112 Added to these refusals there was no follow-up on Lagrange’s assurance on the introduction of a statute for political refugees. These extreme demands, which would have been decidedly provoca­ tive to the right-wing governments of Flandin, Laval and Sarraut, although endorsed by ministers in Blum’s government, nevertheless were unrealistic and too challenging even for the socialist PF and especially to the Quai. The Conference was preaching to the converted but not to the PF. The reactions of the Quai and the Ministry of the Interior during the PF were to continue to be adamant that only refugees protected by the Nansen Office and by the HCR were recognised and the PF went along with it. The Quai’s views and concerns were ‘set out in a letter from the Direction des affaires politiques et commerciales to Salengro asking for his opinion.113 The Quai said it also needed Salengro’s response to the draft proposals sub­ mitted by the HCR for the July Geneva Convention, anodyne compared with those of the Paris Conference.114 The letter explained that the German problem was different from the Russian because there had been no revolution, the situ­ ation was evolving and the number of German refugees was likely to increase substantially from about 60,000 to 1 million because of the Nuremberg laws. Jews had strong political connections in the Anglo-Saxon world and were likely to use them to influence public opinion. The High Commissioner’s pro­ posal concerning German refugees that they be given an identity document like the Nansen passport, valid for one year and extendable every six months, was acceptable. The most delicate area concerned expulsions: the propos­ als were prudent and did not compromise French sovereignty in that they prohibited expulsions unless the individuals were a threat to public safety or

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national security. This would protect France against any abuse of the right of asylum. Furthermore, no one was to be expelled to the Reich. A declaration that stateless refugees would also be covered by these proposals would be well received and was acceptable to the Quai provided the Ministry of the Interior agreed. It was good that Malcolm said nothing about French consuls issuing visas to persons wishing to leave Germany. France had to maintain its sovereignty in this respect, especially in view of the labour market in France, considering that refugees once in France could not be sent back to Germany. It was noteworthy that the Quai now referred to the Nuremberg laws while it had not mentioned them when briefing Roland-Marcel six months earlier. Most of the demands anticipated the French position ten years later after the Second World War but they found no traction at the time they were pro­ posed except for the idea of an amnesty. The Quai, aware that under the more forgiving attitude of the PF it could not ignore all the proposals, was already considering an amnesty. With the approval of Ministry of the Interior the Quai went ahead to grant an amnesty to clandestine German refugees already in France, but there was no question of extending the measures to include new categories of refugees or of adopting the other demands of the Paris Conference. The Quai hoped that the amnesty would be enough to satisfy the political left. In addition, it judged that the declaration of the amnesty at Geneva would be well received by American and British Jews, whose contin­ ued financial support was crucial, and would also mitigate their criticism of the previous French governments’ practice of refoulement of refugees whose papers were not in order.115 As an additional gesture, Longuet was authorised to declare at the Geneva Conference that although France could not undertake an open-ended commitment to the future because it might encourage a fresh exodus of refugees that would aggravate the current economic problems, it would be more generous in the issue of work permits.116 The Quai, anxious to capitalise on the good impression its declaration would make in interna­ tional circles, instructed Fouques-Duparc to urge the incoming director of the Sûreté Nationale, Pierre Moitessier,117 to sign the amnesty decree before Delbos went to Geneva to attend the September General Assembly.118 The outcome of the Geneva Conference was the signature on 4 July of the LON Provisional Arrangement. Article 1 defined a German refugee; refugees who had lived in Germany but were stateless were not included, nor were refugees who had lived in Germany who were nationals of a third country.119 Refugees were entitled to the issue of identity certificates valid for one year with the possibility of a six-month extension, which permitted travel to other countries and return to the country that issued the certificate. The French hoped the provision of this certificate would encourage refugees to travel and settle in other countries. Article 2.1 was confirmation of the French proposal concerning the amnesty as a ‘transitory measure’.

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The Contracting Governments shall issue to refugees coming from Germany and lawfully residing in their territory an identity certificate in conformity with the attached specimen (see Annex), or some other document having the same object. As a transitory measure, this certificate may be issued to refugees whose residence in the territory on the date of the coming into force of the present Arrangement was irregular, if they report themselves to the authorities within a time-limit determined by the Government concerned.120

The press release presented the amnesty as a logical part of the Provisional Arrangement.121 The result was disappointing: only seven countries signed.122 The French left wing and the Jewish charities which wanted a more extensive arrangement were not satisfied.123 The JDC criticised ‘a number of measures that are unnecessarily precautionary’, whose vague terms could be interpreted to the disadvantage of the refugees.124 The Quai asked for a meeting with Blum, the President of the Council, which took place on 12 August. At the meeting Perrin said that he was wor­ ried that publication of the amnesty might encourage more refugees to come to France, a surprising statement for a signatory to the resolutions of the Paris International Conference of 21 June.125 The representative of the Sûreté Nationale, Henri Chavin,126 said that he was concerned only with the situa­ tion of refugees already in France and that questions about the future were political decisions that concerned the government. Blum expressed his wish that France should continue to be ‘une terre d’asile’ Ça land of asylum’ ).127

THE FEBRUARY 1938 LON CONVENTION CONCERNING THE STATUS OF REFUGEES COMING FROM GERMANY The 17th Geneva Assembly resolved that the LON’s future role regarding German refugees should be decided at the latest by the 1938 September General Assembly.128 Malcolm set February 1938 as the date for the Conference that was to substitute the Provisional Agreement with a Permanent Convention and it was signed in Geneva on 10 February.129 The same Conference expressed the hope that the practice of countries depriving its citizens of their nationality when abroad would cease. While not actu­ ally naming it, this was the nearest the LON came officially to criticising Germany.130 Again, as they had in the Provisional Arrangement, the French success­ fully influenced the formulation of the Permanent Convention. Bargeton’s instructions to the French delegates, Longuet, de Reffye and FouquesDuparc, referred to the HCR’s recommendation that international cooperation

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should aim to facilitate the emigration to countries of permanent settlement of refugees from countries that were sheltering them, and that states shel­ tering refugees should adopt measures to favour their emigration.131 At first sight it would have seemed that the Quai would endorse these proposals because France would be the beneficiary. However, Bargeton took the opposite view: France could not agree because it would be the first country to receive more emigrants. France also opposed a substantial revision of the 1936 Provisional Arrangement. It argued that although the problem of refugees from Germany had become acute France had been most generous in its treatment of refugees after the 1936 Arrangement so that there was no need to revise its articles and that a simple extension of the Provisional Arrangement was all that was needed. Furthermore, it would be easy to administer because the managers had become used to executing the 1936 provisions. The sole change would be that LON protection would extend to refugees who had been resident in Germany but now were stateless. Koht, the Norwegian delegate, still wanted the LON to protect all politi­ cal refugees without distinction of origin but said he would not propose this because there was little chance of the Convention accepting it. Speaking for the Liaison Committee of the HCRf31 Bentwich hoped that the Convention would include all stateless refugees. The Belgian delegate, Hermann Bekaert, deputy head of the Belgian Sûreté, was concerned about the obligations of countries of first settlement of refugees. He complained that France should take responsibility for refugees who moved from France to Belgium. The Quai made sure that the articles did not address these concerns. The 1938 Convention gave the same rights to German refugees as had been granted five years earlier to Nansen refugees;133 and, as the Quai wanted, it repeated the articles of the Provisional Arrangement of 1936 without amend­ ment. In addition, however, it agreed to the wider definition, which was not in the Provisional Arrangement, to include stateless refugees who had been resident in Germany and had to leave. However, this was qualified by the exclusion of refugee status for those who left Germany for reasons of per­ sonal convenience.134 The definition in Article 1 said: Persons possessing or having possessed German nationality and not possessing any other nationality who are proved not to enjoy, in law or in fact, the protec­ tion of the German Government; Stateless persons not covered by previous Conventions or Agreements who have left German territory after being estab­ lished therein and who are proved not to enjoy, in law or in fact, the protection of the German Government. Persons who leave Germany for reasons of purely personal convenience are not included in this definition.135

It was significant that this restriction, which was the trade-off for extending protection to the stateless, was incorporated at the request of the Belgian and

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Swiss representatives, not the French, and that it was Longuet who insisted that a Control Commission must determine the interpretation.136 Another addition was Article 5, which said that refoulement to German territory was not allowed except in cases where refugees were lde mauvaise foP (‘dishonest') and had refused arrangements to go to another country or arrangements to that effect: ‘The High Contracting Parties undertake not to reconduct refugees to German territory unless they have been warned and have refused, without just cause, to make the necessary arrangements to proceed to another territory or to take advantage of the arrangements made for them with that object’.137 The Quai did not give up on its efforts to move the refugees in France elsewhere and the third addition was the preamble that stated: ‘Considering that the making of arrange­ ments for those who cannot be absorbed in the countries in which they have taken refuge is an essential part of the work undertaken for the benefit of said refugees’.138 France signed the Convention but did not ratify it until 1945.139 Compared with the international community’s willingness to deal expedi­ tiously with the Russian refugee crisis some fifteen years earlier the LON needed five years to agree a Permanent Convention that granted protection to refugees from Germany. The world economic depression, restricted job oppor­ tunities, German intransigence, Avenol’s obduracy and the focus of politicians’ attention on more important matters hampered its introduction. Given these constraints French authority at the LON was decisive. The Quai was able to influence drafting the 1936 Provisional Arrangement and the 1938 Convention so that their articles reflected the conditions that France wanted. This contrasted with the establishment of the HCR when the Quai had to accept a compromise.

NOTES

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1. See chapter 8. 2. See chapter 8. 3. The July 1938 Evian Conference is discussed Chapter 11. 4. The broad outline of the international narrative is related by Susanne Hein, ‘International Refugee Policy and Jewish Immigration under the Shadow of National Socialism’, in Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore (eds), Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States (New York: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 17-47. 5. See Livian, Le Parti Socialiste. 6. For example, it was criticised by Norway, the LDH and SR, the International Association for the Respect of the Right of Asylum and help for Political Refugees, the JDC and HICEM. 7. LON Official Journal, June 1934, Item 3407, Document C 181 -1934.XLL See chapter 5. 8. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Note, La question des étrangers et des réfugiés et la Société des Nations’ (Note. The question of foreigners and refugees and the League of Nations) 1 avril 1935, pp. 19-23.

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9. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Note, L’Assemblée et le problème des réfugiés’ (Note. The Assembly and the problem of the refugees) Geneva, 22 août 1935, pp 68-71. 10. Until Michael Hansson’s appointment, ex officio, to the presidency of the Nansen Office in January 1936. He was a judge at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. 11. Took office on 20 March 1935. 12. LON 20A 18558 686, Geneva, 17 May 1935. 13. LON Registry 18812, Oslo, 27 June 1935. 14. LON A 13 1935 XII, 9 September-11 October 1935. 15. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Compte-rendu de la réunion de Londres’ (Report of the meeting in London) 18 juin 1935. 16. Colban left the LON in 1934 to rejoin the Norwegian Foreign Office and then serve as Norwegian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the UK. 17. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Note, L’assistance aux réfugiés internationaux et la délé­ gation norvégienne’ (Note: Aid for international refugees and the Norwegian delega­ tion) 11 juillet 1935. 18. MAE SDN 1806, Note, 22 août 1935, pp. 66-67. 19. MAE SDN 101, ‘Note pour le représentant de la France. Sous-direction de la SDN’ (‘Note for the French representative. Sous-direction of the LON’) septem­ bre 1935, pp. 109-13. The French delegation to the 1935 LON General Assembly included the politicians Laval, Herriot, Joseph Paul-Boncour, Georges Bonnet, Bérenger and Paul Bastid. Léger, Bargeton, Massigli, Fouques-Duparc, Charles Rochat, Louis Bourgeois, Jean-Marie Padovani and Jean Paul-Boncour represented the Quai. 20. MAE SDN 1806, ‘Note pour Monsieur Le Sénateur Henry Bérenger’ (Note for Senator Henry Bérenger) 12 septembre 1935, pp. 72-75. 21. LON Official Journal, Special Supplement no. 143; MAE SDN 1806, Note from the UK Delegation to the LON, 17 September 1935, pp. 75-76. 22. LON A 64 1935 XII, International Assistance to Refugees, Report submitted by the Sixth Committee to the Assembly, Geneva, 26 September 1935. 23. MAE SDN 1806, lettre de la Sous-direction de la SDN à Henry Bérenger (Letter from Sous-direction de la SDN to Henry Bérenger), 2 octobre 1935, pp. 101-03. 24. MAE SDN 225, ‘Relations avec le parlement. Note pour la direction des affaires politiques et commerciales’ (Relations with Parliament. Note for the manage­ ment of affaires politiques et commerciales) 1 avril 1933, p. 114. 25. MAE SDN 1806, note de Fouques-Duparc à Massigli (Note from FouquesDuparc to Massigli), 24 septembre 1935, p. 91. 26. MAE SDN 1806, Lettre de la Sous-direction de la SDN à Henry Bérenger (Letter from Sous-direction de la SDN to Henry Bérenger), 2 octobre 1935, pp. 101-03. 27. Le Matin no. 18047, 17 août 1933, p. 2. 28. Barbier is scathing about the regime of Roland-Marcel’s prefecture. See Barbier, ‘L’accueil des réfugiés d’Allemagne en Alsace (1933-34): arbitraire de l’administration et marges de l’action individuelle et collective’, especially p. 68 (The

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reception of the refugees from Germany in Alsace (1933-34): the arbitrary adminis­ tration and the scope of individual and collective operation). 29. See Rémond, ‘Conclusions’, pp. 513-19. 30. Holocaust Encyclopaedia, at https://www.ushmm.org/leam/holocaust-en cyclopedia (accessed 25 April 2016). 31. MAE SDN 1806, Lettre à Roland-Marcel (Letter to Roland-Marcel) 15 novembre 1935, pp. 125-26. 32. MAE SDN 1806, Lettre de la Sous-direction de la SDN à Joseph Avenol (Letter from the Sous-direction de la LON to Joseph Avenol) 15 novembre 1935, pp. 127-38; LON R5634 20A 20704A, Aide-mémoire, ‘Le problème des réfugiés en France’ (The problem of the refugees in France). 33. He helD the office from 1934-1936. 34. The meeting to brief Roland-Marcel was at the Quai; MAE SDN 1806, ‘Réunion du 23 novembre 1935 au MAE’, pp. 153-58. 35. MAE SDN 1806, Lettre de Fouques-Duparc à Roland-Marcel (Letter from Fouques-Duparc to Roland-Marcel), 26 novembre 1935. 36. LON CAIR PVI, Geneva, 18 December 1935. 37. McDonald et al., Refugees and Rescue, p. 82. 38. Ambassador, Senator, formerly General Commissioner of Emigration. 39. Ambassador to France. 40. Former British ambassador in Berlin. 4L This was the recommendation also of the HCR’s Governing Board meeting of 16 October 1935. 42. LON C.2. M.2.1936 XII, Rapport du Comité pour L’Assistance Internationale aux Réfugiés’ (Report of the Committee for International Assistance to Refugees) Geneva, 3 janvier 1936. 43. LON A.73.1936 XII, 8 October 1936. 44. MAE SDN 1806. 1 décembre, p. 160. Proposed in a telegram by the left-wing lawyers Moutet, Vincent de Moro-Giafferi and Henry Torres from France, and Georg Branting from Sweden, 1 décembre, p. 160. , 45. LON Official Journal, 90th Session of the Council (24 January 1936), 3705. C.85. 1936. 46. MAE 1806, Sous-direction de la SDN, ‘Note pour le représentant de la France. Réfugiés’ (Note for the representative of France, Refugees). 17 janvier 1936, pp. 183-85. 47. Quoted by Hein, ‘International Refugee Policy and Jewish Immigration under the Shadow of National Socialism’, p. 29. 48. MAE 1806, Ministre de l’intérieur, Sûreté Nationale, au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères. ‘Réorganisation de l’assistance internationale aux réfugiés’ (Ministry of the Interior, Sûreté Nationale, to Minister of Foreign Affairs Reorganisation of inter­ national aid for refugees) 18 janvier 1936, pp. 185-86. 49. MAE SDN 150, ‘Note pour le représentant de la France’ (Note for the repre­ sentative of France) 17 janvier 1936, pp. 17-19; LON Official Journal, 90th Session of the Council (24 January 1936), 3705. 50. PRO CO 3231 1402 6, Report of meeting 15 January 1936.

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51. LON Official Journal, 90th Session of the Council (24 January 1936), 3705. C.85.1936. 52. See chapter 9. 53. Livian, Le Parti Socialiste, p. 94. 54. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, Article 3 paragraph 1(b). For the narrative leading to the amnesty, see chapter 5. 55. AN F7 16073, ‘Réfugiés Allemagne. Ministre de l’intérieur aux préfets (Minister of the Interior to prefects), 14 août 1936. 56. Ex-Minister of the Interior of Prussia, 1926-30. 57. Livian, Le Parti Socialiste, pp. 98-103 mentions the presence of the last three, whereas Langkau-Alex, Deutsche Volksfront, vol. 2, p. 264, does not. 58. Livian, Le Parti Socialiste, pp. 98-103. 59. JO, 23 septembre 1936, p. 10058. See also Alland, ‘Le dispositif international du droit de F asile’, p. 29. 60. BDIC, F delta res 0798 77 31 décembre 1937, Excerpts from the Pariser Tageszeitung. 61. See chapter 1. 62. AN F7 14823 Lettre du Ministère de la Justice au Ministère de l’intérieur (Letter from Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of the Interior). 22 mars 1934 63. LON CAIR PVI, 18 December 1935. 64. LON CAIR PVI, 18 December 1935. 65. Author of the pamphlet Le Secours Rouge de France vous parle. [Assistance aux prisonniers politiques] (Paris, Secours Rouge de France, 1936). La Défense 335, 336, 17, 24 janvier 1936. 66. Archives du PCF, Bobigny 3 Mi 7, Fonds 539.3, dossier 1234, Circular, 27 janvier 1936. 67. Marcel Livian, ‘Témoignage Jean Longuet et les réfugiés’, in Gilles Candar and Maurice Agulhon, Jean Longuet, pp. 93-102. 68. The others were from the Quai, Fouques-Duparc and de Reffye. See MAE SDN 103, pp. 41-42. 69. LON CONF SRA 1-2 and C3621936 P Vl-5 Sixth Meeting; AN F7 16073, ‘Réfugiés allemands. Déclaration (German refugees. Declaration), 4 juillet 1936. 70. Livian, ‘Témoignage Jean Longuet et les réfugiés’, p. 100. 71. Lewis, The Boundaries of the Republic, p. 184. 72. Livian, ‘Témoignage Jean Longuet et les réfugiés’, p. 101. In meetings with Salengro, Viénot, Jules Moch and André Blumel. 73. See BDIC, Fonds LDH F Delta res 786/66: Commission juridique du Bureau International pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques (The Legal Commission of the International Office for the Respect of the Right of Asylum and help for Political Refugees). 74. The UK did ratify the 1933 Convention on 16 November 1936: MAE SDN 1812, pp. 188-89. 75. NA HO 213 1631, 16 July 1936, Report by E.N. Cooper on the Intergovernmental Conference 2-4 July 1936, in Geneva.

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76. MAE SDN 102, ‘Note pour le Ministre’ (Note for the Minister) 18 juin 1936, pp. 13-14. 77. The Intergovernmental Conference for the Adoption of a Statute for Refugees coming from Germany. 78. NA HO 213 1631, 16 July 1936, Report by E.N. Cooper. 79. Socialist and pacifist politician, he was expelled from the SFIO in 1944 for having rallied to Vichy. 80. Radical Republican and Radical-Socialist, President of the Commission des Affaires étrangères of the Chambre des Députés from 1936 to 1940. 81. MAE SDN 101, Decree 27 juin 1936, p. 15. 82. Radical, Minister of Commerce. A lawyer, he was married to the daughter of Jules Basdevant. 83. A member of the SFIO, Minister of the Budget. 84. Sous-directeur des Chancelleries. 85. MAE Papiers 1940 Delbos 3, ‘Note pour le Ministre’ (Note for the Minister) 11 janvier 1938, pp. 56-57. 86. MAE SDN 103, Decree 19 mai 1937, pp. 7-8. 87. MAE SDN 103, Decree, pp. 41-42. 88. MAE SDN 1812, ‘Note pour la Sous-direction de la SDN’, Procès-verbal (Note for the Sous-direction of the LON, Minutes). 15 mai 1937. 89. Livian, ‘Témoignage Jean Longuet et les réfugiés’, p. 98. 90. Archives du PCF, Bobigny 3 Mi 7, Fonds 539.3, dossier 1234, Circular, 27 janvier 1936. 91. Livian, ‘Témoignage Jean Longuet et les réfugiés’, p. 98. 92. Vice-president of the LICA. 93. La Défense 343, 13 mars 1936. 94. Le Populaire, 26 mars 1936. 95. In the 1930s she was expelled from the PCF for supporting Trotsky. She fought for the release of Victor Serge from Soviet prison. 96. La Défense 335, 17 janvier 1936; 336, 24 janvier 1936. 97. Harry Olten, Weltappell fur Asylrecht: Zu dem Pariser Internationalen Asylrechtskonferenz vom 20. und 21. Juni 1936 (Paris: Editions Universelles, September 1936); (Worldwide Call for the Right to Asylum: The International Conference on Asylum Rights Held in Paris, 20-21 June 1936). 98. La Défense 355, 5 juin 1936. 99. Leader of the British Labour Party, 1932-35. 100. French socialist politicians who attended included Grumbach, Viénot, Moutet, Joseph Paul-Boncour and Jouhaux. 101. BDIC, Fonds LDH F Delta res 786 66, ‘Rapport de la Commission des Mandats’: sixteen international organisations, fourteen Socialist parties, five Communist parties, four democratic parties, nine trade unions, forty-nine aid and soli­ darity groups, twenty-three émigré organisations, and thirty-six cultural and academic associations. 102. Secretary-general of the CGT. 103. Catholic politician, socialist pacifist campaigner for women’s rights.

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104. Communist lawyer, founder member of the Fondation de 1’Association Juridique Internationale, advocate for L’Humanité. 105. Editor of L’Humanité 1918-58, member of the central council of the PCF 1923-58; Deputy 1914-36, Senator 1936^0. 106. Omnes, Les Bannis d’Hitler, p. 97. 107. Olten, Weltappell für Asylrecht. 108. BDIC, Fonds LDH F Delta res 786 66, Associations de soutien aux réfugiés politiques (Associations that supported political refugees). 109. See chapter 4. 110. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, Article 9 paragraph 2(a). 111. BDIC, LDH F798 22 carton 76. No date but probably late July or early August 1936. 112. See debates, JO, Débats Parlementaires - Chambre des Députés, Séance 29 janvier 1935, pp. 246, 256-60, 265; Séance 19 février 1935, pp. 550, 563-65. 113. AN F7 16073, ‘Réfugiés Allemagne’; Lettre du 25 juin 1936, ‘Statut des réfugiés provenant d’Allemagne’. Letter of 25 June 1936 (Statute of Refugees Coming from Germany) 114. AN F7 16073, ‘Réfugiés ’Allemagne’, Annexe no.l de la lettre du 25 juin 1936 (Annexe no 1 to the letter of 25 June 1936). 115. For the question of American perceptions, the role of the JDC and Bernard Khan, see Caron, Uneasy Asylum, Chapter 5. 116. AN F7 16073, ‘Réfugiés Allemagne. Déclaration’ (German refugees, Declaration) 4 juillet 1936. 117. He took office on 26 September 1936, replacing Magny. 118. MAE Série Papiers 1940, Cabinet du Ministre, Delbos, Lettre 15 septembre 1936 (Cabinet of the Minister, Delbos, Letter 15 September) pp.37-39. 119. LON OJ C.362.M 237.1936 XII, ‘For the purpose of the present Arrangement, the term “refugee coming from Germany” shall be determined to apply to any per­ son who was settled in that country who does not possess any nationality other than German nationality, and in respect of whom it is established that in law or in fact he or she does not enjoy the protection of the Government of the Reich’. See chapter 4. 120. LON OJC.362.M 237.1936 XII. 121. AN F7 16073, Réfugiés Allemagne. Note pour la Presse’ (Note for the Press), 12 août 1936. 122. Belgium 7 October 1936, Denmark and France 4 July 1936, Ireland 25 September 1936, Norway 21 September 1936, Spain 27 January 1937, Switzerland 30 August 1937. 123. Livian, Le Parti Socialiste, p. 94. 124. JDC NY_R3344_0005; Jacob B. Lightman (a JDC executive), ‘Some analyti­ cal notes on the second revised text of the Provisional Arrangement concerning the status of German refugees as agreed upon by the LON Intergovernmental Conference for the adoption of the Statute of the Refugees coming from Germany’. 125. AN F7 16073, ‘Réfugiés Allemagne. Compte-rendu d’un entretien à la Présidence du Conseil’ (Report of a discussion at the Prime Minister’s Office) 12 août 1936.

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126. He became Director of the Sûreté Nationale in 1940. 127. AN F60 497, Sessions (Sittings) 22 janvier, 16 mars, 2 juillet, 28 novembre 1936. The subject of German refugees and the amnesty seems not to have been within the remit of the Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration. This Commission, which met once a quarter at the Quai and in 1936 was chaired by Tetreau, discussed work permits for refugees with Nansen passports not for German refugees. 128. LON C 2. M.2. 1936 XII, September 1936. 129. LON C75.M.30.1938 XII. 130. The questions of refugees coming from Germany who, although having lived for a long time in Germany did not have German citizenship, was not dealt with in the Provisional Arrangement. 131. MAE SDN 103, ‘Note pour le représentant de la France’ (Note for the repre­ sentative of France) 8 septembre 1937, pp. 45-47. 132. The Liaison Committee was set up in pursuance of a resolution adopted by the 1936 LON Assembly. It included representatives of twenty-six Jewish and nonJewish organisations interested in the refugee problem, including the Quakers, the American Jewish JDC, the Council for German Jewry, the World Jewish Congress, the Agudath Israel, the Jewish Agency for Palestine and refugee committees of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia. 133. The LON Convention of 28 October 1933, which granted legal, social and working rights to Nansen refugees. 134. See Frank Caestecker, ‘Modern Refugees as Challengers of NationState Sovereignty: From the Historical to the Contemporary’, and ‘How the Refugees Crisis from Nazi Germany got (partly) solved through International Concertation’, both in Comparativ: Zeitschrift fur Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 1 (2017), pp. 7-17, 39-59. Caestecker draws a distinction between refugees who were pushed to leave Germany and those who left because they were pulled by the chance of a better life in another country. He says: The severe persecution of all opposition to the new regime meant that these people did not have a real choice but to flee. Their flight could be labelled an acute refugee movement, to use the label minted by Kunz in distinction to ‘anticipatory’ refugee movements. The lat­ ter did not have to leave on the spur of the moment but had some time to plan their depar­ ture. Still ‘anticipatory’ refugee movements are also qualified as an involuntary departure or flight in response to ‘push’ factors, while (voluntary) migrants as Kunz outlined are responding to ‘pull’ factors. The flight of non-politically active Jews from Germany in 1933 was much less a response to an acute threat. Some fled as they had been targeted by the chaotic violence in the wake of Nazi victory, others did not trust the new rulers, and still others hoped to increase their opportunities by leaving Germany.

The latter argument ignores the laws the Nazi government passed in the spring of 1933, which deprived Jewish lawyers and civil servants of their livelihood. See also Kunz, ‘Exile and Resettlement: Refugee Theory’, pp. 42-51. 135. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, p. 60.

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136. Gerhardt Riegner, ‘Report of the International Conference for the Adoption of a Definitive Statute for Refugees from Germany, 14 February 1938’, World Jewish Congress Collection, MS-361, Box A8, Folder 5, International Conference, Statute for German Refugees, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH. 137. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, p. 62. 138. LON Treaty Series, vol. CXCII, no. 4461, p. 59. 139. The C was signed by France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Norway, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands. Cuba, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia signed only the last paragraph. Poland did not sign anything.

Chapter 11

Evian

The period from April 1938 until the fall of France in June 1940 saw a dramatic hardening of the French authorities’ attitude towards refugees compared with the previous five years. Contrary to the previous years, the government took an active role in forming the refugee policy and abandoned even the lip service of a duty to provide refuge for the persecuted. After the Anschluss on 12 March 1938 the Quai predicted that France was threatened with an unprece-dented influx of undesirable refugees: the numbers would be increased by 30,000 Germans and 400,000-500,000 Austrians, plus the clandestine refugees displaced by the anti-Semitic policies of the Polish, Romanian and Hungarian governments.1 The figure for Austria was exagger­ ated to such an extent that it was difficult to believe.2 Maybe the government pressured the Quai to give a high figure and in reply increased it to become excessive. The new policy was designed to limit the number of refugees seeking asylum in France, to resist Nazi intentions to dump Germany’s and Austria’s unwanted citizens on France, and allay the fear of the Ministry of Defence and Daladier that there would be fifth-columnists among the refu­ gees.3 On 25 April 1938 Daladier, who Noiriel describes as lun homme de gauche pour appliquer une politique de droite’ (‘a man of the left to apply policy of the right’),4 spoke about the refugees in his inaugural speech, unprec­ edented for a Prime Minister, when he announced the introduction of the new measures, drawing a distinction between desirable and undesirable: refugees whose papers were not in order were undesirable, as were those without the funds to support themselves.5 Two days after the Anschluss Sarraut, who was to become Minister of the Interior in April, declared in the Chambre des Deputes (The Chamber ofDeputies): ‘We cannot include the detritus and flot­ sam in these torrents, the dregs of humanity who have lost all moral sense and would constitute a very grave danger for us if we keep them on our soil’.6 The 231

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Quai ordered French consulates not to issue visas to Austrian subjects unless they held US visas and were transiting through France.7 In April, Sarraut, as Minister of the Interior, instructed the Quai that visas were to be refused to artisans and small-scale merchants suspected of intending to settle in France and he imposed limitations on the right of foreigners to engage in commerce. Jean Berthoin, director of the Sûreté Nationale, demanded that France should no longer be the depository for the waste products of the entire Austrian and German immigration and repeated Bérenger’s insistence that France should serve only as a country of transit.8 Caron writes: It was a combination of economic and security considerations generated by the Austrian refugee crisis, the worsening situation of German Jewry, and the growing demand of East European Jews for asylum that stimulated the Daladier administration to formulate new policies over the spring and summer (1938) aimed at blocking the entry of new refugees and forcing out thousands of illegal aliens already there. By the time of the Evian Conference in July, France had abandoned even the pretence of still being a nation of asylum.9

The decrees of May 1938 gave added substance to the new policy.10 Noiriel says that a compromise between the Quai and the Ministry of the Interior was that France would remain open to refugees.11 Refugees who were manual workers who could serve in the French armed forces and persons who had the financial means to support themselves without recourse to jobs or activities that would compete with French labour or enterprises were considered desirable. Foreigners whose papers were not in order were undesirable.12 They had one month to regularise them and if they had not done so were subject to expul­ sion. Also liable to expulsion were foreigners who took part in trade union or domestic or foreign political activities. The French government refused to deport undesirable German and Austrian refugees to their countries of ori­ gin, therefore they were assigned to house arrest (assignées à residence) or interned. Annie Lacroix-Riz says that the May decrees satisfied the demands of the Chambre de Commerce de Paris (Paris Chamber of Commerce) which launched a xenophobic campaign in 1937 to expel clandestine Polish Jewish refugees.13 The decrees were reinforced in June14 and November 1938.15 Indeed, France did not officially condemn the Nazi pogrom of Kristallnacht.16 This provoked the moral outrage of a broad coalition that included politicians of all parties who demanded the reversion to the more liberal application of the PF’s rules for asylum. Caron describes its limited success.17 In December 1939, the Quai set up together with the Ministry of Defence the Commission intermin­ istérielle permanente de crib/age (The Permanent Interdepartmental Screening Commission) which screened applicants to be released from internment. It was against the background of the increase in the numbers seeking asy­ lum that President Roosevelt called for the Intergovernmental Conference that

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convened in Evian on 14 July 1938.18 It is doubtful that Daladier would have given his consent had Blum not already agreed in March, after the Swiss had refused to host it, that the Conference could be held in France.19 The agenda was to examine the measures that can be taken to facilitate the settlement in other countries of political refugees coming from Germany (including Austria). To examine the measures that can be taken immediately, in accordance with the legislation and the rules on immigration presently in place in the countries accepting refugees, to come to the aid of the most pressing cases.20

The Jewish and caritative organisations21 were optimistic that the thirtythree countries attending the Conference would act to alleviate the plight of refugees from Central and East Europe.22 They were disappointed. Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader, summed up the Conference by saying that the world had become divided into two camps, one of countries expelling Jews and the other of countries which did not admit them.23 Daladier appointed Bérenger President of the Conference as well as head of the French delegation. His instructions were to ensure that refugees deemed undesirable did not come to France, that the discussion and any reso­ lutions concerned only refugees from Germany and that the other countries would participate in taking in the German refugees.24 Bérenger’s address to the plenary session repeated the mantra that the refugee crisis was an inter­ national problem, that France had been more than generous in its reception of these refugees but now was saturated, that it had no funds left to receive more refugees and that it could not allow further large-scale refugee immigra­ tion.25 However, he did not repeat the anti-Nazi rhetoric of his earlier LON interventions. Although the delegates expressed ' sympathy and concern for the plight of the German refugees, the Dominican Republic was the only country that offered more than a limited number for settlement.26 French efforts to encour­ age other countries to take German refugees continued to meet resolute resis­ tance.27 Bérenger blocked a proposal that refugees from countries other than Germany should be given protection but was obliged to concede that Austrian refugees were included in the LON definition of refugees from Germany, 1 and in place of the narrow definition of protection to agree a modification to allow broader justifications for flight which included refugees in transit.28 Although France was a signatory, the Daladier government ignored the resolutions. The one major achievement of the Conference was to establish the IGCR to assist in efforts to resettle refugees from Europe to countries allowing permanent immigration.29 It was also authorised to negotiate with Germany to allow refugees to take their assets with them when emigrating but not to intervene with the German authorities to try to persuade them to stop the persecution. Although its establishment was in the French interest, Bérenger,

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as he had done for the HCR, vetoed the proposal that the IGCR’s headquar­ ters should be in Paris, again fearing the city would become a hub for refugee organisations and pressure groups. The IGCR was established in London in August 1938. Its first President was George Rublee, an American lawyer, then from 1939 Sir Herbert Emerson, former Governor of the Indian State of Punjab, who served also as the LON High Commissioner for Refugees. During the interwar years, the guiding principle of both the Quai and the LON was that instead of a definition of refugees as individuals it would con­ cern certain categories of refugees who would be issued with documents that gave them residence and travel rights. The last pre-war international defini­ tion to which France was a signatory but did not ratify was the resolution adopted at the Evian Conference.30 After the Second World War, the pendulum swung to the other extreme when French policy recognised a duty to grant asylum to the persecuted. Echoing the Montagnard Constitution of 1793, the Preamble of the Fourth French Republic’s Constitution of 17 October 1946 declared in Article 4: ‘Any individual persecuted by reason of his actions in favour of liberty has a right to asylum in the territories of the Republic’. The reversal was given substance by the establishment of the Office national de l’immigration (The National Immigration Office) (ONI) in 1945 under the aegis of the Ministry of the Interior,31 and the OFPRA in 1952, under the aegis of the Quai.32 The split of responsibility between the Ministry of the Interior and the Quai is yet another example, which continued after the Second World War, of the jurisdictional fights between the ministries. The definition now encompassed all the persecuted including the stateless; it was broad and the right to request asylum was recognised. The mission statement of the ONI’s successor office, the Office français de l’immigration et de l’intégration (The French Office for Immigration and Assimilation) (OFII),33 reads: Faithful to its tradition of welcome and integration, as far as immigration is con­ cerned, France conducts a policy made up of generosity and humanism, setting its sights on going beyond original values to adhere to values that are common to the Republic. The OFII today is the anchor of this integration policy and is the place where every immigrant on our soil is welcomed.34

Its guide to requests for asylum shows how far the French narrative had shifted, even though politicians consider its current implementation deficient.35 The OFII defined that the status of refugee ‘may be granted: to persons per­ secuted by reason of their actions in favour of liberty; for persons under the mandate of the “United Nations High Commission for Refugees”; to persons corresponding to the definitions in Article 1 of the Geneva Convention of 28

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July 1951 relative to the status of refugees’.36 New, as well, was the OFII’s mission to manage not only the refugees’ entry but also their integration into French society.37 Whereas in the 1930s the Quai had been anxious to protect French sover­ eignty and for this reason had resisted the pressure to recognise a human right to asylum, after the Second World War it agreed to release its sovereignty by giving the authority for management of refugee affairs to international organisations.38 Indeed, the French position had changed so much that when the UN set up the Commission on the Rights of Man in January 1947 to draft the UDHR, the proposals were too radical for many countries. For example, France had wanted the UN authorised to enforce the right of asylum. The original draft of Article 14 read: ‘Everyone has the right to seek and to be granted, in other countries, asylum from persecution’.39 The pre-war opinion of most international jurists still prevailed, that the ‘competence to grant asylum derives directly from the territorial sovereignty of states’,40 and main­ tained there was no reference to the grant of asylum being a human right.41 The Commission watered down the final 1948 wording to ‘everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’.42 The refugee had a right to seek asylum, not a right to receive it. Internationally, the gap remained between ideals and practice and it continued to prove difficult to translate the emotive concepts of terre d’asile (land of asylum) and tradition d’acceuil (tradition of welcome) into law. This was also the case when the UN passed the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees on 28 July 1951, CSR, which does not have the obligation of a state to grant asylum43 The first generic definition of a refugee by the UN was in Article 1(2) of the 1951 Convention: a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual resi­ dence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.44

Although the CSR shifted the basis for being a refugee from collective cat­ egories to individuals, it was criticised as being too narrow because it was limited to persecution and did not include people displaced because of eco­ nomic or natural calamities or war and because it continued to apply the rule of non-intervention. An essential characteristic of refugee status remained crossing the border.45 If France or the UN interfered in the domestic affairs of a state it would violate the state’s sovereignty.

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French recognition of the universal right to a nationality also came after the war. Article 15 of the UDHR provided that ‘everyone has the right to a nationality’ and that ‘no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality’. The 1954 UN Convention relat­ ing to the Status of Stateless Persons defines statelessness as ‘a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’.46 Although in the interwar period a distinction was often made between refu­ gees who were stateless and refugees who possessed a passport even though it did not give them protection, the concept that statelessness was inconsistent with human rights was not an argument that was used.47 The French pre-war preoccupation with the problem of burden sharing, which they had complained about so bitterly, was recognised after the war by the international community in Recital 4 of the preamble of the CSR:48 ‘Considering that the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries, and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which the United Nations has recognised the international scope and nature cannot be achieved without international cooperation’.49 France, through the Quai, had a large hand in drafting the UDHR and the CSR, but it was not until some twenty years later that the international community took serious account of them. As Moyn points out, they had no international resonance until the 1970s.50 Whereas in the interwar years the LON and the Quai insisted that private caritative organisations bear the cost of refugee relief, the onus changed in 1943 when the UN assumed the responsibility. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association was established and France became a mem­ ber in 1944.51 Its activities were transferred to the International Refugee Organisation52 and then in 1950 to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.53 Its office in France was established under the aegis of the Quai in 1952. After the Second World War, allowing for the myriad of organisations, associations and commissions that complicated matters, it was clear that the French government’s intention was that France would give up a good part of its sovereignty to the UN to decide and execute international refugee policy. Whether the reality of what happened differed from this intention must be the subject of a separate study.

NOTES 1. MAE ACN 2 58, ‘Note pour le Président du Conseil’ (Note for the Prime Minister). 8 avril 1938. 2. See chapter 1.

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3. Daladier served as Minister of Defence in the four governments from June 1936 until May 1940. 4. Noiriel, Immigration, antisémitisme et racisme en France, p 457. 5. For example, if they did not have a visa, or their visa had expired. 6. Quoted by Frédéric Monier, ‘Léon Blum, les socialistes français et les réfugiés dans les années 1930’, Fondation Jean Jaurès, Histoire, 13 juillet 2016, at https://jean -jaures.org (accessed 23 July 2016). 7. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, Chapter 8. 8. For a full description, see Vicki Caron, ‘Unwilling Refuge: France and the Dilemma of Illegal Immigration, 1933-1939’, in F. Caestecker and B. Moore (eds), Refugees from Nazi Germany and Liberal European States (New York: Berghahn books, 2010), pp. 57-81. See also Annie Lacroix-Riz, De Munich à Vichy l’assassinat de la Troisième République, 1938-1940 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2008), pp. 100-101. 9. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, p. 172. 10. JO Lois et Décrets, 3 mai 1938, p. 4967, 15 mai 1938, p. 5492. The former decree concerned the police and the latter the stay of foreigners. 11. Noiriel, Réfugiés et sans-papiers, pp. 60-61. 12. See Aurélie Audeval, ‘L“Indésirable”, une catégorie d’action publique inter­ nationale’ and Sylvain Bissonier ‘Les décrets-lois Daladier de 1938 ou l’exclusion des étrangers indésirables à la fin de la Ille République’ in Cahiers de l’Ethnopole 01/2019 Amiens, CPA, pp. 9-24. 13. Lacroix-Riz, De Munich à Vichy l’assassinat, pp. 100-101. 14. JO, Lois et Décrets, 29 juin 1938, p. 7 251 concerned health regulations. 15. JO, Lois et Décrets, 13 novembre 1938, p. 12 920-21 concerned the Police des étrangers. For a full description, see Vicki Caron, ‘Unwilling refuge: France and the dilemma of illegal immigration, 1933-1939’, in F. Caestecker and B. Moore (eds), Refugees from Nazi Germany and Liberal European States (New York: Berghan books, 2010), pp. 57-81. See also Lacroix-Riz, De Munich à Vichy l’assassinat, pp. 100-101. 16. 9-10 November 1938. See Rod Edward, La Vie en Bleu (London: Allen Lane, 2005), p. 217. President Roosevelt recalled the US ambassador from Berlin. 17. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 228-34. 18. For his decision, see S'. Adler Rudel, ‘The Evian Conference on the Refugee Question’, Leo Baeck Institute, Year Book vol. XIII (1968), pp. 235-73; Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 182-86; Rafael Medoff, ‘FDR’S Response to Kristallnacht: Another Look’, David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, November 2014. 19. Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 181-82. 20. New York Public Library, ZP-467, no. 3, ‘Actes du Comité Intergouvememental, Evian du 6 au 15 juillet, Compte-rendu des Séances Plénières du Comité, Résolutions et Rapports’, II (Proceedings of the Intergovernmental Committee, Evian 6-15 July, minutes of the plenary sessions of the Committee, resolutions, and reports, II). 21. Thirty-nine attended. 22. France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and nineteen South American states.

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23. S. Adler-Rudel, The Evian Conference and the Refugee Question in Leo Baeck Institute, Yearbook vol. XIII (1968), p. 236. 24. MAE SDN IM 1815, ‘Rapport. Programme de la reunion du comité intergou­ vememental d’Evian (Report. Programme for the meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee at Evian) 24 juin 1938, pp. 211-18; MAE SDN IM 1815, ‘Note pour le ministre’ (Note for the Minister) 29 juin 1938, pp. 253-58. See also Caron, Uneasy Asylum, pp. 179, 183-84; Anne Dulphy, Le Comité intergouvememental pour les réfugiées: les limites de la solidarité démocratique de l’Europe face au Fascisme, Centre de Recherche Histoire et Civilisation de l’Université de Metz, 2003, pp. 229-47. 25. New York Public Library, ZP-467, no. 3, Actes du Comité Intergouvememental (cf. n. 20), pp. 15-16. 26. Of the 5,000 Dominican visas issued between 1940 and 1945, 645 Jews went to the Dominican Republic. A condition was that they had to work in agriculture. See Marion A. Kaplan, Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosiia, 1940-1945 (New York: Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2008). 27. See Catherine Nicault, ‘L’abandon des Juifs avant la Shoah: la France et la conférence d’Évian’, Les cahiers de la Shoah no. 1 (Paris: Les Éditions Liana Levi, 1994), pp. 135-50. 28. See chapter 3. 29. New York Public Library, ZP-467, no. 3, Actes du Comité Intergouvememental, ‘Décisions prises à la conférence d’Evian sur les réfugiés juifs’ (The Intergovenmental Committee, decisions adopted at the Evian Conference concerning Jewish refugees) 14 juillet 1938. 30. See chapter 4. 31. The decree of 2 November 1945 codified the rules for foreigners to enter and stay in France. 32. Established 25 July 1952. Appeals against OFPRA decisions were heard by the Commission des recours des réfugiés until it was replaced in 2009 by the Cour nationale de droit d’asile, under the Conseil d’État. 33. Established April 2009. 34. See www.ofii.fr (accessed 14 June 2016). 35. See http://www.ofii.fr/demande-d-asile. In the Sénat report on the work of the OFII, Yvon Collin said: ‘We’ve understood that we are still only halfway down the road and that the actions of our office must be reinforced, in qualitative terms in particular’. Sénat Rapport d’information no. 47, 12 octobre 2012. 36. http://www.ofii.fr/demande-d-asile 37. The rules for entry, stay and the right of asylum, the Code des étrangers, were consolidated in 2004 as the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile (CESEDA). See https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/eli/ordonnance/2004/ll/24/ INTX0400217R/jo/texte 38. Including the EU in which France takes part in its effort to achieve a Common European Asylum System. 39. See Felice Morgenstem, ‘The Right of Asylum’, British Yearbook of International Law 327 (1949), pp. 327-57.

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40. Boed, ‘The State of the Right of Asylum in International Law’, pp. 3-5. 41. See Sibylle Kapferer, ‘Article 14(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Exclusion from International Refugee Protection’, Refugee Survey Quarterly 27(3) (2008), pp. 53-75. 42. Yearbook on Human rights for 1948, pp. 535-37: UN Document A 810. Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted and proclaimed by UN General Assembly Resolution 217A (III) of 10 December 1948, p. 71. 43. As amended by the Protocol of 13 January 1967. 44. United Nations High Commission for Refugees, text of the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Text of the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees Resolution 2198 (XXI) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly with an Introductory Note by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva, December 2010, p. 14. 45. The European Union Dublin III regulation specified the demarcation of bor­ ders for refugees. See Regulation (EU) no. 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determin­ ing the Member State responsible for examining an application for international pro­ tection lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person. 46. United Nations High Commission for Refugees, text of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, Chapter 1, article 1, p. 6. 47. Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, ‘Refugees and Stateless Persons. Introductory Note’, UN Audio-visual Library of International Law, at http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/prsr/prsr .html (accessed 17 December 2016). 48. Claire Inder, ‘The Origins of Burden Sharing in the contemporary refugee protection regime’, Working Paper no. 18, Refugee Law Initiative, pp. 29-41; edi­ tion of special papers from the Annual Conference, ‘The Future of Refugee Law', Senate House, London, 29 June-1 July 2016 (London: School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2016). 49. 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, UN Treaty Series, vol. 189, p. 137. 50. Moyn, ‘Le retour des droits de 1’homme’, pp. 684-86. Even France did not ratify the 1950 European Convention of Human Rights until 1974. 51. Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, 9 November 1943. 52. UN Treaty Series, vol. 33, p. 302. 53. United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 189, p. 137. See the Yearbook of the United Nations 1950, Part 1, Chapter 4, Refugees and Stateless Persons, Economic and Social Questions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), pp. 569-88.

Conclusion

The French never officially closed their borders, although in practice, even if they had wanted, it would have been difficult because they were contigu­ ous with six countries, the borders were porous and the French customs and police were never in full control. Yet for ideological and practical reasons the reality was that France was the only large Western democracy to provide refuge.1 Up to late 1938 the United States and the United Kingdom, the two other major democracies, apart from a few cases were closed to German refu­ gees. French refugee policy should be judged against this setting. The assessments of contemporaries ranged from approbation to critical. Hope Simpson gave his opinion in his survey in 1939 for the Royal Institute of International Affairs:2 France, with a population estimated in 1935, at 4J,900,000, is par excellence the country of refuge in Western Europe for those unfortunates whom politi­ cal conditions have compelled to leave their native country. ... No European country approaches France in the numbers to whom permanent refuge has been given. She treats her refugees with liberality and consideration. Some are doubt­ less more favoured than others. The Russians and Saarlanders have been more welcome than the Germans and the Armenians.

About asylum he said: The French people cherish the ideal of the right of asylum. This has always been evident, but particularly in times when French governments have tended to accept the views of the political Left. On occasions, there have been outbreaks of xenophobia, usually due to cases of violent crimes in which aliens were sus­ pected to be the culprits, or to extreme economic depression. . . . But there has always been a return to liberal thinking.3 241

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By contrast, the letter the US President Herbert Hoover sent to New York Representative Fiorella La Guardia in 1930, although it did not mention the German refugees, exemplified the American attitude at that time. ‘The Italians are predominantly murderers and bootleggers [and you and your Italian supporters] should go back to where you belong [because] like a lot of other foreign spawn, you do not appreciate this country which supports and tolerates you’.4 Contemporaries and historians censured the Quai for being both too humanitarian and not humanitarian enough. Its work at the LON was criti­ cised by Louise Holbom, an author on refugee affairs who had emigrated from Germany to the United Kingdom in 1933 and then settled in the United States in 1934. She did not blame her adopted country for having kept its doors closed to fellow refugees. Instead she wrote: It is evident that the League has handicapped itself in its work for refugees, first by always dealing with it as a humanitarian question instead of treating it as a political one and striking at the root of the problem, as both Nansen and McDonald proposed, by negotiations with the refugee-producing countries; and second by its unwillingness to commit itself to long-range plans.5

Janowsky and Fagen6 criticised the LON and the Quai for their refusal to acknowledge that humanitarian rights trumped sovereignty. And post-war historians such as Badia and Thalmann are critical of the French authorities and unsympathetic to the Quai for its apparent lack of consideration for the plight of refugees.7 French governments were criticised by contemporaries, especially from the political left, for not having an immigration policy and refusing to adopt a statute for refugees and asylum seekers. Barbier says that the lack of political direction was the cause of the arbitrary exercise of excessive power by local officials.8 The assessment of this book is less severe. The Quai did have a policy; it did not encourage the refugees to come to France, but in most cases, it allowed them to do so. Its reaction to the problem may not have been supportive of them; nonetheless, it was not as unfavour­ able as that of the United States or the United Kingdom. As seen in chapter 3, there were German refugees whose experience belied Simpson’s assessment. Although it appeared that some refugees did not appreciate or respect France for providing refuge, typically they were complaining as much about the challenges and hardships of being a refugee as the obstacles imposed by the French authorities. When Exilliteratur described the difficulties of starting a new life in a foreign country, France as the preferred, sometimes the only country of refuge, was often the object of their frustration. Indeed, the refu­ gees could enjoy the freedoms of expression and assembly that were denied

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them in Germany. The strictures imposed by the government and executed by the police that the refugees must not take part in French politics or while they were in France conduct campaigns against the Nazi government were hardly ever enforced. Although the refugee problem was not a main preoccupation of FrancoGerman relations, nevertheless the Quai applied the skills it used for tra­ ditional diplomacy when dealing with the German refugees, a new field, sui generis, that required an innovative approach.9 The historian Robert Boyce writes about French foreign policy between 1918 and 1940 as having ‘intelligent leadership, competent advisers, and farsightedness in the policy making process’ and considers that ‘France as a great power for at least three centuries benefited from a diplomatic service of impressive profes­ sionalism’.10 The LON was a principal theatre for dealing with the problem of the refugees. It is striking how the Quai manoeuvred to influence its resolutions in the Quai’s favour and how successful it was in ensuring that the LON acted in France’s interest. The Quai’s agency was conspicuous in the negotiations for both the Provisional Arrangement of 1936 and the Convention of 1938. Apart from issuing visas over which the Quai had control although it complained that consuls were not adept at policing, there were neither the manpower nor the resources to patrol the common border with Germany to stop the clandestine entry of refugees.11 Nevertheless, whether because of lack of resources or because of humanitarian considerations or a combination of both, France abided by the Republican value that it should provide asylum for the persecuted. When confronted with the arrival of German refugees, the Quai’s response to the crisis was not so much to resist the fait accompli of the refugees’ arrival in France but rather to allow them refuge with the intention that they should transit to settlement in other countries. The French initially hoped that the HCR would help fulfil Bérenger’s demand that France must be une voie de triage (sorting station) and not une voie de garage (parking lot), by arranging for refugees in France to move on for settlement overseas, and had to concede when it became clear that the HCR had no intention of helping. The Quai lost interest in it and, indeed, supported Avenol’s refusal to give League status to McDonald. The Quai was uneasy about the trade-off between handing responsibility to the LON and the loss of French sovereignty that this would entail. When the Quai recognised the international pressure that the LON should undertake commitments for the German refugees, it made sure that the Arrangement and Convention did not compromise French sovereignty too much. For exam­ ple, in 1933 the Quai negotiated a let-out from the rule of non-refoulement with the clause that it did not apply in cases when the subject was a threat to national security or to social order.12

244

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The Quai was careful to avoid open-ended future commitments. In 1936, the PF’s delegate, Longuet, had to disregard the wishes of the political left and settle for the arrangement that concerned only German refugees, and that the amnesty related only to the past. The Quai ignored the argument of international jurists that refugees had a right to asylum and in the negotiations for the definition of a refugee it suc­ ceeded in blocking the moves by pressure groups that the right to asylum should be extended to all refugees. The Quai also used its skill to hold on to its jurisdiction over refugee affairs in the turf wars with other ministries. When this was threatened by Chautemps, the Quai convinced the government that it was the only Ministry that had the experience and capability to pursue a refugee policy that required flexibility and agility to deal with unfamiliar problems. The French felt that France was having to shoulder a larger burden of refugees than other states and they wanted a fairer distribution. But this was an area in which the Quai failed. The British rebuffed the Quai when it. approached them to increase the quota for settlement of refugees in Palestine. It was unable to shame the United States into easing its immigrant restric­ tions. It lost faith in the HCR when it became clear that McDonald was not interested in helping France to move the refugees already in France. The Quai was unsuccessful when it approached overseas countries especially in South America to take in refugees. The French Colonial Ministry refused to help. Sarraut, the Colonial Ministers and Colonial Governors were keen to develop (mettre en valeur) the economies of the French colonies but it was not their intention that this should be done by German refugees, most of them Jewish. Unlike the British, who, at other times, looked to their empire for providing the possibility of long-term refugee relief, the French would not do this, nor did they see the provision of refuge as a low-cost alternative to intervention since physical intervention in Germany was not a realistic choice.13 The fact that about half of the refugees who came to France turned out to be in transit for settlement in other countries was due more to the efforts of caritative organisations than to those of the Quai. Nevertheless, the conclusion of this study is to have sympathy for the French position.14 It took the LON five years to agree on the 1938 Convention concerning the status of refugees coming from Germany. While the LON was trying to find a solution to the problem, experimenting with the HCR and the Provisional Arrangement, while the doors for immigration to the United States and to the United Kingdom were closed, the Quai, aware that France had a moral duty to provide asylum and in the face of the economic constraints of the great depression, managed affairs so that during the period 1933-1938 France gave refuge to a far greater number of refugees than any other country. For other countries, especially the United States and

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the United Kingdom, it was a case of wanting the refugee problem solved provided it was not on their territory. On the other hand, the Quai, at the same time as protecting French sovereignty, was resolute in acknowledg­ ing the Montagnard imperative to give refuge and that this was not merely lip service, in stark contrast to the United States and the United Kingdom, lands of liberty and justice, who did not provide the same haven during these years. And, even as late as August 1938, when French policy was to appease Germany, the Quai refused German requests for information about German refugees in France.15 Yet the Quai ignored the proposition that its understand­ ing of sovereignty was not curbed by the rule of non-refoulement; that the two were not in opposition. On the contrary, a precondition for responsible behaviour was a healthy sovereign state and the state was stronger by the acceptance of this principle.16 There is no evidence, whatever the private opinions of its staff, of antiSemitism in the Quai’s professional conduct while the views of politicians, public opinion and those of many French Jews were anti-Semitic and antiracial.17 However, the Quai’s attitude to the refugees was unyielding and its policies to deal with the unfamiliar problem of the German refugees did not evolve. Instead, the foundations of the post-war acceptance of the human right of asylum, of international obligations due to all refugees and of statutes to enable them to build a new life were laid in the interwar years by pressure groups and international lawyers, not by the Quai.

NOTES 1. For a survey of policies in other European countries, see Frank Caestecker, ‘Les prémisses de l’institutionalisation de la politique des réfugiés dans l’aprèsguerre: expérimentations en matière de protection des réfugiés dans l’Europe des années 1930’, in Aline Angoustures, Dzovinar Kevonian and Claire Mouradian (eds), Réfugiés et Apatrides; administrer l’asile en France (1920-1960) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2019), pp. 47-64. 2. Hope Simpson and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, The refugee problem, p. 297. Hope Simpson was responsible for the Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development of October 1930, to address these issues in Palestine after the 1929 riots. The report recommended limiting Jewish immigration to the economic absorptive capacity of the Mandate. 3. Hope Simpson and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Refugee Problem, pp. 297-98. 4. Quoted by E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (New York: Random House, 1964), p. 30. 5. Louise W. E. Holbom, ‘The League of Nations and the Refugee Problem’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 203 (1939), pp. 124-35.

246

Conclusion

6. Janowsky and Fagen, International Aspects', see also chapter 6. 7. See chapter 3. 8. See chapter 5. 9. See Duroselle, France and the Nazi Threat', Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years (New York: Norton, 1994), in Jean-Claude Allain, Pierre Guillen, Georges-Henri Soutou, Laurent Thesis and Maurice Vaïsse, Histoire de la diplomatie française II. De 1815 à nos jours (Paris: Tempus, 2005), pp. 287^426. Interestingly, the index to the Documents Diplomatiques Français 1932-1939 has a category for foreigners, but not for refugees. 10. Robert Boyce, French Foreign and Defence Policy 1918-1940 (London: LSE/ Routledge, 1998), p. 6. 11. See chapter 3. 12. See chapter 5. 13. Caroline Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace. Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 2-3. 14. Caestecker says that only Belgium’s reception was more generous: Caestecker, ‘How the Refugee Crisis from Germany got (partly) Solved through International Concertation’, pp. 39-69. 15. AN Fonds de Moscou, Carton 19940500 119, Circulaire, 11 août 1938. 16. Discussed by Professor Elspeth Guild at the Forum for European Philosophy, 30 October 2017. 17. Commentators considered the Daladier decrees of 1938 anti-Semitic because at least 80 per cent of the immigrants were Jewish, but if they were to stop immigra­ tion, then they were anti-immigrant rather than anti-Semitic.

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Index

Académie Diplomatique Internationale, 90-91, 93-94 Africa: resettlement of refugees, 191-92 (Ethiopia, 183; Madagascar, 195-97; North Africa, 181, 195; South Africa, 181, 184) American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 21, 62-63, 149, 184-85, 194-95, 195, 221 amnesties: clandestine refugees, 18-19, 33-34, 44, 153; Front Populaire, 212-14, 220-21, 244; limitations, 214-25; political refugees, 217, 218; Provisional Arrangement, 212-14, 220-21; right of asylum for Gerinan refugees, 151-52; Secours Rouge calls for, 151-52, 217 annexation of Austria (1938), 16, 57, 84-85, 139, 180-81, 231 Armenian refugees, 14, 16, 42, 78, 210; League of Nations protection, 100101; Nansen passports, 55-56; right of asylum, 100-101 assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia, 108 assembly, freedom of, 53 assets of refugees, 133-34, 233-34 asylum. See right of asylum Australia: resettlement of refugees, 194 287

Avenol, Joseph: League of Nations and High Commission for Refugees, relationship between, 131, 162, 163— 64, 223, 243; Nansen protection, opposition to extension, 57, 102-3, 206, 211; sovereignty and human rights, 108-9, 123, 137, 162, 165 Bargeton, Paul, 32, 34-35, 45-46; Provisional Arrangement, 222 Barthou, Louis, 32; assassination, 69, 108; League of Nations protection, opposition to extension, 131; restructuring the Quai D’Orsay, 34; settlement policy, 182 Basch, Victor, 109, 147-49, 172, 213 Bentwich, Norman, 21, 163-64, 167, 171-72, 190, 222 Bérenger, Henry, 32; burden sharing, 8, 158, 179, 208-9; caritative organisations, 194-95; Comité national de secours aux réfugiés allemands victimes de l’antisémitisme, 62-63; condemnation of Nazism, 168-69; Evian Conference, 233-34; High Commission for Refugees, hostility towards, 158, 162, 167-72, 189-90, 212; human rights and sovereignty,

288

Index

relationship between, 91; Nazi regime, criticism of, 168-69; triage concept, 169, 232, 243 Blanchet, Louis, 35-36, 37, 43, 162, 210 Blum, Léon, 16, 205-6; International Conference on the Right of Asylum, 216-17, 219, 221; non-intervention policy (Spain), 137 Bonnet, Georges, 17, 139 Breischeid, Rudolph, 61-62, 66, 216-17 Brown Book, 63, 135 burden sharing and distribution of refugees, 8-9, 101-2, 157-58, 168-69, 236; negotiations with UK, 186-88, 244; Quai d’Orsay’s strategies, 180-85; settlement in Palestine, 186-88 Bureau international pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques, 65, 152; German refugee defined, 79-80

Canada: resettlement of refugees, 181, 182-83, 194 Carton de Wiart, Henri, 160 Cassin, René, 104, 153 categorisation of refugees, 16, 42, 60-61, 78, 81-82, 102-4, 234, 235; Nansen protection for all, 206-7, 210-11, 220; Provisional Agreement, 215 Cecil, Lord Robert, 21, 162, 163-64, 167, 170, 190, 206-10 censorship, freedom from, 53 Centre de liaison des comités pour le statut des immigrés, 84 Chautemps, Camille, 11-12, 16; Commission interministérielle sur les réfugiés allemands, 42-43; cronyism, 61-62; Ministry of Immigration, attempts to establish, 13, 31; resettlement, 179, 182; safe conduct for refugees, 36 Chiappe, Jean, 66, 69, 134-35

China: resettlement of refugees, 183 clandestine refugees, 39; amnesties, 18-19, 33-34, 44, 153 codification of international law, 98-99, 137 Colban, Erik, 92-93, 125, 207 collective security policy, 33, 127 Comité consultatif pour les réfugiés d’Allemagne, 65, 213 Comité d’aide et acceuil aux victims de fascism, 64, 82 Comité d’assistance aux réfugiés, 6263; settlement policy, 194 Comité mondial contre la guerre et le fascisme, 64 Comité national de secours aux réfugiés allemands victimes de l’antisémitisme, 62-63; Bérenger, 166, 167-68 Commission consultative des réfugiés, 44, 213 Commission de l’immigration, 42-43 Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration, 35, 41-42, 44, 111 Commission interministérielle sur les réfugiés allemands, 37, 42-43, 100-101 Commission juridique du Bureau International pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques, 218-19 conditions of entry, 194-95; quotas (United Kingdom, 15, 19, 180; United States, 15, 19, 163, 180); République des faveurs, 61-62; restrictions, 35, 46, 69, 104-5 (criminal convictions, 11-12; health grounds, 9; professions, 3; undesirable refugees, 110-12). See also non-refoulement principle Confédération général du travail, 64, 217 Confédération générale du travail unitaire, 217

Index

consuls and diplomats: discretion regarding visas, 1-2, 35, 37-38, 8586, 104, 107, 112, 168, 214, 220, 243 Convention concerning the Status of Refugees coming from Germany (1938), 106, 205, 221-23, 244 Convention for Refugees from Germany (1936), 216-17; international refugee passports, 217, 219-20; political emigration/refugee defined, 217-18; Provisional Arrangement, 220-21; refugee status defined, 218; right to work of political refugees, 217, 220 Convention on the International Status of Refugees (1933), 78, 106-7, 165 Convention on the Status of Refugees (1951), 7-8, 234-35; refugee defined, 235 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954), 236 cronyism, 61-62

Daladier, Edouard, 13, 16-17, 43, 46, 84-85, 110; anti-Semitism, 38; Evian conference, 231-33 de Brouckère, Louis, 217, 219 Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 11, 53, 90; Complément à la déclaration des droits de l’homme, 96-97 de Graeff, Andries, 159, 161 de Jouvenel, Henri, 96, 107, 130 de Lagarde, Paul, 195-96, 197 Delbos, Yvon, 13, 32, 45^46, 137, 148, 216, 220 de Navailles-Labatut, Edouard, 34-35, 98, 106-7, 159 de Reffye, Paul Verchère, 34-35, 110, 159, 210, 215-16, 221-22 Dobler, Jean, 37-38, 216 Doumer, Paul: assassination, 69 Dreyfus Affair, 20 eugenics, 110-12 Evian Conference (1938), 232-33; Bérenger, 233-34; Daladier, 231-33;

289

German refugee defined, 80-81, 233, 234; Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 233-34 expression, freedom of, 53 fifth-columnists, infiltration by, 17, 231 Flandin, Pierre Étienne, 2, 3, 17, 32, 83-84, 108, 219 foreign policy: Franco-German relations, impact on, 12; fundamental principles, 7; right of asylum, 1-4. See also immigration policy Fouques-Duparc, Jacques, 35, 44, 125— 26, 185-86, 189, 207-11, 215-16 Franco-German relations, 20-21; French foreign policy, impact of, 12, 64, 109, 131; restrictions on refugee activities, 14, 53, 134-37, 243 François-Poncet, André, 1, 123, 129-30, 133, 209 freedom from censorship, 53 freedom of assembly, 53 freedoms accorded to refugees, 53-54 freedom to express political opinion, 53 French Jewish attitude to Jewish refugees from Germany, 19, 38, 171-72, 194, 245 Front Populaire, 3, 205-6; collapse, 16; ministries, importance of, 31; refugee policy, 212-16 German Anschluss of Austria. See annexation of Austria German refugee defined, 78-81; Bureau international pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques, 79-80; cas douteux, 82; émigrés ordinaires, 82; Evian Conference (1938), 80-81, 233, 234; High Commission for Refugees, 78; proscrits politiques, 82; Provisional Arrangement, 78-79 German Social Democratic Party, 15; Sozialistische Aktion, 63 Germany. See Nazi Germany

290

Index

Grumbach, Soloman, 62, 162, 172, 213, 216

Haavara Agreement, 133, 181 Hague Congresses: codification of international law, 98, 99, 137 Helbronner, Jacques, 149, 159, 166-67, 171-72, 181, 191-92, 207, 210 Herriot, Edouard, 2, 40-41, 81, 91, 166 High Commission for Refugees: Bérenger’s hostility towards, 158, 162, 167-72, 189-90, 212; establishment, 158-64; French resistance to separation from League of Nations, 161-62; French role within, 162-63; geographic base, 162; German refugees defined, 78; German withdrawal from League of Nations, impact of, 164; Nansen Office responsibilities, 158-59; origins, 157-58; Quai d’Orsay’s relationship with, 164-65 (complexity, 164-67; Quai’s refusal to grant Nansen status to German refugees, 165-66); redistribution of refugees, 8, 188-93; restructuring, 205; role, 162; support for US involvement, 163. See also League of Nations Hitler, Adolf: accession, 16, 43, 125; League of Human Rights’ criticisms of, 145; underestimation of, 130. See also Nazi German hostility towards police, 53-54, 68-69 human rights: Académie Diplomatique Internationale, 90-91, 93-94; asylum. See right of asylum; codification of international law, 98-99; Complément à la déclaration des droits de l’homme, 96-97; Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen, 53, 90, 96-97; emergence of human rights discourse, 89- 98; Institut de Droit International, 90-91, 93, 95-96; League of Human Rights. See League of Human Rights; minorities, 92-94, 97; natural law,

94-95; non-refoulement principle. See non-refoulement principle; origins of concept of human rights, 90-92 (League of Nations Covenant, 92, 98); promotion of (international associations, 90-95; lectures, 94-95); right of asylum. See right of asylum; rights of man distinguished, 90; sovereignty, impact on, 97-98, 100, 235, 243 identity cards, 42, 68-69, 111, 147-48, 207, 214 immigrant foreign workers, refugees as, 42 immigration policy, 3, 15, 18-19, 31, 41, 242-43, 244-45; ministerial conflicts, 35-36; United Kingdom, 3, 15-19, 180, 188, 241-45; United States, 3, 15-19, 169, 172, 179-80, 189-90, 241—45 (relaxation of entry restrictions, 180, 205, 241-42); universality principle, 17. See also foreign policy Institut de Droit International, 90-91, 93, 95-96; statelessness defined, 109-10 intellectual elites, 186; alienation of foreign intellectuals, 60-68; cronyism, 61-62; political activities, 60-61, 65-68 (clandestine operations against regimes, 64; delegitimization tactics, 63-64; pressure groups and associations, 63; propaganda campaigns, 63; subversive writings, 64-65) Inter-American Committee of American Jurists, 100 interference in domestic affairs of other nations, 7-8, 12, 57, 62, 110, 13132, 134, 137-39, 235 Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 158, 233-34 International Conference for the Right of Asylum (1936), 83-84, 151, 21617, 219, 221

Index

International Labour Organization, 42, 186 international obligation to provide refuge, 7, 12-13, 77-78, 85-86, 9899, 100-104, 222, 235, 245. See also High Commission for Refugees; League of Nations international relief and settlement, 9, 62-63, 98-99, 105; caritative organisations, 194-95, 236; French budgetary constraints, 44-45, 133, 158, 171; United Kingdom, 189, 193; United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association, 236; United States’ contribution, 180, 190-91. See also High Commission for Refugees intervention: appeals for, 136-37; debate in France, 129-31; debate in UK, 131-32; interference compared, 134; sovereignty argument, 132-33 Jewish Agency for Palestine, 187-88, 194 Jewish Colonial Association, 149, 182— 83, 191, 194-95 Johnston-Reed Act (USA), 15 Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, 39, 60, 135, 213

Laval, Pierre, 3, 32, 137-38, 219 League of Human Rights, 8, 64-65, 95-96, 145; High Commission for Refugees, relationship with, 148-49; intervention of behalf of refugees, 38-39; mission/remit, 146; non­ refoulement principle, 105; origins, 146; Quai d’Orsay, relationship with, 146-48; recognition of right of asylum, 100 League of Nations: asylum on humanitarian grounds, 8, 12, 91, 242-43; categorisation of refugees, 234; codification of international law, 98-99; France, relationship

291

with, 12, 17, 32-35, 161-62; French resistance to separation of High Commission for Refugees, 161-62; German refugees, responsibility for, 78-81, 159-61; German withdrawal, 130, 164; human rights (codification, 98-99; non-refoulement principle, 104-6, 109-10; right of asylum, 100-104; rights of minorities, 92, 96-97, 123-29); intervention concerns, 130-32, 137-39; legal status of refugees, 78, 233-34 (German refugees, 78-81; political refugees, 81, 147-48); Nansen protection, 55-57, 68 (debate concerning extension of remit, 206-12); settlement question, 188-89, 193 (Palestine, 185-88); Special Committee for reorganisation of refugee services, 208-12. See also Convention concerning the Status of Refugees coming from Germany (1938); Convention on the International Status of Refugees (1933); High Commission for Refugees; Provisional Arrangement concerning the Status of Refugees Coming from Germany (1936) Léger, Alexis, 32-33, 34, 46, 103, 133, 165-66, 182, 196 Ligue des Droits de l’homme. See League of Human Rights lois scélérates, 54 Longuet, Jean, 33, 61-62, 215-16, 219-21, 221-23, 244 Madagascar: resettlement of Jewish refugees, 195-97 Malcolm, Neill, 79, 137, 205, 212, 216-17, 220, 221 Marchandeau, Paul, 13 Massigli, René, 34-35, 98, 126-29, 137-38, 159, 184, 206, 210-12 McDonald, James Grover, 159, 163-64; Bérenger, relationship with, 170, 172; Quai d’Orsay, relationship with,

292

Index

164-67; resettlement issues, 191-93; resignation, 136, 167, 205 Ministère des Affaires étrangères. See Quai d’Orsay Ministry of Immigration: attempts to establish, 13, 31, 41-44; incorporation of Commission under auspices of Quai d’Orsay, 45-46 minorities, protection of: Committee on New States and for the Protection of Minorities, 124; Hitler’s accession, 125-29; Jewish population distinguished, 128-29; sacred duty, as a, 125-29; Versailles settlement (1918), 124; Weimar Constitution, 124-25 Montagnard Constitution, 2, 7-8, 17, 54, 132, 234, 245 Moutet, Marius, 82-83, 105, 107-8, 196 Miinzenberg, Willi, 39, 61, 63, 135-36, 151,213

Nansen Office: debate concerning extension of remit, 206-8 Nansen Refugee Fund, 207 Nansen refugees, 1, 11, 37, 53, 55-57, 82, 102-3; Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration, 41-42; extension of status to all refugees, 206-8, 221-23 naturalisation of refugees, 11, 41-42, 105, 151-53,218 Nazi Germany: anti-Nazi activities of refugees, 134-36, 243; appeasement of, 165-66, 168; Kristallnacht, 232; League of Nations criticisms of, 9798, 233; Nuremberg laws, 131, 20910; persecution of opponents, 1, 3-4, 43-44, 60, 123, 130 (intellectuals, 63-64; political refugees, 81-82); politics of intervention, 131-32; pre­ war, 16-17; refugees, 58-59, 139 Netherlands: High Commission for Refugees (Carton de Wiart, Henri, 160)

newpapers and journals: refugee writers, 66-67 non-refoulement principle, 9-10, 82, 83-86; campaign for French statute, 105-8; Convention on the International Status of Refugee, 1067; curbing discretion, 107; Institut de Droit International, 109-10; League of Human Rights, 107; League of Nations, 106-7, 108-9; mitigation in France, 104-5; states’ duties, 106. See also repatriation of refugees Norway: refugee policy, 8, 15, 157, 206-7 Office français de l’immigration et de l’intégration, 234-35 Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides, 57, 234 Office national de l’immigration, 234

Palestine: Arab disruption, 8, 187-88; quota system, 186-87; resettlement destination, as a (French ambivalence, 185-87; German Jews, 187-88; requests to the British, 185-86) Parti communiste français, 21, 65, 84, 150 Paul-Boncour, Jean-Louis, 159-60 Paul-Boncour, Joseph, 1, 36, 128, 147, 216 Perrin, Paul, 84-85, 151, 221; Comité de Liaison, 152, 213, 217-18 persecution defined, 7-8 Petain, Philippe, 82, 168 Poincare, Raymond, 40-41 Poland, 7, 170-71; France (repatriation from, 171; settlement of Polish refugees in French colonies, 195— 97); la grande émigration, 54, 5859, 109; Palestine, immigration to, 187, 189; persecution of minorities in Germany, 96, 124-25; Provisional Arrangement, 215

Index

police, hostility towards, 53-54, 68-69 political activities of refugees, 14, 53-54; clandestine operations against regimes, 64; crackdown on, 69, 137— 39; delegitimization tactics, 63-64; domestic v foreign politics, 134-35; intellectuals, 62-68; lack of control, 69; pressure groups and associations, 63; propaganda campaigns, 63-64, 134-36; subversive writings, 64-65, 134-36 political refugees, 54; curtailment, 54; defined, 81-86, 107-8 (Convention for Refugees from Germany (1936), 217-18; Provisional Arrangement, 84) Popular Front. See Front Populaire pressure groups, 145-46; League of Human Rights, 8, 146-49; peace movements, 63; Quakers, 152-53; Secours Rouge, 149-52; Union International des associations pour la Société des Nations, 153 primacy of French national law, 7 primacy of French sovereignty, 7. See also state sovereignty professional bodies, restrictions on refugees by, 3 propaganda campaigns, 63-64, 134-36 protection of culture, 63-64 , Provisional Arrangement concerning the Status of Refugees Coming from Germany (1936), 205, 212-13; adoption, 79, 84, 220-21; French policy, 212-16, 220-23, 243; German refugees (defined, 78-79; legal status, 109); political refugees defined, 84; refugee amnesty, 212-14 (scope, 214-15); UK policy, 215-16 Quai d’Orsay, 31-32; ad hoc interministerial meetings, 44; administration of refugee affairs, 32-38 (regulations, 38-39; responsibilities, 39-46); antiSemitism, 37-38; budgetary

293

constraints, 44-45; collective security policy, 33; Commission consultative des réfugiés, 44 (incorporation under auspices of Quai d’Orsay, 45-46); Commission de l’immigration, 42-43; Commission interministérielle permanente de l’immigration, 41—42, 44; Commission interministérielle sur les réfugiés allemands, 42—43; debate concerning extension of Nansen Office’s remit, 206-8; directorates with refugee responsibility, 34-35; financial contribution to international relief and settlement, 9; fundamental principles of foreign policy, 7, 242-43; immigration policy. See immigration policy; instability, 3233; mass naturalisation of refugees, 11, 41-42, 151, 152-53; perceived threat from other ministries, 13; persecution defined, 7-8; redistribution of refugees. See burden sharing and distribution of refugees; refoulement. See non-refoulement principle; restructuring, 34; uniqueness of division of ministerial responsibilities, 39-46; voluntary repatriation, 10-11 Quakers, 8, 145^16, 152-53, 159, 190, 213

redistribution of refugees. See burden sharing and distribution of refugees refoulement. See non-refoulement principle refugee defined: Convention for Refugees from Germany (1936), 218; Convention on the Status of Refugees (1951), 235; German refugee defined, 78-81 (Bureau international pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques, 79-80; cas douteux,

294

Index

82; émigrés ordinaires, 82; Evian Conference (1938), 80-81, 233, 234; High Commission for Refugees, 78; proscrits politiques, 82; Provisional Arrangement, 78-79); individualist approach, 77; juridical approach, 77; political refugee, 81-86, 107-8 (Convention for Refugees from Germany (1936), 217-18; Provisional Arrangement, 84); social approach, 77; statelessness defined (Institut de Droit International, 109-10) registration of refugees, 55, 68-69 reluctance to criticise German government: France, 123, 125; League of Nations, 123 reoccupation of the Rhineland, 63, 130 République des faveurs, 61-62 resettlement, 179; Canada, 182-83; charitable organisations, 194-95; China, 183; colonies, 196-97 (Madagascar, 195-96, 197; North Africa, 195); French policy, 179-80 (Interministerial Commission, ISO82); High Commission for Refugees, 188-93; Palestine, 185-88; Quai d’Orsay’s strategies (bilateral strategies, 180, 182-85; multilateral strategies, 180; non-German refugees, 181); settlement overseas, 180; South America, 183-85 residence permits, 55, 66-67, 101, 105, 112, 152-53, 165, 187, 191, 207 right of asylum, 1-4, 241-42; Armenian refugees, 100-101; Commission interministérielle sur les réfugiés allemands, 100-101; countries other than Germany, refugees from, 8; German refugees, 151-52; humanitarian grounds, 8; International Conference for the Right of Asylum, 83-84, 151, 216-17, 219, 221; League of Nations (asylum on humanitarian grounds, 8,

12; recognition of right of asylum, 100-104); meaning of asylum, 101— 2; non-refoulement principle, 9-10, 82, 83-86, 104-10; recognition as a human right, 100; Russian refugees, 102-3; Secours Rouge (International Conference for the Right of Asylum, 151; recognition of right of asylum, 100, 150-51); state sovereignty, relationship with, 100, 102-4, 235, 243 right to a nationality, 236 Roland-Marcel, Pierre-René, 44, 159, 209-11 Russian refugees, 14, 102-3 Sarraut, Albert, 17, 231-32 Secours Rouge: amnesty for refugees, 151; Bureau International pour le Respect du Droit et de l’Asile et I’Aide aux Réfugiés Politiques, 151; International Conference for the Right of Asylum, 151; origins, 149-50; recognition of right of asylum, 100, 150-51; Secours Rouge Populaire Français, 152 Section française de l’internationale ouvrière, 65 Serre, Philippe, 13, 21, 41, 45-46, 85 settlement. See resettlement South America: resettlement of refugees, 180, 183-84, 191-93, 196, 244 sovereignty. See state sovereignty Spanish Civil War, 14-15, 137 Spanish refugees, 14-15, 16 statelessness, 236; German policy of withdrawing nationality, 137-38; Institut de Droit International, 109-10 state sovereignty: human rights, relationship with, 98, 235; right of asylum, relationship with, 100, 102-4, 235, 243 Stavisky affair, 20, 108

Index

sterilisation policies: French refusal of threatened refugees, 110-11 ; German policy, 110-11; Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (D), 110 terminology and definitions: Bureau international pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques (German refugee defined, 79-80); Convention for Refugees from Germany (1936), 216-17 (political emigration/refugee defined, 217-18; refugee status defined, 218); Convention on the Status of Refugees (1951), 7-8, 234-35 (refugee defined, 235); Evian Conference (1938) (German refugee defined, 80-81, 233, 234); German refugee defined, 78-81 (Bureau international pour le respect du droit d’asile et l’aide aux réfugiés politiques, 79-80; cas douteux, 82; émigrés ordinaires, 82; Evian Conference (1938), 80-81, 233, 234; High Commission for Refugees, 78; proscrits politiques, 82; Provisional Arrangement, 78-79); High Commission for Refugees (German refugees defined, 78); persecution defined, 7-8; political refugee, 8186, 107-8 (Convention for Refugees from Germany (1936), 217-18; Provisional Arrangement, 84); Provisional Arrangement concerning the Status of Refugees Coming from Germany (1936) (German refugee defined, 78-79; political refugees defined, 84); refugee defined (Convention for Refugees from Germany (1936), 218; Convention on the Status of Refugees (1951), 235; individualist approach, 77; juridical approach, 77; social approach, 77);

295

statelessness defined (Institut de Droit International, 109-10) Tetreau, Daniel, 45, 148, 164-65, 184, 210 "tradition d’hospitalité de la France”: German community in France, 57-59; Nansen refugees, 55-57; political refugees, 54; repression (lois scélérates, 54); role of the state regarding civil status, 55; Russian refugees, 54-55 triage concept, 4, 8-9, 161, 168-69, 243. See also burden sharing and distribution of refugees; resettlement

undesirable refugees, 9, 46, 77, 104-5, 231-33; assimilation difficulties, 110; danger to public order, 165; economic burden, 110; exile to colonies, 180-81, 184; public health, 110; sterlisation policies, 110-11 Union International des associations pour la Société des nations, 153 United Kingdom: minority rights, 96, 125-26; Norwegian proposal, 207; Palestine, 8, 181, 185-88; refugee policy, 3, 15-19, 180, 188, 241^15 United Nations: Convention on the Status of Refugees (1951), 7-8, 106, 234-35; Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954), 236 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association, 236 United States, 33; Bill of Rights, 90; League of Nations, 92-93; refugee policy, 3, 15-19, 169, 172, 179-80, 189-90, 241-45; relaxation of entry restrictions, 180, 205, 241-42 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 90, 91, 102, 235-36 universality, principle of, 17 Upper Silesia: protection of minorities, 12, 97-98, 124-29

296

Vidnot, Pierre, 33-34, 44, 62, 109, 213, 215-16 visas, 243; consuls’ and diplomats’ discretion, 1-2, 35, 37-38, 85-86, 104, 107, 112, 168, 214, 220, 243; cronyism, 61-62; limitations, 231—

Index

32; qualifying refugees, 37, 38-39 voluntary repatriation, 10-11

work permits, 42, 45, 67-68, 151-52 165-66, 191, 214, 217, 219-20 ’

About the Author

Julius Fein is a historian with specialisation in French archives. He received his PhD in modern French history jointly at Queen Mary University of London and University of London Institute in Paris. Julius Fein’s parents were refugees from Leipzig. The April 1933 German laws prohibited his father, a Jewish lawyer, from practising his profession. They chose England as their country of refuge. Despite the ban on immigrants, they were able to enter because they proved they would not be a burden on the public purse as his father founded the London branch of the family business. Julius was bom in London in 1938. His paternal grandmother took him as an evacuee to New York during the Second World War. She came from the Alsatian capital, Strasbourg. Although born during the German occupation in 1880, she con­ sidered herself French. Hence Julius’s interest in France. On his retirement, after fifty years of trading, Julius went back to academia to research nine­ teenth- and twentieth-century French history. He divides his time between London, Paris and Provence.

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