Why didn’t more Jews leave Europe before the war began?Why didn’t more Jews leave Europe before the war began?
The most straightforward answer is that they simply had nowhere to go. For the Jews of Europe, as noted in Chaim Weizmann’s famous remark, the world was divided into two: places where they could not live and places where they could not go. The restrictive immigration practices of the major overseas countries vis-á-vis Jewish refugees reflected a global climate of economic protectionism tinged with xenophobia and outright antisemitism. An international conference on refugees at Evian (France) in July 1938, initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, proved to be a complete fiasco. Except for the Dominican Republic, none of the representatives of the 32 countries invited offered prospective Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria any hope whatsoever. Another explanation is that the intermittent and uneven application of the antisemitic pressure during the Nazi regime’s first years sent confusing signals to the Jewish victims, lulling their sense of danger and allowing them to believe
