April 19, 1943
Bermuda Conference on Refugees Opens
Historical context
On this day, April 19, 1943, British and American delegates opened a closed conference in Bermuda on wartime refugees. It produced no rescue program.
Archive record
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- Date
- April 19, 1943
- Verified sources
- 1
- Archive threads
- 6
On this day, British and American delegations opened a conference in Bermuda on refugees from German-occupied Europe. The meeting followed public reports of mass murder of Jews. Delegates limited the agenda, kept Jewish organizations out, and treated the island’s isolation as a way to restrict the press.
The United States would not enlarge immigration quotas. Britain would not open Palestine as a refuge. Talk of reviving the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees from the 1938 Évian Conference produced no funded rescue. The conference is dated here by its opening, not by a claim that it saved anyone.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- The Bermuda Conference · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum · Holocaust Encyclopedia View source
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