Negotiating Freedom—At A Price

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31167, 17 September 1966, Page 4

Negotiating Freedom—At A Price

. The Mission. By Hans Habe. ; Ifarrap. 300 pp. and Documentation. I An historical conference . which took place in 1938 is r here described in fictional . form by one who was present ; in an official capacity at a • melancholy and foredoomed • meeting. Held at Evian by > courtesy of the French, the i conference was convened by ! President Roosevelt, and was i attended by delegates from 32 i nations, its object being to ■ examine a wily proposal by i Hitler for releasing 40,000 German and Austrian Jews, ■ then being held in virtual ! captivity, to enjoy the hospi--1 tality of a supposedly sym--1 pathetic world. The fact that ’ Hitler proposed to send the ' Jews penniless to their new ! homes, and moreover was demanding 250 dollars a head ’ for them from the host-coun- ( tries was at first concealed, but Hitler’s trump card lay in ’ sending to the Conference a I world-famous surgeon, nomi- , nally as the representative of i the Jewish community, to , plead the Jewish cause. All this is history; the name ■ of the delegate Professor (Heinrich von Benda and his ; personal problems is not, though the book’s dedication plainly points to the real , identity of this great-hearted humanitarian. Released from a brief incarceration in gaol, 5

Heinrich von Benda was briefed by the Gestapo for his mission, his wife and child being held as hostages for his (return. The Professor was suffering from periodical attacks ■of Angina pectoris, but was (enabled by his medical knowledge to stem the worst of their effects. His hopes of influencing the outside world to make a gesture of assistance to Central European Jewry were never very high, but as he sat through the agonising days of the conference, and heard the delegates propound their various national arguments against the feasibility of a proposal, with the ethics of which, however, they had the profoundest sympathy, he knew that the frail craft of the Jewish cause must inevitably founder in raging seas of power politics and commercial interests. Professor von Benda had One friend. The representative Of Columbia believed that calling Hitler’s bluff was the only way in which the world’s compassion for his victims could possibly impress him. His argument was fated to be swallowed up in collective casuistries and noble but empty rhetoric, and so on. The tragi-farce ended in the conference leaving 40,000 and countless other Jews to their fate. I No country, nor yet the| Vatican which sent an "ob-

server” to the conference could be said to have come out of the conference with a clear conscience except Columbia. It remains for the hindsight of the present generation to condemn its conclusions, and condemn it we must. This is an American Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and it will enhance the author’s already high literary reputation. The translation is by Michael Bullock.