Leaving the Reich, But Where To?

In the final years of the 1930s, two events changed the world for Jewish refugees from the Reich. In July 1938, at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s initiative, international diplomats from 32 countries gathered in Evian-les-Bain, France. Over the course of ten days, they addressed the growing crisis of German and Austrian Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in the Reich. Although most delegates expressed sympathy for the Jewish refugees, no immediate resolution came out of these discussions. Then, in May 1939, more than 900 Jews boarded the M.S. St. Louis to find temporary refuge in Cuba. But after Cuba turned them away, they came back to Europe to face persecutions again. Dr. Diane Afoumado, Chief of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will deliver this important talk about the refugee crisis of the late 1930s.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Diane F. Afoumado is Chief of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center in the David M. Rubenstein National Institute for Holocaust Documentation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She was a Museum fellow in 2003 and worked on a book project about the M.S. St. Louis and the refugee crisis in the late 1930s. Formerly Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Paris 10-Nanterre and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris, she worked for the two French Commissions related to compensation to Jewish victims (Office of the Prime Minister). She worked as a Historian for the Archival Division of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine - Mémorial de la Shoah. Afoumado also worked for the Archival Department of the French Ministry of Justice.

She is the author of several books: Indésirables 1938 : La Conférence d’Evian et les réfugiés juifs (Calmann-Lévy / Mémorial de la Shoah, 2018); L’affiche antisémite en France sous l’Occupation (Berg International, 2008); Exil impossible. L’errance des réfugiés juifs du paquebot « St.Louis » (L’Harmattan, 2005); and co-author with Serge Klarsfeld of La spoliation dans les camps de province (La documentation française, 2000). She participated in the following publications: “ITS Research at the USHMM for Descendants of Holocaust Victims and Survivors », In: Tracing and Documenting Nazi Victims Past and Present, volume 1, Edited by: Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler and Isabel Panek, (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020); Introduction for France to the volume III of Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, (p. 89-98), as well as the entry for Drancy (p. 134-136), 2017; “The ‘Care and Maintenance in Germany’ Collection – A Reflection of DP Self-Identification and Postwar Emigration”, In: Jahrbuch des International Tracing Service, (Wallstein Verlag, 2014). Repicturing the Second World War. Representations in Film and Television, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Evoking Genocide. Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Lives, (The Key Publishing House Inc, 2009), and she has written more than twenty articles related to the Holocaust.

Additional Information and Registration:

This event is free and open to everyone – students, faculty, staff, community members, local educators, and more! -- but advanced registration is requested. Registration is available here.

This will be a fully virtual, fully synchronous event. Due to the use of copyrighted materials, we are not able to record this talk. We hope you can join us live!

This event is part of a series being co-hosted by the KSC Archives and the Cohen Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies during the 2025-2026 academic year. This particular event will provide additional context for understanding many of the archival materials and documents that we’ll encounter throughout the series as a whole. Please emailcoheninstitute@keene.edu with any questions.

This event is part of the Cohen Center calendar.