Sin, Sweat, and Sorrow

Examines the formation and execution of Australian government policy towards the Jews during the Holocaust period. Australia did not have an established refugee policy (as opposed to immigration policy) until late 1938. Following the Evian Conference in 1938, Interior Minister John McEwen promised to accept 15,000 refugees but failed to keep his promise. Ca. 10,000 Jews entered Australia during these years despite obstacles set up by the bureaucracy. Popular attitudes toward Jewish immigrants were largely negative, and were manifested in the press and in letters to the Interior Ministry. When World War II broke out, questions of security were exploited as the means to further exclude Jewish refugees, a policy incongruous alongside government pronouncements condemning Nazi atrocities during the early 1940s. Between 1933-45 Australia treated Jewish refugees as regular immigrants, which was justifiable in the 1930s, when no one knew about the genocide of the Jews, but not in 1940-44 when news of it appeared in the press.