In the months following Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria in March 1938, Nazi persecution of Jews in Austria climbed dramatically. Jewish property was destroyed, persecution and violence against individual Jews became commonplace, and hundreds of Jews were marched off to prisons and concentration camps. These crimes against Jews drew worldwide attention. During the spring and summer of 1938, tens of thousands of Austrian Jews swelled the ranks of Jews seeking to flee pre-Anschluss Germany. In the early summer of 1938, Nazi Germany offered its Jews to the world. At the same time, neighboring Hungary and Yugoslavia closed their borders with Austria, while fascist Italy, which had recently permitted German and Austrian refugees to enter the country, halted Jewish immigration. Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland allowed small numbers of these Jewish refugees to enter; Great Britain instituted a special new visa requirement sorting out Third Reich Jews from other refugees.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responding to pro-refugee sentiments in the United States, called an international conference on refugees. Delegates from thirty-two countries assembled in the French resort town of Evian-les-Bains between July 6 and July 14, 1938, to discuss ways to help Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi Third Reich. Many delegates attending the Evian Conference publicly professed their sympathies for the Jewish refugees, and the conference chairman, Myron C. Taylor, a former head of U.S. Steel, invoked a plea to those assembled that governments act and act promptly to address the refugee problem.