840.48 Refugees/6018: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland (Harrison)
2023. The cable below refers to last paragraph your 3107 May 16,71 forms WRB cable no. 39 and is for McClelland. Since principal motivating force behind the authorization to issue visas was the encouragement such authorization might give to Swiss Government to [Page 1068] permit acceleration of entry of additional children, the Board feels that the issuance of visas to children who entered Switzerland before January 1, 1944 would not accomplish purpose for which visas were made available. Backward revision of January 1 date might assure Swiss that some refugee children now in Switzerland would not stay there after the war, but it would not focus the attention of the Swiss on the relationship between the admission of additional children and the availability of American visas.
Parallel action being contemplated by a number of governments in Latin America to that taken by the United States in this matter. In the near future Board hopes to give you details of offers to the Swiss from these governments which may provide for children who entered Switzerland before the date mentioned. Please inform the Board, should it appear with some clarity after consultation with the Minister and appropriate Swiss authorities, if the movement of children into Switzerland would be accelerated by visa issuance to children who entered before January 1.72
Kindly report, in reference Legation’s 2810 of May 373 whether any additional information regarding efforts of Stucki74 at Vichy has been received by Minister Bonna.75
- Not printed; Roswell McClelland, the Special Attaché to the Legation in Switzerland on war refugee matters, voiced doubt therein as to whether the number of children eligible for American visas and able to reach Switzerland by July of 1944 would reach 600 and inquired whether it would be possible to make such visas available to all children reported in Switzerland at the time rather than just to those who had entered the country since the beginning of January 1944 (840.48 Refugees/6018).↩
- On August 21 American consular officers in Switzerland were authorized to issue visas to refugee children arriving in that country from Hungary (811.111 Refugee Children/206b). Actually, no United States visas were granted under these authorizations to refugee children admitted to Switzerland, since no children were ever presented to receive such visas.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Walter Stucki, Swiss Minister to the Vichy Government, repeatedly requested the Vichy authorities to permit endangered children to leave France, but to no avail; Swiss overtures to the Germans to permit the evacuation of children likewise failed.↩
- Chief of the Foreign Affairs Division of the Swiss Federal Political Department.↩