Évian Conference: what Wikipedia removed
The Évian Conference was the 1938 meeting of 32 countries called to address the crisis of German and Austrian Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Through 2015 the opening described the backdrop as Kristallnacht, when a pogrom across Germany brought the destruction of over 1,000 synagogues, massacres and the arbitrary arrest of tens of thousands of Jews. Today that sentence is gone from the opening, though massacre survives once elsewhere in the article. A reader today does not learn from the opening that Kristallnacht, the backdrop to the conference’s failure, involved massacres of Jews.
The word “occupation” appeared 3 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2015. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 2. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| occupation | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| massacre | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| antisemitism | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| genocide | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| resistance | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- A photo caption describing German Jewish refugee girls arriving in Britain via the Kindertransport was dropped from the opening.
- The historians’ account that Roosevelt sought to deflect criticism of America’s own restrictive refugee quota was reworded.
- A passage describing the hope of dispossessed and displaced Jews of Austria and Germany was dropped from the opening.
- A quoted passage about rescue and a new life seeming within reach, followed by Hitler’s response, was reworded out of the opening.
- A quotation beginning ‘I can only hope and expect that the other world’ was dropped from the opening.
- The sentence naming the destruction of over 1,000 synagogues, massacres, and mass arrests of Jews during Kristallnacht was dropped from the opening.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2005 (revision 16889050):
The Evian Conference was convened at initiative of the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July, 1938 to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees . For nine days, from July 6 to July 15 , delegates from thirty-two countries met at Évian-les-Bains , France . However, not much was accomplished, since most western countries were reluctant to accept Jewish refugees. The conference failed to pass even a resolution condemning German treatment of the Jews, a fact that was widely used in Nazi propaganda . The lack of action further emboldened Hitler , proving to him that no country had the moral fortitude to oppose Nazism’s assault on European Jewry.
2025 (revision 1294235254):
Conference addressing a Jewish refugee crisis Myron Taylor addresses the Évian Conference The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains , France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany . It was the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt who perhaps hoped to obtain commitments from some of the invited nations to accept more refugees, although he took pains to avoid stating that objective expressly. Historians have suggested that Roosevelt desired to deflect attention and criticism from American policy that severely limited the quota of refugees admitted to the United States. The confe…
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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