About 300 Auschwitz survivors gathered at the site of the former Nazi death camp last week to mark 70 years since its liberation on January 27, 1945.

The anniversary was observed across the globe — and it also put the spotlight back on a little-known chapter in Bermuda’s military history.

The 12-day “Bermuda Conference” in April 1943 was shrouded in secrecy as delegates from Britain and the US met at locations such as Horizons, Belmont and the Mid-Ocean Club to find a way to save Europe’s Jews from Hitler’s gas chambers.

The conference, which was called to placate the growing outrage at the extermination of tens of thousands of Jews, opened on the same day as the Nazis stormed the Warsaw Ghetto leaving a trail of death and devastation.

Its abject failure to achieve anything is also believed to be one of the main reasons for the suicide of Szmul Zygielbojm, a member of the Polish government-in-exile, who made it his mission to tell the world about the Holocaust.

The wartime gathering in Bermuda was later portrayed as a “missed opportunity”, with the representatives who took part being accused of dodging the issue.

Today few would be aware that the conference took place, let alone the way its failure was received by the world.

Fiona Elkinson, president of the Jewish community in Bermuda, told The Royal Gazette: “The thing about the conference is that the Allies were well aware of the annihilation of the Jewish community at the time.

“They gathered to discuss what could be done, and yet did nothing to deal with the situation. Neither side was willing to allow Jewish refugees to come to their country.

“From the research I have done, it appears that a Bermudian Parliamentary Committee was formed to handle and organise the conference.

“The Bermuda Government volunteered to pay for the costs and Horizons even billed the Government £771 for the role it played,

“It’s difficult to know what the people of Bermuda made of this conference at the time, given the fact there had been clear instructions to minimise coverage in the press.

“As for the Jewish community, it might be seen as significant now, but at the time it probably was not, especially as there were very few Jews in Bermuda.

“For Bermuda it was about hosting an event, and it was a job well done. It was later that the rest of the world reacted with disdain and anger to what had transpired on the Island.”

The story of the Bermuda Conference was recounted at the weekend in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, as part of a series of reports on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The report by David Blair suggests that from the outset, the British and American governments were reluctant participants. He wrote: “The ambivalence of the two governments was made clear by their selection of representatives: the American delegation was led not by a serving official but by Harold Dodds, the president of Princeton University; his British counterpart, meanwhile, was Richard Law, a junior minister at the Foreign Office and hardly a titan of Churchill’s government.

“The Allies feared that Hitler would land them with millions of Jewish refugees, forcing the diversion of ships away from the war effort to take the fugitives to safety.

“But in Bermuda, the only item left on the agenda was how to help the Jews who had already saved themselves by reaching Spain. In the end, the conference’s sole outcome was to move 630 of them to North Africa. The gathering ended without saving a single Jew.”

On May 11, 1943, less than a month after the Bermuda Conference had ended, Zygielbojm took his own life at his home beside Porchester Square, London. He was said to be dismayed by the failure of the conference and had learnt that his wife, Manya, and their son, Tuvia, had died inside the Ghetto.

“The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out,” he wrote. “But indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime.”