Comité des Délégations Juives
The Comité des Délégations Juives ( auprès de la Conference de la Paix ) (English Committee of Jewish Delegations ) was an international organization established against the background of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to represent Jewish interests in Europe. It went up in 1936 in the World Jewish Congress .
Emergence
The committee was formed in 1919 as part of the negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference. Already in December 1918 there were efforts in Zionist -minded circles to hold a meeting of representatives of Jewish national councils, especially from Eastern Europe. Jewish demands for the impending peace should be discussed. At first they met in Switzerland. Later they moved to Paris.
Jewish representatives were present in Paris not only from the eastern states but also from the west. Julian Mack of the American Jewish Congress assumed the presidency of the assembly. Representatives from the London-based Zionist Conference were also present. At the beginning, efforts were made to include non-Zionist organizations such as the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the British Joint Foreign Committee. Some resistance came from within our own ranks, especially from representatives from Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the British and French representatives rejected national demands. At a meeting of both sides, the committee members demanded cultural and linguistic autonomy, minority representation and unhindered local organization of the minorities. There were also reservations among the American delegates. A collaboration did not come about. In total, the delegates claimed to represent the rights of 10 million Jews.
The assembly was divided into a presidium and a general secretariat. There were also four commissions. These were the Political Commission, the Program Commission, the Press and Propaganda Commission, and the Compensation and Reconstruction Commission. The chairman was initially the American Julian Mack and then Louis Marshall . The real driving force was Nachum Sokolow , who also became chairman in July 1919. Leon Reich became the head of the press and propaganda commission . Until his death in 1933, Leo Motzkin also played a decisive role in the organization.
Establishing minority rights
The endeavors were hardly heard by the French public. At the same time, however, representatives of the committee began to negotiate with the powers represented at the peace conferences. The committee drew up a memorandum on minority rights in the newly established or, in some cases, strongly changed states in east-central, south-east and eastern Europe, and submitted it. This laid down the principle of (cultural) nationality law based on group autonomy.
Great energy was devoted to anchoring Jewish rights in the emerging Polish state. Questions included the legal recognition of the Sabbath and the ability for Jews to work on Sundays. These and other rights, for example with regard to schools, should be enshrined in minority clauses in the individual contracts.
Although not all questions could be answered satisfactorily from the point of view of the delegates, the creation of the minority status and the recognition of Jewish peculiarity and the right to exist in the Polish treaty alone meant progress.
The American delegation then left. The work of the committee continued. Sokolow took over the management. subsequently it was about similar rights in Yugoslavia , Greece , Czechoslovakia and Romania . It was possible to agree minority rights for a number of Eastern and Southeastern European states. In the Treaty of Seuvres of 1920, such rights were also enshrined for Turkey . It was also about informing the public about the anti-Jewish movements and pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Further development
However, it remained unclear what could happen if the clauses were violated. The League Council should be responsible for the minorities and the International Court of Justice could also be referred to. The success was doubtful, however. A complicated course of action was eventually agreed. The violation of minority rights was brought before the League of Nations through petitions. This could only be done through a League member or a recognized organization. This also included the Comité des Délégations Juives. Corresponding positions were often viewed as interference in internal affairs in the states concerned.
In the following decades the organization remained the guardian of Jewish rights, especially in Eastern Europe. The efforts were financed primarily by Zionist organizations. Since 1925 the committee cooperated with the European Nationalities Congress . The organization was reorganized in 1927. A permanent council for Jewish minority rights was set up at the headquarters of the League of Nations in Geneva.
time of the nationalsocialism
After the beginning of National Socialist rule and the first attacks against Jews in the German Reich, the committee used the Jewish minority rights guaranteed in the German-Polish Agreement on Upper Silesia to put Germany under international pressure. The Bernheim petition to the League of Nations served this purpose. It complained about the anti-Jewish measures taken by the German government and accused it of breaking the German-Polish agreement on Upper Silesia of 1922. The League of Nations was called upon to induce the German government to end its anti-Semitic actions in Upper Silesia and to insist that Germany make amends. For Upper Silesia it was actually possible to achieve successes after long negotiations. These special conditions ended in 1937 at the latest when the German-Polish treaty expired.
In any case, the results did not change the persecution of Jews in the rest of Germany. As early as 1933, under its President Leo Motzkin , the committee commissioned a book on the persecution of Jews in Germany. It appeared under his name in Paris after Motzkin's death in 1934: The Black Book: Facts and Documents; The situation of the Jews in Germany in 1933 . In it, the editor Rudolf Olden and his colleagues had listed the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi regime in 1933.
The Comité des Délégations Juives was finally absorbed into the 1936 World Jewish Congress .
Publications
- Leo Motzkin and Comité des Délégations Juives (eds.): The Black Book: Facts and Documents; The situation of the Jews in Germany in 1933 . Editorial office Rudolf Olden, Paris 1934. A reprint was published in 1983 as a paperback by Ullstein, Frankfurt 1983. ISBN 3-550-07960-5 . In 1983 a review by Julius H. Schoeps appeared in der Zeit.
literature
- Leon Reich : The Committee of the Jewish Delegations in Paris. In: The Jew. Issue 8/9 1920/21, pp. 439-448.
- Shmuel Ettinger: From the 17th Century to the Present. The Modern Age. In: History of the Jewish People: From the Beginnings to the Present. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55918-1 , pp. 1154-1156.
- Erwin Viefhaus: The minority issue and the emergence of the minority protection treaties at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Holzner, Würzburg 1960, DNB 455263957 .
- Philipp Graf: Comité des délégations juives. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 2: Co-Ha. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02502-9 , pp. 13-17.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ See “German-Polish Agreement on Upper Silesia” (Upper Silesia Agreement, OSA) of May 15, 1922, In: Reichsgesetzblatt . 1922, part II, p. 238ff.
- ↑ Julius H. Schoeps: The situation of the Jews in Germany: documented as early as 1933 . In: The time . No. 39/1983 ( online ).