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League Body Puts off Action on Danzig Jews

January 20, 1939
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Hope for immediate League of Nations intervention to protect the Jews in Danzig, a thousand of whom have been ordered to emigrate before the end of the month, were shattered today when the Council’s Committee of Three on Danzig postponed a definitive examination of the question for another meeting, which will be held before the next Council session, probably in February in either Paris or London.

The postponement of action, announced in a communique, came as a surprise to League circles. The committee’s course was reported to have been based on a desire to withhold a decision to see what Chancellor Adolf Hitler says regarding Danzig in his speech on Jan. 30, on the occasion of the sixth anniversary of his rise to power.

The communique said that Prof. Karl Burckhardt, League High Commissioner for Danzig, had called the committee’s attention at two meetings to the latest decrees of the Danzig Senate and that the committee had decided they were contrary to the Free City’s League-guaranteed constitution. The committee also examined the possibility of considering the irregular position, which raised the question of the League’s obligations as guarantor of the constitution, but postponed a decision to “enable a fuller examination.”

Meanwhile, Prof. Burckhardt is not returning to Danzig. He is, according to the communique, “on his usual leave,” and will be at the committee’s disposal.

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