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State Department Asks Senate Ratification of United Nations Genocide Convention

January 24, 1950
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Dean Rusk, Deputy Under Secretary of State, today asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to retify the United Nations Convention on Genocide. “The worst atrceities of Nero against the Christians failed to reach the level of those perpetrated by Hitler against the Jews,” Mr. Rusk told the Senators. “No one can yet have forgotten the organized butchery of racial groups by the Nazis, our enemies in World War II, which has resulted in the extermination of some 6,000,000 Jews.”

Jacob Blanstein, president of the American Jewish Committee, also testifying on genocide, said Senate ratification was important “not only because 6,000,000 Jews were recently murdered, but to give this convention the official approval of the United States so that, by our example, other nations may be encouraged to speed ratification and at last bring the scourge of genocide within the control of international law.”

Shad Polier, chairman of the Commission on Law and Social Action of the American Jewish Congress, and Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Congress vice-president, also testified.

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