Behind the Headlines German and Jewish Leaders Confer on Soviet Minority Rights

West German and Jewish scholars and leaders joined forces to call for an end to Soviet violation of the basic human rights of Soviet Jews and Germans.

The occasion was a Conference on The Condition of Minorities in the Soviet Union under International Law, held in Bonn, March 19-21, cosponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the University of Cologne’s Institut fuer Ostrecht, with grants from The Elson and Volkswagen Foundations.

The meeting marked perhaps the first time that West German leaders committed themselves publicly to the cause of Soviet Jewry. Previously they preferred to focus on individual cases, like that of Anatoly Shcharansky. West German willingness to place Soviet Jewry on their public as well as private agenda with Soviet leaders represents a potentially significant development in the Federal Republic away from its close alliance with the United States.

The conference drew some 50 scholars of international law and government from leading American and German universities and research institutions. Conference participants, among whom were many younger Germans, explored the Soviet and international legal norms appropriate for measuring the treatment, and advocating the cause, of the Jewish and German minorities.

In a concluding statement, participants declared Soviet practices regarding minorities to be violations of accepted international standards; called on the United Nations to adopt a Declaration on Minority Rights; and urged the UN Human Rights Commission to draft a Declaration on the Right to Leave and Return. Both UN initiatives, currently under discussion in diplomatic circles, were given a boost by this joint American and German support.

A PIONEERING EFFORT

In research terms, the Conference represented a pioneering effort to analyze the problems facing Soviet Jews and Germans. Each group numbers about 2 million, and in the 1970’s 250,000 Jews and 85,000 Germans succeeded in emigrating from the USSR.

The fact that neither group possessed a viable Soviet territorial unit hampers their exercise of cultural rights. Both groups, moreover, experienced hostile incitement in the government-run media, and discrimination in employment and higher education. Differences for both groups were discerned in socio-economic status, with Jews concentrated in the professions, and Germans focused in skilled crafts and technical fields: in demography, with Germans having a significantly higher birthrate than Jews; and in the degree of desire for emigration among the groups: an estimated 100,000 Germans have taken initial steps to emigrate as against some 400,000 Jews.

Participating in the Conference were prominent figures in the West Germany foreign policy establishment, including Volker Ruehe, deputy president of the governing Christian Democratic Party and its chief spokesman for foreign affairs; Lutz Stavenhagen, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs; and Richard Lowenthal, long-time architect of the Eastern European policy of the Social Democratic opposition. The Ambassadors to West Germany of Israel and Italy, as well as the U.S. Embassy’s Political Counselor also attended.

COMMON CONCERNS OF GERMANS AND JEWS

The speakers who opened the Conference dwelt on the common interests of Germans and Jews in demanding Soviet compliance with international legal standards in their treatment of their Jewish and German minorities.

American Jewish Committee president Howard Friedman stressed that cooperation between Germans and American Jews on human rights issues was based on the fact that both lived in free societies and felt a moral duty to ease the plight of their less fortunate ethnic fellows in the USSR.

Ruehe urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to understand that political relations between East and West depended on such issues as Soviet treatment of its Jewish and German minorities, and that Soviet actions on Jewish emigration will indicate how serious the Soviets are about improving East-West ties.

Edward Elson, AJCommittee treasurer, said that, though the conference was scholarly in nature, the problems that the participants would be addressing were borne by real people, whose plight demands coordinated humanitarian action.