Rene Cassin Dead at 88

Prof. Rene Cassin. Nobel Prize Laureate, author of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and honorary president of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, died here Friday at the age of 88. One of Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s earliest followers in June, 1940 after the Nazis overran France, the Jewish French-born writer, statesman and attorney broke with de Gaulle in 1967 over the General’s Middle East policy. Prof. Cassin, commenting on deGaulle’s arms embargo on Israel, stated: “France is identifying itself with injustice.”

Prof. Cassin obtained his doctorates in law, economy and political science and was appointed law professor first at Aix-en-Provence University and then at the Sorbonne. In the 1920s he was a French delegate to the League of Nations and served in this capacity until the outbreak of World War II. in June, 1940, he was the first ranking French civilian to join de Gaulle in London and was subsequently appointed Minister of Justice in de Gaulle’s “Free French” government.

At the end of the war, Prof. Cassin was appointed vice-president of the Council of State, France’s highest non-political administrative post, and was subsequently appointed as the Council’s honorary president. He was the first French delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights and then its president. In 1968 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1973 the Goethe Prize. He donated the monies of these awards to humanitarian activities. Prof. Cassin was throughout his career interested and active in Jewish and Israeli affairs. In 1974 a French high school was inaugurated in Jerusalem bearing his name.

Among the many positions he held, Prof. Cassin was the head of the Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations and a former president of the European Human Rights Court and the International Institute of Administrative Sciences. He was a founder of UNESCO and subsequently a strong critic of that UN body’s politicalization.

Prof. Cassin took a leading part in campaigns for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate. As president of the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, he joined the American Jewish Committee in the sponsorship of a conference in Uppsala, Sweden in 1972, which influenced the human rights sections of the Helsinki Declaration adopted by 35 countries last year. His honors included the Croix de Guerre, Medaille Militaire, and Officer of the Resistance.