Overshadowed in the news of the past week by the action of the American Olympic Committee in accepting the bid to participate in the Olympics at Berlin, were a series of striking developments at Geneva of paramount importance to the Jews on the international scene.
The first was the revelation that the League of Nations will demand definite guarantees from Germany that the rights of the Jews in the Saarland will not be affected in the event that the Saar plebiscite next January is favorable to Germany—as from present indications it most likely will be.
The League, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned authoritatively, will insist on conditions virtually identical with the minorities provisions of the peace treaties and those embodied in the Polish-German convention governing Upper Silesia. Should Germany fail to accede to this demand, League circles state she will have proved herself unfit to rule the territory.
It is not only the 10,000 Jews resident in the Saar who fear the results of Nazi victory but also thousands of refugees who fled the Reich proper. The fate of all these people has been a matter of deepest concern and frequent representations have been made to the League for guarantees of their rights and security.
In demanding, with elementary justice, protection for the Saarland Jews, the League of Nations acts on a higher plane than the purely legal which proscribes such a course, and it vindicates much of the faith placed in it as a power in world affairs.
The League acted with commendable forthrightness in another case in which the Jews have a vital stake when the Sixth Commission of the League of Nations firmly rebuked the Polish Government for its renunciation of the minorities clauses in the peace treaty which gave the Republic a new existence.
Poland had announced that pending generalization of the minorities clauses, she would no longer recognize League jurisdiction in her internal affairs—a jurisdiction which, so far as the Polish Jews were concerned, was entirely theoretical.
The Commission, on Thursday, reported to the League Assembly that the minorities treaties could be abrogated only by the League Council; that as long as the Council does not modify them, all signatories must observe them. The Assembly is expected to adopt the report without debate.
If Col. Beck, Polish Foreign Minister, and his strategists thought that by Beck’s declaration of a few weeks ago, they could force a harassed and weakened League to accept their demands, events have proved their error.
Representatives of Great Britain, France and Italy verbally spanked Poland, and now the League itself has put that nation in the unhappy predicament of unilateral renunciation of the very treaties that give the country a national existence. The next step is up to Poland and she will consider it very carefully before taking it.
In Austria, the Schuschnigg Government, despite its pledges, acted to isolate the Jews along the lines of the accepted Nazi racial theories. “Non-Aryan” children were ordered segregated in ghetto schools apart from Catholic and Protestant students. The Vienna Jewish community voted to send a delegation to Dr. Schuschnigg with a plea to abolish the separate school system, but with little hope of any success. Meanwhile, Dr. Schuschnigg’s own party organ published an outright demand for radical legislation against the Jews. The government also set aside its rigid rule regarding political gatherings to permit two anti-Semitic rallies in Vienna.
All in all, it appeared definite that Dr. Schuschnigg was following a policy of giving with one hand and taking with the other— leaving the total result at zero or less. His fine pledge of equality for all, given one day at Geneva, was cancelled by his anti-Jewish decrees made public the next.
Nearer at home was the unfortunate decision of the American Olympic Committee to accept the Reich invitation to the 1936 Olympics at Berlin. The decision was adopted following the report of Avery Brundage that all was well in the German sport world and his announcement of faith in a Nazi pledge that Jewish athletes were not the victims of discrimination.
The committee, it is to be feared, was carried away by Mr. Brundage’s rosy picture of the Reich and missed a wonderful opportunity to display the true sportsman’s reaction to such conditions as exist in Nazi Germany.
Although the decision had been expected in the light of Mr. Brundage’s declarations, it had been felt that more consideration would be given to the strong sentiment displayed by the American Amateur Athletic Union in voting against participation, and by the strong protest from all parts of the country against it.
The committee’s decision, however, is not necessarily final since the A. A. U. can still prevent certification of an American team.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
