The United Nations Commission on Human Rights discussed today the worldwide outbreaks of anti-Semitic incidents in 1959 and 1960 and the value of adoption of a resolution on steps to cancel discriminatory laws and for legislation to ban all types of discrimination.
Delegates of the Netherlands, Pakistan and Denmark favored postponing adoption of such a resolution. The delegates of Poland and the Ukraine felt that a resolution should be adopted. No decision was reached.
Austria formally introduced a resolution calling on the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities to evaluate principles in international “instruments” which provide special protective measures for racial, national, religious and linguistic groups. The Subcommission also would be asked to analyze those internal protective measures compiled by the Secretary General in a memorandum.
P. E. Nedbailo of the Ukraine said that finding means to eradicate the forces that caused the resurgence of anti-Semitism and other forms of racial prejudices was one of the main tasks of the Commission. He said that attribution of such manifestations to juvenile delinquents was misleading. He pointed out that 200, 000 persons were arrested during the 1959-60 outbreaks throughout the world and that this proved it was a mass movement.
The Ukrainian delegate claimed the outbreaks were due to fascist and neo-Nazi organizations in the Western world, particularly in West Germany, to the remilitarization of West Germany and to “monopolistic forces” which he said were trying to educate the new German generation in the spirit of Nazi “revanchism.” He asserted that “the link between nazism, racism and colonialism” was “a fact” and that “such evil” should be liquidated.
Mrs. Marietta P. Tree, the United States delegate, said that the 1959-60 outbreaks were “shocking” but that such reports as those of the Subcommission were reassuring. Citing a long list of documents submitted by governments on discriminations of all kinds in their countries, Mrs. Tree reiterated that “not all” of the governments had replied to the UN on the situation of Jews and anti-Semitism in their countries–a reminder to which Soviet delegate V. I. Saphozhnikov objected earlier this week stating that there was no anti-Semitism in his country and that charges to the contrary were a “smokescreen.”
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