The World Jewish Congress has addressed a letter to Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and to all delegations of the 58 member-nations at the Palais de Chaillot, calling attention to the critical situation of the Jewish minorities in the Arab countries.
The organization urged that the U.N. adopt an emergency resolution recommending that the Arab states of the Middle East, especially Iraq and Egypt, revise their anti-Jewish policy and safeguard the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all racial and religious groups within their countries.
The Congress also asked the U.N. General Assembly to request that the governments concerned report within eight days whether the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Jewish citizens had been violated and what measures had been taken to prevent further violations and redress the wrongs.
Measures taken in Iraq were described in the letter as designed to “ruin and despoil the Jews.” It stated that 400 Jews were interned in concentration camps by the Iraqi authorities solely because they own property in Palestine. The letter mentioned the execution of Shafrik Ades, wealthy Iraqi Jew, on order of a military court on charges of supplying arms and other war equipment to the Zionists, although “he was never associated with a Zionist organization.”
With regard to Egypt, the Congress recalled the explosion in Cairo last Sept. 22 when four houses were blown up and 19 Jews were killed and 47 seriously injured. Referring to a protest previously addressed to the U.N. Phonemic and Social Council, the letter states that 300 to 1,000 Jews had been interned in Egypt since the middle of May and their property confiscated. More than 200 Jews were killed during June and July in bomb outrages or street attacks in Egypt.
The letter emphasized that “events in Iraq and Egypt–murder, mass arrests, imprisonment in concentration camps, confiscation of property and the boycott of is goods and businesses–followed precisely the Hitler tan, Fascist model of and persecution against the Jews. For such crimes Hitler end his Nazi gangsters were brought to book. These are the same sort of crimes which the international W Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg condemned as crimes against humanity, the letter said.
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.
