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State Dept. Urged to Seek Senate Ratification of Genocide Pact

April 17, 1961
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The American Jewish Congress today called on Secretary of State Dean Rusk to take the lead in pressing for Senate ratification of the international Genocide Convention outlawing mass murder.

In a resolution, the Jewish group urged that the United States “seize the occasion of the Eichmann trial in Israel to join in the international pledge that degradation and horror of the kind perpetrated by the Nazi regime may never again be permitted on this earth, “

American failure to sign the treaty, the AJCongress declared, had “gravely compromised our country’s traditional championing of human rights and seriously weakened the treaty’s effectiveness as an international instrument. ” The Convention, which is aimed at preventing and punishing the destruction of national, racial, religious or ethnic groups, has been ratified by 64 countries since the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted it in 1948.

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