World Jewish Congress Calls for U.S. Ratification of Genocide Pact

A plea to the United States Government to ratify the United Nations Genocide Convention was made in a resolution adopted at a meeting here this evening sponsored by the American Section of the World Jewish Congress. The resolution noted that the United States remains the only major power that has not acceded to the Convention although it has been before the U.S. Senate since 1949.

Speakers at the meeting urging U.S. action on the Convention included Rep. James Scheuer, New York Democrat; Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress; and Dr. Max Nussbaum, chairman of the WJC American Section. In a message to the meeting, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller said that Nazi mass murder of Jewry had constituted “the most hideous chapter in the history of the world, a history with many ugly interludes.” Governor Rockefeller said that steps should be taken “to make certain that it cannot happen again.”

In urging the U.S. Government and Senate to accede to the Convention, the resolution declared: “We deeply believe that, in order to keep our position of moral leadership in the world, the U.S. must play a pioneer role in the promotion of international and national legislation designed to uproot the evil manifestations of prejudice, discrimination and persecution of human groups among which genocide is certainly the most monstrous.”

Present at the meeting were representatives of all the major national Jewish organizations affiliated with the American Section of the World Jewish Congress: American Jewish Congress, Americans for Progressive Israel, Bnai Zion, Farband-Labor Zionist Order, Federation for Labor Israel, Labor Zionist Organization of America, Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi, Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America, Pioneer Women, Poale Agudath Israel of America, United Labor Zionist Party, United Zionists-Revisionists of America, and the Zionist Organization of America.