Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

30 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:27
in Romania over denial of citizenship to Jews as “foreigners” because only
those of “Christian persuasion can obtain naturalization”; and in Russia in
1911-13 in the Beilis case. In 1945 it was trenchantly argued that, in an
attempt to broaden the jurisdiction of the upcoming Nuremberg trials to
include persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany prior to the war, “for the last
century there have been many interventions for humanitarian reasons. All
countries have interfered in [the internal] affairs of other countries to defend
minorities who were being persecuted.” 4
The 1878 treaty of Berlin settling the Russo-Turkish war was a
landmark accord. The great powers declared legal equality for Jews to be a
binding principle of international law, although the treaty provided no
mechanism for enforcement. Jews worked assiduously and lavished funds
to mobilize the press, parliamentarians, and governments to support minority
rights, and they energetically lobbied delegates at Berlin—Gerson von
Bleichröder, Bismarck’s banker and confidential advisor in the lead,
together with Alphonse-Isaac Crémieux, head of the first Jewish defense
organization, the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The famous Article 44, on
Romania and ten other of the treaty’s 66 articles, guaranteed to the—
unnamed—Jews of Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia religious
freedom, equality of civil and political rights, entry into the professions, and
commercial and industrial rights in return for recognition of the sovereign
independence of the four new nations by the great powers; the Ottoman
Empire also subscribed to the guarantees. Romania defied Article 44 by its
relentless persecution of Jews, and a cynical Bismarck and the increasingly
preoccupied European powers did not trouble to intervene. They were
reminded of this indifference from time to time by the American government,
such as the 1902 protest to Romania of its violations of the Berlin
treaty and a summons—punctuated by copies of the treaty text—to the
seven signatories to do their duty under international law. Britain expressed
some interest, but the rest were indifferent or opposed. More failed minorities
diplomacy ensued: the treaty of London, March 1913, concluding the
First Balkan War, recognized the independence of newly created Albania
and reiterated, pro forma, the principles of Article 44. It was, in effect, torn
up by the treaty of Bucharest, August 1913, concluding the Second Balkan
War; the belligerents negotiated among themselves, quite indifferent to the
great powers, and made no pretense of including the principles of Article 44
despite the lobbying of Jewish NGOs. So Romania continued its antisemitic
persecutions with impunity, gaining the northern part of Dobrudja, and
4. William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 35.