Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

34 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:27
Another serious shortcoming was the lack of concrete penalties or punishments
for infractions, which, when added to complex procedures that
resulted in interminable delays, induced minorities to give up hope and
refrain from seeking redress. Early on, the League rejected the far-seeing
proposal of Lord Robert Cecil that violations be treated as threats to international
peace, a principle that would have made forceful action and intervention
more distinctly imperative, as prevails today under UN auspices.
By the summer of 1920, the minority states—Czechoslovakia, Greece,
Poland, Romania, and the Serb-Croat-Slovene state that became Yugoslavia—had
signed treaties, and minority provisions were inserted in the peace
treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Jews were specifically mentioned
in four of the peace treaties, five minorities treaties, and several unilateral
declarations concerned with protecting minority religious and civil
rights. Yet most of the agreements made no specific mention of special
Jewish rights; more typically, very minor cultural rights inserted in the
Greek treaty did not prevent harsh hellenization of Salonika’s large Jewish
population. The Romanian treaty recognized all Jews resident in Romania
as citizens and prohibited their relegation to “alien” status, reiterating,
though in vain, the provision in the Berlin treaty that had been consistently
flouted. Not surprisingly, the treaty framers and international jurists dedicated
to implementation anticipated the danger of genocide and the general
persecution of minorities (they had only to look about the continent to witness
multiple atrocities) by their affirmation of the “right to life” of vulnerable
national, ethnic, or religious groups in at least four peace treaties: those
with Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and the future Yugoslavia. Thus,
“Poland undertakes to assure full and complete protection of life and liberty
to all inhabitants of Poland without distinction of birth, nationality, language,
race or religion.” 8 By 1924, Albania, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and
Lithuania were admitted to the League, but only light demands were put on
them; often, they had merely to issue a pro forma declaration to protect
minority rights. Turkey was also brought into the League’s minorities regimen.
By 1925, the League’s Minority Section was responsible for 15 states
and 50 minorities. Though it was one of the defeated nations, under the
Versailles Treaty Weimar Germany was not compelled to guarantee minority
rights within its shrunken boundaries, and it was barred from the League
until 1926, when it was admitted and became a permanent member of the
Council. With an irredentist eye focused on its former citizens and territories
lost to the new or expanded states on its borders, Germany quickly
became the foremost advocate of minority protection: it submitted proposals
to make the League’s procedures fairer and more open and speedier, and
8. William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law, 23.