Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

36 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:27
together with nineteenth-century diplomatic precedents, provided important
examples and helped set the pattern for the development of international
human rights law after 1945. The ultimate failure in practice notwithstanding,
the necessity for special protection of national minorities was recognized,
both morally and juridically, and those years saw the first attempt to
launch an international criminal court, an idea that had taken fairly definite
shape by 1937 in a treaty adopted by the League of Nations but was a
casualty of the world crisis. The interwar experience is the starting point of
Raphael Lemkin’s pioneering treatise, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws
of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944), in
which he coined the term “genocide” and made the case that it be designated
a crime under international law and prosecutable in an international
court. In many ways, the creation of the modern international human rights
legal system represents a resumption of the ground-breaking efforts of the
interwar period, and owes much to Lemkin’s heroic activism. 10 Lemkin was
a one-man lobbying machine, interceding with heads of state and delegates,
urging on the deliberations of planning committees, and plying all and sundry
with articles, memoranda, letters to the editor, and much else. In the
aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, 1989-1991, some
observers saw a striking parallel between the new states that emerged with
new boundaries and minorities trapped in hostile settings, and the aftermath
of World War I, when the disintegration of multinational empires saw the
emergence of new states with new boundaries and minorities trapped in
hostile settings. Witnessing the renewed horrors of ethnic persecution and
denial of human rights, Mikhail Gorbachev was not alone in advocating the
revival of the interwar minorities treaties. 11
PRECEDENT-SETTING TRIALS
While the 1919 Versailles Treaty called for the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm
II and other German war leaders for violations of international morality and
treaties in an international court, it was not implemented; the treaty also
required German courts to prosecute German soldiers charged with war
crimes, but these Leipzig trials turned into fiascos, for only about twelve
men were actually tried; some were acquitted, while those convicted were
given very light sentences, giving a decided boost to the superior-orders
10. For this line of interpretation, see William A. Schabas, Genocide in International
Law, 23-30, and generally chap. 1.
11. Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews,
and International Minority Protection, 1878-1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), xv.