Jews and Human Rights In Europe
Seventy years ago, on December 17 1942, British Foreign Minister Sir Anthony Eden reported to the House of Commons that the Jews of Germany and German-occupied Eastern Europe were being systematically starved and murdered. He read a declaration by the Allies (named by Franklin Delano Roosevelt the “United Nations”) condemning this “bestial policy.” The declaration included a “solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution.” The Allies, declared Eden, would try to give asylum to as many refugees as possible. After the Second World War, the General Assembly of the newly created United Nations, a body larger than the anti-Hitler coalition, accepted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Five months later, a group of European countries created a Council of Europe, agreed to a European Convention on Human Rights, and gradually accepted the jurisdiction of a European Court of H...