Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: A temporary victory for Czechoslovakian Jews Archive/File: pub/places/czechoslovakia/czech.001 Last-Modified: 1994/9/15 "Czechoslovakian Jews reacted to Hitler's rise to power according to their nature and their geographical situation. In the border regions, in the Sudetenland, the sense of danger was more heightened than in Prague. In the capital, where President Masaryk responded to events in Germany by reiterating his unswerving faith in democracy, the Zionist organizations held protest meetings and were confident that 'it can't happen here.' The Jewish National Party called for public meetings and Margulies, head of the party and always the fighter, resolved to embark on a vigorous counterattack. According to Paragraph 147 of the 1922 German-Polish Convention, Germany undertook to protect all minority rights in the region annexed to her. In a letter to the Zionist Executive in London, Margulies proposed that a protest be lodged with the League of Nations at Germany's violation of the said paragraph vis-a-vis Upper Silesia. 'A petition must be organized by Jews throughout the world and the initiative must extend to all Jews everywhere. Geneva expects the initiative to come from the Jews...They must not remain silent and wait for others to act on their behalf. [The petition] must be based on legal evidence - not on 'atrocities' - on the violation of an international agreement in that the Jews of Upper Silesia who are lawyers, hospital doctors, university professors, and government clerks are not permitted to work.' On behalf of Fritz Bernheim, a minor employee in a government warehouse in Gleiwitz who had been fired by the Nazis and subsequently emigrated to Czechoslovakia, Margulies submitted a petition to the League of Nations, since by the terms of the Upper Silesia Convention any citizen whose national rights had been infringed could apply to the League. Margulies attached a hundred applications from Jewish organizations to the Bernheim petition, much to the consternation of von Keller, the German delegate to the League, who claimed that one Bernheim had no right to speak for all the Jews. To support his contention, von Keller submitted letters from assimilated Jewish organizations in Germany who protested the right of any Jewish minority to speak on their behalf. An ad hoc committee of jurists rejected the German objection, and in May 1933, the Bernheim petition was brought before the Council of the League of Nations. In this way at least the rest of the world learned of the civil rights problem of the Jews of Germany. At the Geneva Congree of National Minorities, the Germans had, of course, pointed out the astonishing fact that while countries all over the world censured Germany for persecuting Jews, they themselves were reluctant to accept those 'surplus Jews who wish to leave Germany.' Still, Hitler, fearing reprisals on German minorities in Poland and elsewhere, knew how to adapt his policies to the prevailing mood, at least outwardly. In September of that year, Germany informed the League of Nations that Jewish civil rights in Upper Silesia had been restored. This state of affairs, in which the Jews of Upper Silesia lived as if on a protected island, continued until July 1937, at which time the 1922 agreement between Poland and Germany expired and Hitler could ignore both world opinion and the League of Nations." (Bondy, 44-45) Work Cited Bondy, Ruth. Elder of the Jews. New York: Grove Press, 1989. (Translated from "Edelshtain neged had-zeman". Zmora, Bitan, Modan, publishers, 1981
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