PETITION TO THE LEAGUE

Taranaki Daily News, 3 June 1933, Page 7

PETITION TO THE LEAGUE

BRITISH MINISTER’S REPORT.

REPLY IN HOUSE OF COMMONS.

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, June 1.

In a reply circulated in the House of Commons with the official report, Sir John Simon, Foreign Secretary, said that the Bernheim petition to the League of Nations on behalf of Jews in Silesia and Mr. Lester’s League report had been considered by the League Council, which approved (with the German delegate abstaining) of Mr. Lester’s proposal to refer the matter to a committee of three jurists. Mr. Lester is to present the report to the council, if possible in a few days. ■ Mr. R. A. Eden (British delegate) had supported Mr. Lester’s proposal, adding that his silence with regard to some of the statements by the German delegate should not be taken as implying agreement.

Herr Bernheim, late of Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, who stated that he was dismissed from his employment in a German emporium because he was a Jew, arrived at Geneva with a petition to the League of Nations. The petition stresses that Germany, when she secured special treatment for her minorities in Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and elsewhere, undertook to extend the same treatment to foreign minorities established in Germany.

The Irish Free State delegate, Mr. Lester, was appointed to report on the petition and declared that Germany ignored the Geneva convention of 1922 in respect to the treatment of minorities of Silesia, wherefore she should reinstate and compensate judges, lawyers and other victims.