Refugees, Human Rights and Realpolitik

The Clandestine Immigration of Jewish Refugees from Italy to Palestine, 1945-1948

Daphna Sharfman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351995443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

This book presents a multidimensional case study of international human rights in the immediate post-Second World War period, and the way in which complex refugee problems created by the war were often in direct competition with strategic interests and national sovereignty.

The case study is the clandestine immigration of Jewish refugees from Italy to Palestine in 1945–1948, which was part of a British–Zionist conflict over Palestine, involving strategic and humanitarian attitudes. The result was a clear subjection of human rights considerations to strategic and political interests.

Part 1

Historical background

1 Refugees in Europe 1920–1948

The one form of international action which would have provided the most substantial relief for the refugees would have been a widespread lowering of immigration barriers. Most nations, however, were prepared to do no more than suggest this course of action for their neighbours.¹

This chapter will examine the lack of commitment towards refugees that was one of the hallmarks of government policy during the 1920s and 1930s, and which had significant consequences for the post-Second World War era. Particular emphasis will be placed on the problematic lack of human rights considerations during the inter-war period when at times the refugees were all but abandoned by the leading democracies. The chapter will provide the basis for evaluating governmental post-war policies, especially those of the United States and Britain.

Refugees and their rights: background

The refugee problem became a recognized international issue during the inter-war period, and led to the establishment of the first international refugee regime.² According to Skran, a regime is based on several notions: principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures. The first basic principle was sovereignty, followed by humanitarianism. The refugee problem may have arisen as a result of actions by states that violated humanitarian standards. However, human rights were not regarded as an international concern until after the Holocaust. A government’s treatment of its citizens was regarded as a domestic affair.³

The three norms within the international refugee regime were asylum, assistance and burden-sharing. The asylum norm has had a long tradition in international law since the seventeenth century, and the right of a state to grant or deny asylum is now universally accepted. The Judeo-Christian norm of assistance recognized that such people were bereft of any government protection, and hence were more vulnerable than immigrants and illegal aliens. All members of the League of Nations, whether or not providing physical asylum, had an obligation to share the financial burden of sheltering refugees. The rules were formulated in legal documents adopted between 1922 and 1939, and were intended to enforce the principles and norms of the regime. Although involving all the independent states to some degree, they concentrated mainly on Europe.⁴

The general definition of a ‘refugee’ refers to a person who has left or who has been forced to leave his or her country for political reasons, is deprived of its diplomatic protection and is without nationality or the diplomatic protection of any other state. The term includes those who formally retain their nationality but lack the state’s protection and also those whom the state deprives of their nationality, thus making them stateless. In practice the position of these two groups is the same.⁵ However, the international attitude towards the refugee issue, as manifested in the agreements and conventions drafted during the inter-war period, did not include a general individual connotation and the benefits were extended only to certain groups of refugees. Furthermore, even though the honouring of human rights has led to improvements in the way in which refugees are treated, the political, economic, and social difficulties prevailing in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s made it difficult to secure proper legal status and assistance for them. At the time, the largest group of political refugees comprised Russians departing in the aftermath of the Civil War. Most of them were destitute and stateless, and needed identification papers for travel. ⁶

The League of Nations established a new approach to the recognition of the refugees’ problems and the need to assist millions of post-war refugees. In 1921 the Council of the League appointed Dr Fridtjof Nansen of Norway as High Commissioner on behalf of the League in connection with the problem concerning Russian Refugees in Europe. He worked with the International Labour Organization and volunteers from the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, among others. From 5 July 1922 they provided funds and distributed food and clothing, arranged medical services, housing, employment opportunities, helped to reunite families, and prepared legal documents, including the ‘Nansen passport’ for the estimated two million Russian refugees. The League intervened in government policies to secure the repatriation of individual refugees.⁷ A separate agreement reached by the Greek and Turkish governments following the Greco-Turkish war was confirmed by the Lausanne Treaty of July 1923. It provided for the mandatory expulsion and repatriation of around one million Orthodox Greeks and 500,000 Muslims.⁸ The Arrangements of May 1924 and May 1926 extended this provision to Armenian refugees and identity certificates were issued to them. By June 1928 the governments that had adopted these Arrangements also undertook an obligation on behalf of assimilated refugees (Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldeane, Syrians, Kurds and a small number of Turks). No responsibility was taken in regard to other refugees. The participants recommended improvements in the status of refugees and the appointment of representatives of the High Commissioner for Refugees in as many countries as possible.⁹ In 1930 the League’s Assembly decided to create an autonomous organization, the Nansen International Office for Refugees, whose mandate was to undertake humanitarian tasks while the Secretariat remained responsible for the judicial aspects regarding legal protection, civil rights and the status of refugees. The Nansen Office was to operate until 31 December 1938. The reality was that the growing economic depression worsened the situation of the refugees and their chance for legal employment; furthermore, they did not benefit from governmental measures of relief for the unemployed. Many refugees had to procure false papers or attempt to enter states illegally where they hoped to find better opportunities. The governments reacted with strict legal measures such as imprisonment and expulsion: ‘The latter move confronted the refugees with a conflict between two sovereign wills, the one expelling them, the other forbidding their entry. There was no place to go and in many cases vagrancy or suicide were the only alternatives of the refugee.’¹⁰

In reaction to this difficult situation, the Inter-Governmental Conference was convened on 26–28 October 1933 in Geneva, attended by government representatives from fifteen states. Those from Britain, Germany and Lithuania were absent. The participating states accepted the Convention relating to the International Status of Refugees. It was the first binding international agreement to afford refugees legal protection and the first to articulate the principle that refugees should not be returned involuntarily to their country of origin. However, the treaty never became globally applicable and it only protected those refugees already recognized in the previous Arrangements. It aimed to improve the status and the daily life of the refugees, but the eight states to acceed to the Convention did so with reservations which limited its value. Even though the governments were reluctant to draft the treaty, public pressure from former refugees, private voluntary organizations and international refugee advocates all contributed to the creation of the Convention.¹¹

At that time, the British attitude towards the refugee problem was unsympathetic. Regarding the problem of the Jewish refugees from Germany, official recommendations from the Foreign Office were based on the legalistic interpretation that the problem exceeded the Nansen Office’s authority. Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon’s view was that any appeal to the League in this matter would be regarded in Germany as an act of unwarranted interference and therefore should be avoided. Following the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, the British Jewish community requested the government in July 1933 to raise the issue in the League Assembly’s September meeting. However, the Foreign Office was adamantly against doing so, as were other related offices. The response given to the Jewish organizations was negative for the reason that stated that there was a much smaller number of refugees in Britain than in other European countries. On 11 October Allen Leeper, head of the League of Nations Department in the Foreign Office, informed the representative in Geneva, Ashley Clarke, that Britain would not participate in the Conference. During 1934 and 1935 the Home Office continued to resist accession to the Convention, as it expected to come under pressure concerning the German (Jewish) refugees.¹²

The Nazi persecution of Jews, liberals, socialists and other ‘undesirables’, which included loss of employment and annulment of German nationality, was carried out on a large scale and as a result about 150,000 Germans had left the country by 1938. However, the increasing power of Germany in the 1930s impaired the ability of the League of Nations to respond to the widening problem of refugees from that country. As the League operated on the basis of consensus, the German delegation could veto its policies so long as it remained a member of the organization (Nazi Germany withdrew from the League on 14 October 1933). In the years that followed the appeasement policy of Britain and France hindered the League’s ability to deal with the refugee problem. Following the broadly supported Dutch proposal for League action on behalf of the Jewish refugees, the problem was discussed only by the League’s Second Committee (Technical Organizations). The German government strongly objected to this and managed to reach a compromise arrangement that was drawn up by the French and British delegates.¹³

The American High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and Others) Coming from Germany, James G. McDonald, was appointed by the Council in October 1933. However, as a result of the political compromise, his office was set up as an autonomous organization reporting to its own Governing Body, and not to the Council of the League. In contrast to the Nansen International Office, its funds were provided by private organizations. The German refugees were not eligible to receive Nansen passports and were not included in the categories deemed suitable for international arrangements. The various states issued their own policies in regard to documents of identity and travel. Almost all governments recognized their validity but most of them required special visas to be issued for admission to their territory.¹⁴

Lord Robert Cecil, the British representative at the League and soon to be elected Chairman of the Governing Body, was instructed by his government to try to avoid any recommendations ‘likely to provoke resentment in Germany’, and not to consider any proposal for a financial contribution by Britain to assist the refugees. Additional instructions concerned the continuation of British control of immigration to Palestine according to the country’s economic capacity, as determined by Palestine’s High Commissioner.¹⁵

The passing of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935 that deprived Jews and other non-Arians of their citizenships led McDonald and his Governing Body to officially call the attention of the governments to the new persecutions and to the increase in the number of refugees. The High Commissioner repeated his request that the British and American ambassadors in Berlin should be instructed to ask the German government to allow the refugees to transfer their property abroad, but the Foreign Office refused to intervene, fearing that the German government would ask Britain to take a number of Jewish refugees. The British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, informed his government in October ‘of the net being drawn round the Jewish community’, and added in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Introduction
• PART 1: Historical background
• PART 2: Political developments
• PART 3: Case study: Jewish refugees in Italy: human rights drama or an exercise in realpolitik?
• PART 4: The refugees’ struggle against the empire
• Index