The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Holocaust: An Endangered Connection

345 Pages·2018·2.142 MB·English

by  Johannes Morsink

THE
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION
HUMAN RIGHTS
OF AND

HOLOCAUST
THE
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THE
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION
HUMAN RIGHTS
OF AND
HOLOCAUST
THE
AN ENDANGERED CONNECTION
JOHANNES MORSINK
Georgetown University Press / Washington, DC
© 2019 Johannes Morsink. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro-
duced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, with-
out permission in writing from the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for third-party websites or their content. URL links
were active at time of publication.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Morsink, Johannes, author.
Title: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Holocaust : An
Endangered Connection / Johannes Morsink.
Description: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2019. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018003847 (print) | LCCN 2018033165 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781626166301 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626166295 | ISBN 9781626166295
q(pbk. : qalk. paper) | ISBN 9781626166288 q(hardcover : qalk. paper) | ISBN
9781626166301 q(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: United Nations. General Assembly. Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. | Human rights. | Human rights movements. | Holocaust, Jewish
(1939-1945)—Influence.
Classification: LCC K3238.31948 (ebook) | LCC K3238.31948 .M668 2019
(print)| DDC 341.4/8—dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2018003847
c This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American
National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
20 19 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America.
Cover design by John Barnett.
To the memory of my parents, who,
during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands,
in word and deed upheld the values this book defends.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Universal Declaration as Postcard 1
PART I: THE HISTORIC MOMENT
1 New Historians and the Declaration 17
2 Moyn’s Dismissal of the Connection 69
3 The 1940s Moment of Human Rights 119
PART II: THE PHILOSOPHIC MOMENT
4 The Moral Engine of the System 159
5 Portable, Not Territorial 218
Conclusion: Enacting the Connection 283
References 315
Index 325
About the Author 334
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
H
aving as a professor made the library my home base on the Drew
University campus, I am most indebted to Drew librarians for their
help with yet another book on the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Some of them need to be singled out because their expertise
was repeatedly put to speedy use to help me write this book. I thank
Rick Mikulski, who, as a historian and librarian overseeing Drew’s col-
lection of government documents, was an invaluable source for brain-
storming about UN- related materials and for finding stuff we thought
was lost or never existed. Similarly, I thank Jennifer Heise for help with
both UN documentation and the reference section of this book. No
library can have all the materials a scholar needs. So I need to thank
Brian Tervo, head of Drew’s Interlibrary Loan Office, who was most
helpful in getting me items Drew did not have. I also thank Verna
Holcomb in the Instructional Technology Center for helping me send
off the manuscript in the required format. Of a totally different order
are the thanks I owe my wife, Nancy, for creating an atmosphere at
home that is conducive to researching and writing.
ix