THE QUESTION OF MINORITIES IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

ON 28 June 1919, in the great Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, the new Polish state received its international warranty. Poland had been duly recognized as a full and integral element in a ‘new Europe’ created through the Great War victory of the Western Allies. But there were, as the term ‘warranty' implies, strings attached. Ignacy Paderewski and Roman Dmowski were on this momentous occasion being required to put their signatures to more than a treaty which would govern the future relationship between states. The peace, as determined by the Allies, also demanded specific obligations from Poland with regard to its non-Polish inhabitants. These obligations, governing Poland's domestic relations, were to be committed to international protocol in the form of a special and separate Minorities Treaty. Citizenship for all those living in Poland was to be guaranteed, their nationality firmly fixed as Polish. This was consistent with the agendas of previous international conferences where new states had been created or fully recognized. But the Minorities Treaty departed radically from these precedents in that it recognized not simply the existence of linguistic or cultural groups who did not belong to the dominant Polish majority but also their entitlement to rights as such within the framework of a sovereign Poland.

The arrangements for minorities had been developed and drafted at the Paris peace conference with a view to their general appncability to all the new states created in eastern Europe, and indeed beyond. The concept of minority rights, or, in modern parlance, group rights, had for the first time, however tentatively, been addressed and endorsed at the highest international level. The creation of a League of Nations moreover provided, in theory at least, a body which would ensure that these obligations remained binding and a mechanism, through the International Court of Justice, for redressing violations or infractions. These had implications far beyond Poland. Nevertheless, the Minorities Treaty not only put Poland in the international spotlight at Paris but in a critical sense was peculiarly addressed to her. More particularly still, they concerned Poland's relationship with one of her minority populations, the Jews.