German official: 1951 refugee treaty applies now
Germany's foreign minister says the world's failure to agree on taking in Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in 1938 resulted in a refugee treaty after World War II that countries are still bound by today.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted Sunday that the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention "was the response to this failure and remains the binding measure of our humanity."
Maas offered the tweet against the backdrop of a debate over Europe's response to mass migration from Africa and the Mideast.
His comment came exactly 80 years after an international conference in Evian, France, ended without firm commitments from most of the 32 countries involved to accept more refugees.
Many Jews later killed in the Holocaust had tried to emigrate to countries such as the United States but were rejected.
According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Nazi Germany gloated that other countries criticized its treatment of Jews but wouldn't accept them either.
