By Pierre-Etienne Bourneuf
On 3 July 1936, the morning session of the League of Nations Assembly was interrupted by a gunshot. Stefan Lux had shot himself in the chest in the area reserved for photojournalists near the rostrum. By committing suicide in front of the League Assembly, Lux wanted the world to open its eyes to the plight of Jews in Germany and incite action against Nazi Germany. Despite his ultimate sacrifice, his dramatic cry for help was not heard by the international community. Lux’s suicide did not provoke any political reaction. In the following days, none of the delegates mentioned him in the discussions at the Assembly. The attention of the international press faded quickly. The Official Journal of the Assembly does not even mention the interruption of the meeting. Today, Lux still remains little known by the general public. How can we explain that such a dramatic attempt to alert the world was forgotten? What can the archives of the League of Nations tell us about these events?
The file entitled “Suicide de M. Stefan Lux, photographe”, kept in the archives of the League of Nations, contains a surprisingly small number of documents. It includes a letter addressed to Joseph Avenol, the Secretary-General of the League. In this letter, written in German the day before he committed suicide, Lux apologizes for any inconvenience caused to the League. He expresses his conviction that the negative impact of his act would be outweighed by the positive outcomes. He also asks Avenol to forward other letters he wrote to their recipients. A handwritten note penciled onto Lux’s letter lists them: King Edward VIII, the British Secretary of State, Anthony Eden, two British newspapers – The Times and The Manchester Guardian – and Paul du Bochet, a journalist from the Journal de Genève who helped Lux receive his accreditation to access the Assembly Hall.
The other documents kept in the League of Nations archives show how the Secretariat was not so much moved, but rather embarrassed by Lux’ suicide. A report produced by the Secretariat’s Internal Services focuses more on security matters than the political reasons or moral convictions that pushed Lux to shoot himself. Other documents report how the letters left by Lux to Avenol were delivered to their recipients (the one delivered to Eden was sent back to Bern for the Swiss authorities’ investigations). The press clippings collected by the League Secretariat provide more background information about Lux’s suicide, although they are sometimes factually incorrect. In particular, the last words pronounced by Lux before shooting himself differ according to various sources. The letters addressed to The Times or The Manchester Guardian in which Lux explained his act were not published in their entirety. In most of the press articles, Lux was presented as a Jew who wanted to denounce the persecution of Jews in Germany. Interestingly, a telegram sent to the League Secretariat by Arthur Haller, representative of the city of Prague and Lux’s friend, provides a different perspective on the intentions behind his dramatic act: “Lux did not die for the Jews but for the humanitarian ideal and last not least [sic] for the League of Nations stop I hope that this heroic action will not remain without effect”.
The relative silence of the archives is more telling than it first appears. It can stimulate new approaches to investigate what happened and help formulate innovative research questions. Moreover, the League’s archives represent a unique source to reconstruct the historical context in which Lux decided to take his own life. One year after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, the desperate situation of the Jews in Germany was well known in Geneva. In 1935, James G. McDonald, High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and Other) Coming from Germany, had already resigned to protest the limitations of his mandate and the inadequate international response towards the Nazi regime. When the Assembly was meeting, the Conference on Refugees Coming from Germany was also in session in Geneva. Two years after Berlin’s withdrawal from the League, the complex and ambiguous posture of the democratic powers can provide a possible explanation as to the lack of reaction that followed Lux’s act. This could also explain the passivity of League Secretariat, which was not immune to this political context. At the same time, the international context was extremely tense. The Assembly had been convened in an extraordinary session to discuss the question of the invasion of Abyssinia. Three days before Lux’s suicide, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie had made an historical speech in which he called on the Members States of the League of Nations to defend the principles of the Covenant and assist his country. The decision to suspend the sanctions adopted against Italy marked the collapse of the collective security system on which the League was built. A few days after Lux’s death, the beginning of the Spanish Civil War marked a dangerous step towards the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe.
The League of Nations archives can help us to broaden the perspective and contextualize Stefan Lux’s act. They provide some answers to understand why his suicide did not have the impact he expected. At the same time, the silence surrounding his ultimate sacrifice should be an incentive to better understand what happened, his motivation, and to give him the place he deserves in our collective memory.
source: R5230/15/24650/17433
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