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Jacob Robinson — In Memoriam*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2016
Extract
Jacob, son of David and Bluma Robinson and the eldest of seven brothers, was born in the little Lithuanian village of Serijai, near Suwalk on the German frontier, then part of the Czarist Empire. Among his distinguished forebears was Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, author of the Mishna commentary Tosephot Yom Tov. His father, a well-known scholar, teacher and maskil of Wistyten (Vishtinetz) and a prominent member of the Jewish community, had been its spokesman on several occasions, and had represented it in meetings both with the Czar and with the Kaiser. A sense of Jewish public service was natural in the Robinson household.
In the summer of 1914, as the war-clouds were gathering, Jacob graduated in the Faculty of Law of the University of Warsaw. He went there not so much from choice, but because Czarist anti-Jewish legislation prevented him from studying at the great Russian centres of higher learning. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War on 1 August 1914 (in the East), he enlisted in the Russian Army under special recruitment plans for university graduates (universanti). He served for about a year, and then was taken prisoner by the Germans after Vilna fell to them, in 1915. He was to remain in captivity in German Prisoner of War camps until the end of the War. There he had a hard time of it, and during a period of about 30 months he was in no less that eight different POW camps, where he established himself as an unofficial leader and spokesman of the Jewish POW's and of the Russian POW's as well, no doubt an early manifestation of his sense of universal humanism which was to show itself on so many occasions later.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1978
References
1 For the Memel Statute case, see Publications of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Series A/B, Nos. 47, 49; Series C, No. 59 (1931–1932). For the Expulsion of German Nationals from Memel case (1931), see Stuyt, A.M., Survey of International Arbitrations 1794–1970 (Leiden and Dobbs Ferry, 1972) 496Google Scholar. Strenuous efforts are being made, in several national archives, to obtain a copy of that Conciliation Award, but so far without success. In the light of this experience Jacob was able to provide Israel with valuable guidance in the three international cases in which it has been involved, the Reservations to the Genocide Convention advisory opinion (International Court of Justice, Reports (1951) 15), the Aerial Incident of 27 July 1955 case (Israel v. Bulgaria, International Court of Justice, Reports (1959) 127), and German Secular Property in Israel, arbitration (Israel/Federal Republic of Germany, [1962] 16 Reports of International Arbitral Awards 3.
2 Académie de Droit international (1958–II) 94 Recueil des Cours 493.Google Scholar
3 Curiously, Jacob wrote relatively little on this phase beyond some current periodical articles. But see his two important later essays: “Lauterpacht's Contribution to the Development of International Criminal Law” (in Hebrew) in Studies in Public International Law in Memory of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht (Feinberg, N. ed., Jerusalem, 1961) 84Google Scholar and “The International Military Tribunal and the Holocaust—Some Legal Reflections” in (1972) 7 Is.L.R. 1.
4 Eban, Abba, An Autobiography (New York, 1977) 133.Google Scholar
5 Doc. symbol A/CONF.1/–. Jacob was a member of the Conference drafting committee. This difficult operation was the work of the brothers Jacob and Nehemiah almost unaided. See Robinson, N., United Nations Convention on the Declaration of Death of Missing Persons — A Commentary (New York, 1951)Google Scholar. For text, see K.A. No. 17, vol. 1, p. 183; 119 U.N.T.S. 99.
6 Doc. symbol A/CONF.2/–. This Convention is also the subject of an important study by Nehemiah, , Convention relating to the Status of Refugees — its History, Contents and Interpretation, A Commentary (New York, 1953)Google Scholar. For text, see K.A., No. 65, vol 3, p. 5; 189 U.N.T.S. 137.
7 Doc. symbol A/AC.48/–.
8 Doc. symbol A/AC.65/–.
9 Doc. symbol A/AC.77/–.
10 See supra nn. 5 and 6.
11 K.A., No. 15, vol. 1, p. 163. He also kept a close watch on the Russian scene. His background of Russian culturel was coupled with a refined understanding of Marxist and Communist doctrine and in that respect too his counsel was widely, and often, sought.
12 K.A., No. 69, vol. 3, p. 75. For the Paris Act, see 148 British and Foreign State Papers (1947, Part II) 96. For the allocation to the Jewish Organizations, see the United Kingdom Note to the Israel delegation in London, 5 July 1951, reprinted in Documents relating to the Agreement between the Government of Israel and the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (Jerusalem, Govt. Printer, April 1953) 36.
13 Hausner, Gideon, Justice in Jerusalem (New York, 1966) 303.Google Scholar
14 Manuscripts for volume II (to 1933), entitled Das Minoritatenproblem und seine Literatur: kritische Einführung in die Quellen und Literatur: Allgemeiner Teil, Band II, ready for printing, and volume III, entitled Bibliography on the Minorities Problem, 1939–1940, not annotated, are found in the Jewish National and University Library in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, call number ARC.MS.VAR. 435.
15 A recent Soviet bibliography on international law called Jacob's work a “capital contribution” to the subject. Feldman, D. I., Mezhdunarodnoe pravo, Bibliografiya 1917–1972 (Moscow, 1976) 14.Google Scholar