CYIL vol. 7 (2016)

304 / 536

290
PETR VÁLEK CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ
the German borders: Czechoslovakia and Poland. Already in November 1940 they
issued a joint statement declaring that “the violence and cruelty to which their
two countries had been subjected was unparalleled in human history. Among the
brutalities instanced were – expulsion of population, banishment of hundreds and
thousands of men and women to forced labour in Germany, mass executions and
deportations to concentration camps, plundering of public and private property,
extermination of the intellectual class and of cultural life, spoiliation of treasures of
science and art and the persecution of all religious beliefs.”5
Similar declarations denouncing the Nazi crimes in occupied countries were
made simultaneously by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill on
25 October 1941, both stressing the need for retribution for these crimes, which
was – according to the British Prime Minister - one of the “major purposes of the
war”. The Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov informed on the Nazi crimes committed
on the Eastern front through notes sent to all States having diplomatic relations with
the Soviet Union on 7 November 1941 and on 6 January 1942.6
The next step towards the creation of the Commission was the Conference at St.
James’s Palace and signature of the Inter-Allied Declaration by the representatives of
Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands,
Poland and Yugoslavia on 13 January 1942. The key part of the so-called Declaration
of St. James’s reads as follows: “Recalling that international law, and in particular
the Convention signed at The Hague in 1907 regarding the laws and customs
of land warfare, do not permit belligerents in occupied countries to commit acts
of violence against civilians, to disregard the laws in force, or to overthrow the
national institutions… (3) [the signatories] place among their principal war aims
the punishment, through the channel of organised justice, of those guilty of or
responsible for these crimes, whether they have ordered them, perpetrated them or
participated in them.”7
In his speech at the Conference, Monsignor Jan Šrámek, Prime Minister
of Czechoslovakia, pointed out, in line with the operative paragraph (1) of the
Declaration,8 that the crimes committed by the Germans could not be classified
either as acts of war or as political crimes and that they were part of a “criminal
campaign well thought out and prepared in advance down to the smallest detail”.9
The signatories of the Declaration formed the Inter-Allied Commission for the
5 The History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Developments of the Laws of
War, London 1948, p. 87, available at .
6 Ibid., p. 88-89.
7 Ibid., p. 89-90.
8 Ibid., p. 90: “(1) affirm that acts of violence thus inflicted upon the civilian populations have nothing in
common with the conceptions of an act of war or a political crime as understood by civilised nations.”
9 Ibid., p. 90.