On July 3, 1936, while the League of Nations was in session in Geneva, a Czechoslovakian Jewish writer named Stefan Lux entered the chamber and shot himself in the chest in front of the assembled delegates. In a letter he had sent to Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, Lux explained that his suicide was meant to alert the world to the dangers of Nazism: “You are dealing with a band of criminals in Germany [who] are morally and mentally depraved individuals. It is my profound hope … that the death of a barely known writer will help to bring out the truth and to shed some light.”
It did not. According to the League of Nations archives—now held by its successor, the United Nations—“the Official Journal of the Assembly does not even mention the interruption of the meeting,” and “in the following days, none of the delegates mentioned [Lux] in the discussions at the Assembly.” Today the incident is almost completely forgotten; even histories of the period seldom mention it.
