Christopher Temple Emmet (1900-1974)
Political Activist against Totalitarianism, of 901 Lexington Ave., New York
He was born in Port Chester, New York, to a notable New York family descended the brother of the Irish patriot Robert Emmet who was executed in 1803. He attended Harvard University and several universities in Germany. After spending six years in Europe studying and writing, he returned to New York in 1933 convinced that there was little to choose from between Nazism and Soviet Communism as they were both run on the totalitarian principal of government, ie., a centralized and dictatorial government that demands complete subservience to the state.
He voiced his views in articles and book reviews for several national publications, and came to play a role in more than a score of organizations and committees that were created to defend democratic liberties against totalitarianism. He was a founder and Secretary of the Christian Committee to Boycott Nazi Germany in 1939, and later worked with a Vote for Freedom lobby to defeat “isolationist” congressmen who had opposed America's involvement in World War II. He also edited a "Facts Versus Fiction" bulletin that countered Nazi propaganda in America, and helped to start the France Forever Committee that supported General de Gaulle against the Vichy government.
After the war, he helped organize groups for a just peace with Italy and protested against the trial of Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty by the Hungarian Communist government in 1949. He obtained a Habeas Corpus writ for the Soviet school teacher, Mrs. Oksana Kosenkina, who had been detained inside the Soviet Consulate General in Manhattan. She wanted to defect, and had escaped by jumping from a third floor window after the writ was served.
He voiced his views in articles and book reviews for several national publications, and came to play a role in more than a score of organizations and committees that were created to defend democratic liberties against totalitarianism. He was a founder and Secretary of the Christian Committee to Boycott Nazi Germany in 1939, and later worked with a Vote for Freedom lobby to defeat “isolationist” congressmen who had opposed America's involvement in World War II. He also edited a "Facts Versus Fiction" bulletin that countered Nazi propaganda in America, and helped to start the France Forever Committee that supported General de Gaulle against the Vichy government.
After the war, he helped organize groups for a just peace with Italy and protested against the trial of Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty by the Hungarian Communist government in 1949. He obtained a Habeas Corpus writ for the Soviet school teacher, Mrs. Oksana Kosenkina, who had been detained inside the Soviet Consulate General in Manhattan. She wanted to defect, and had escaped by jumping from a third floor window after the writ was served.
In 1951, to foster democracy in West Germany, he helped found the American Council on Germany to bring together leaders of the two countries, and he was decorated for his efforts a few years later by Theodore Heuss, then President of the German Federal Republic. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a trustee of Freedom House and a director of the International Rescue Committee. He was unmarried.
