Josef Jundeff was born in Poland. In 1952 he left that country and settled in West Berlin. On a visit to Israel in 1963 he met Sara, an Israeli woman residing in Israel. Josef and Sara married in Tel Aviv in 1965 and immediately after the wedding ceremony they left Israel and established their matrimonial home in West Berlin. There two boys were born to the Jundeffs in 1967. Two years later legal skirmishes started between husband and wife in Berlin. A short period of reconciliation followed. In January 1973 the wife finally decided to separate from her husband and, accordingly, she instituted divorce proceedings in the District Court (Landgericht) of West Berlin. Shortly thereafter, without obtaining her husband's consent or a judicial authorization, Sara took the children and brought them to Israel.

Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms states that:

“No-one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

In his collected lectures, the late legal historian in the University of Groningen, Professor P.W.A. Immink, draws an interesting parallel between Old Germanic law on the one hand, and present-day international law on the other hand. His argument runs as follows.

After 30 years of negotiations, the Rhine river is still very polluted. Although the concentration of some pollutants has diminished during the past few years, the quantity of other harmful substances is still increasing. This lack of progress can be explained to a large extent by a set of peculiar circumstances which seems to be unique for the Rhine. The most important of these circumstances is the international dimension of the situation. The main stem of the Rhine flows through the sovereign territories of Switzerland, the Federal Republic of Germany, France and the Netherlands. Its drainage area, moreover, also covers Italy, Austria, Luxemburg and Belgium. Obviously, no anti-pollution policy can hope to be effective until at least the most directly concerned of these eight States have reached agreement on common objectives and common measures. Reaching agreement, however, is complicated by the problem of conflicting uses which may be more intricate for the Rhine than for any other international river.