Roumania Criticized for Its Reassuring Statements While Onslaughts on Jews Spread

While the notorious anti-Semitic agitators Danila and Nicolai Totu, the latter acquitted in 1927 of the murder of the Jewish student David Falik, have transferred their activities to Transylvania where they are going from town to town arranging for mass meetings of the peasants, the newspapers of Bukowinan and Transylvanian towns as well as of Czernowitz are full of reports depicting the situation as grave and criticizing the government for its reassuring statements and for hushing up the reports of the excesses of Bukawina.

Danila and his aid, Totu, have even appeared in Cluj and Bajamare. Wherever they appear they are establishing sections called the “Archangel Gabriel of the Iron Guard”. Their arrival is the signal for onslaughts on the Jews while the local authorities either through fear or indifference stand by and do nothing and even release the agitators after they have been arrested. Danila and Totu have been reported arrested twice in ten days but they are again spreading their anti-Semitic propaganda.

Newspaper reports indicate that the police arrest the agitators temporarily and then escort them out of town and set them free. At Sziget it is said the officials asked the Jewish community to pay the cost of transporting the agitators elsewhere. The newspapers of Czernowitz are particularly critical of the statement made by M. Angelescu on behalf of the ministry of the interior with regard to the disturbances in Bukowina. His communique is characterized as untrue.

The frequency of the government’s official communiques which generally play down the troubles while at the same time the number of the disturbances is increasing and spreading from one part of Roumania to another is impelling the press to place no credence in these official statements. Not only are they not being credited but the anarchic condition which the anti-Semitic excesses has assumed because the authorities in the towns and villages do not make use of the existing police and military forces is resulting in ridicule for the government’s announcements concerning the anti-Semitic disturbances.