Bucharest.
Former Premier Vaida-Voevod’s proposals for a “numerus valachius” are nothing more or less than a disguised attack on the Jews, Dr. William Fildermann, president of the Union of Roumanian Jews, charges in the Curierul Israelit. Denouncing the Vaida-Voevod program as “demagogic propaganda,” Dr. Fildermann accuses the Rumanian politician of distorting the actual facts of the situation in the country today in order to give color and background to the “new deal” on whaich Vaida-Voevod hopes to return to power.
Describing the Vaida-Voevod program, which has been adopted by the anti-Semitic Jorga faction and is to be the basis of the new party in which Vaida-Voevod and his associates are trying to unite all the anti-Semitic elements of the country, as “not designed really to reduce employment in Rumania but are purely an attack upon the rights of the Jewish population and an attempt to make it impossible for Jews to earn a livelihood,” Dr. Fildermann points out that “a real solution of the problem of national work would proceed along entirely different lines from these demagogic propaganda activities.”
DISPUTES JOBLESS FIGURES
“Vaida-Voevod says there are 87,000 unemployed in Rumania. Official statistics give only 50,000 who are not citizens, irrespective of origin, race or religion, and not, as the protagonists of the ‘numerus’ claim, only Rumanians in the ethnic sense. Nor can there be any question of an overcrowding of the professions, because there are not sufficient doctors as long as infant mortality is as high as sixty percent.
“If law no longer provides a living, then there are altogether only 296 students of veterinary medicine, at a time when enormous number of cattle, one of the most important items of export in Rumania, are dying of disease.
“What is necessary is to distribute the academic professions more appropriately, instead of demanding State maintenance and inciting against the minorities, and above all the Jews.
CITES PLAN’S FAILINGS
“Vaida-Voevod speaks of the collective labor rights of the ethnic and religious groups and asks the members of the minorities to make room for the members of the ethnic majority of the population, but he does not say anything of finding room for the minorities in those branches where they are under represented in comparison with their proportion in the general population. There will be no law promulgated to expropriate five per cent of the national soil in order to give it to Jews, nor will 15,000 public officials, belonging to the ethnic majority of the population be dismissed in order to give the Jews their legitimate five per cent representation in the service of the State.
“Vaida-Voevod says that the unemployment among the Rumanians is due to the fact that the minority elements have flooded Rumania and taken possession of all the professions, leaving the Rumanians to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. In actual fact, not only are the legislative and executive professions of the State and the judicial professions entirely in Rumanian hands, but also the big banking and industrial enterprises, which, from the National Bank downward, do not employ a single member of any minority even as a porter.
QUOTES FIGURES
“Vaida-Voevod alleges disproportion between the Rumanians and the minorities in Transylvania,” Dr. Fildermann continues. “The fact is that a comparison between the conditions there on August 1, 1914, before the outbreak of the War, and today, shows that forestry was then 100 percent; higher officers in the Postal service, ninety-eight per cent; the railway officialdom, ninety-seven per cent; the financial administration, ninety-seven per cent; the Municipal administration ninety-four per cent; judiciary administration ninety-three per cent; professional military ninety-two per cent, and the lower grade personnel ninety per cent of Hungarians, Germans and Jews, while today, fifteen years after the Constitution of Greater Rumania, ethnic Rumanians are represented in all these branches to the extent of eighty to ninety per cent.
“It must be remembered that the minorities, including the Jews, constitute twenty-seven per cent of the total population, so that every fourth inhabitant belongs to the minorities. Other European States and the United States of America as well have solid masses of minorities.
“What would Vaida-Voevod, who would like to become Prime Minister again, say to it if the United States of America were to send the 400,000 Rumanians living there back to Europe? What would he do with these returning Rumanians?”
OFFERS COUNTER PLAN
In order to combat unemployment, Dr. Fildermann proposes:
(1) There are in Rumania about 300,##0 industrial workers. If the va###us enterprises increase wages five per cent and the employees give up five per cent of their wages, 30,000 new workers could be found employment within twenty-four hours. If the State gave up the six per cent wage tax for the employment-finding program, that also would provide work for many thousands more. That would be much more beneficial than the dole for the unemployed, or the discrimination between citizens proposed by Vaida-Voevod, or the elimination of all Jews demanded by Cuza, he declares.
(2) Another method he proposes would be to raise the school age.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
