Nazi Threats to Jewish Property Seen Harming Hungary’s Business

The threatened confiscation of Jewish capital by the Nazis in Hungary is having “the worst possible effect on business generally,” Frederick T. Birchall, correspondent of the New York Times, declared today in a dispatch from London. He stated:

“The principal reason for the timidity of capital and for its export through several loopholes is that capital in Hungary is largely Jewish, and it is against the Jews that the Nazi crusade in Hungary, as elsewhere, is concentrated. One result is that building of every description in Budapest has virtually ceased, throwing out of work carpenters, painters and other artisans who normally earn their living from construction.

“Since the confiscation of Jewish capital is openly threatened by Nazis, Jewish capitalists see no reason for Hungarian investment in any permanent form. In consequence land values have fallen and are still dropping and banks are calling mortgages, with the worst possible effect on business generally.

“This is the situation that feeds Nazism, lends a false gilding to its facile promises and causes the great fear that prevails. The growing political strength of National Socialism caused the late government to defer to it by a certain amount of anti-Semitic regulation, which merely added fuel to the fire.

“Incoming foreigners are frequently asked at the frontier, ‘What is your religion?’ If the answer is, ‘Jewish’, there follow many other questions, including the reasons for the traveler’s coming to Hungary. If the answers are not wholly satisfactory the traveler is turned back.

“Hungarian Nazism is still an internal movement. It may be and probably is encouraged, perhaps even subsidized, by Germany, although there is no proof. There is no doubt that German Nazism would like to see in Hungary a regime wholly in harmony with Germany’s. Among other good results, from the German point of view, would be the complete encirclement of Czechoslovakia, thus opening the way for Germany’s march to the east. But even Hungarian Nazis do not want to see Hungary become a German province as Austria did. National sentiment is too strong. At present the danger is wholly internal.”