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100,000 Jews Come Under Hungarian Rule in Cession of Czech Territory

November 4, 1938
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Approximately 100,000 Jews — nearly one-third of the entire Jewish population of Czechoslovakia–are included in the territory ceded to Hungary by the terms of the Italo-German arbitration award announced yesterday in Vienna, it was estimated today.

Many Ruthenian towns have large Jewish populations. Ungvar and Munkacs, two of the towns turned over to Hungary, are more than 13 per cent Jewish. These Jews are expected now to 8e subjected to the Hungarian law limiting Jews to 20 per cent participation in economic life and other anti-Jewish measures.

Dr. Chaim Kugel, a member of Parliament and principal of the Hebrew Secondary School in Munkacs, was obliged to flee when the decision was announced, owing to his past opposition to dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

Carpatmo-Russia has the densest Jewish population of any of the Czechoslovak provinces, estimated at 15 per cent of the total inhabitants. Their social and cultural life is similar to that of the Jews in adjoining Galicia and central Poland. The Czechoslovak Government had granted the Jews of Carpatho-Russia national cultural autonomy and was supporting the ten Jewish elementary schools, with Hebrew as the language of instruction.

Meanwhile, the Czechoslovak Education Minister, receiving a Jewish delegation regarding rumors that a proportionate limitation on Jewish Lawyers was planned, declared that the Government did not intend to restrict the rights of anyone in the country and that no lawyer would be forced to give up his profession because of nationality. He added, however, that the government, to prevent overcrowding of the profession, was intending to introduce a compulsory age limit and would admit new members to the bar only after the most careful examination of their character.

Plans to form a department to deal with the problems of Germans remaining in Czechoslovakia have been abandoned for the time being, it was learned here today.

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