224,000 Hit in First Year of Hungarian Anti-Jewish Law

Execution of the anti-Jewish laws has left 224,000 people, or 40 per cent of the entire Hungarian Jewish population, without means of livelihood, according to statistics made public today by the Budapest Jewish Community.

The law, in effect one year, limits Jews to six per cent in professions and cultural pursuits, bars them altogether from responsible positions in the press, theater, cinema and civil service posts, and limits them to 12 per cent in private enterprises.

A total of 756 days of imprisonment and 613,668 pengoes in fines have been applied from June 1 against employers violating the law, according to a 12-page report submitted to Parliament by Minister of Justice Laszlo Radocsay.

The report is in reply to a recent challenge by Karoly Meisler-Harethy, Nazi deputy and Fuehrer of the National Socialist Front, that the Government satisfy its critics that it has been zealously carrying out the provisions of the anti-Jewish law.

This year, the report states, the Government authorized 30 courses in various schools for training of "deserving Gentiles" to take over Jewish jobs, and by May 1 a total of 15,000 acquired jobs as a direct result of the anti-Jewish law. It is explained that half of these persons were elected by employers and half by the administration of the law, from lists of persons with preferential status.

Answering Nazi criticism of the Government land reform and demands that all Jewish agricultural landholdings be expropriated, the Justice Minister reported that this must be handled "very cautiously" in order not to injure Gentile agricultural workers employed by Jews. As a result of difficulties in replacing Jewish planters with Gentiles having sufficient capital and experience, Radocsay declared, expropriations this year will probably fall short of the 100,000-acre quota against Jewish land, the total of which is estimated at 600,000 acres.