A Week’s Events in Review

For a long time little has been heard of anti-Semitic attempts in Rumania. It was understood that after the assassination of the Premier Ion Duca, King Carol definitely outlawed all anti-Semitic organizations.

An effort to defy King Carol’s edict was made this week by Vaida-Voevod, former Minister of Interior, who has ambitions again to play a role in the Rumanian Cabinet. Himself a leading member of the National Peasant Party of Rumania, he has suggested that the party include anti-Semitic paragraphs in its program.

SUPPORTED BANNED YOUTH ORGANIZATION

Vaida-Voevod has been known as a supporter of the anti-Semitic youth organizations which are now prohibited. He financed them when he was holding the post of Minister of Interior, and laid great hopes on their eventual coming to power.

With the Iron Guard and other anti-Semitic organizations outlawed by King Carol, Dr. Vaida-Voevod saw a good chance to win the political support of the anti – Semitic Rumanian youth for the National Peasant Party. He based his hopes on the theory that the anti-Semitic youth organizations, resentful at having been suppressed, would lend their moral and political support to any organization or to any legally existing party which incorporated anti-Semitism as an official part of its platform.

The efforts of Vaida-Voevod met, however, with great opposition on the part of Julius Maniu, the guiding spirit of the National Peasant Party. M. Maniu has a reputation as a fair-minded person, one who has not been poisoned by anti-Semitic feelings. His experiences with Jews have made him realize that undeniable benefits accrue to a country when its Jewish population is treated with fairness.

It was due to M. Maniu that Vaida-Voevod’s efforts to convert the influential National Peasant Party into an anti-Semitic party failed. Not only did M. Maniu oppose Vaida-Voevod’s proposal, but he went out of his way to state at last week’s convention of the National Peasant Party that the anti-Semitic students would be better advised to pay more attention to their studies than to spend their time stirring prejudice against the Jews.

ANTI-SEMITES FLOUT KING’S ORDERS

Despite King Carol’s definite wish that no anti-Semitic organizations function in the country and despite the present policy of the government not to encourage any anti-Semitic activities, anti-Jewish discriminations, carried out in a silent way upon the order of Premier Tatarescu, were reported this week from Rumania. The Premier ordered that all government officials submit to the Ministry of Interior information about their ancestors, to the fourth generation back. This order is taken as an indication that non-Jewish officials will be dismissed.

Simultaneously with Tatarescu’s orders, the Ministry of Trade and Industry has warned Jewish manufacturers to replace a number of their Jewish workers with Rumanians if they wish to obtain the required government permits for sending money out of the country in payment for imported raw materials.

Following the lead of the other ministers, Dr. Angelescu, the Rumanian Minister of Education, has suggested that the pharmaceutical faculties of the universities of Jassy and Klausenberg be closed because the majority of students in these faculties are Jews.

All these measures are only a part of the silent discriminations now practiced against Jews in Rumania, where open anti-Semitism is being replaced by a brand which is diplomatic and which recalls the type of anti-Semitism prevalent in Austria and in Poland.

DUBIOUS OF VALUE OF LUDWIG PROMISE

In Austria the announcement was made by Dr. Ludwig, an important government spokesman, that the Minister of Interior is now revising all recent laws in order to modify the clauses in those laws which are interpreted as anti-Semitic. Dr. Ludwig, himself a very liberal-minded person, voiced assurance that the Austrian government does not intend to follow the anti-Semitic road of the German Nazis.

This statement by the Austrian official would have been considered of great importance if similar promises had not previously been made — but not kept—by other high Austrian officials, including Premier Schuschnigg. It is still remembered how, two days after Schuschnigg promised Jewish leaders in Geneva that no discriminations would be practiced against Jews, a law was enacted in Austria segregating Jewish children into ghetto schools.

SOUTH AFRICA TREATS NAZIS HARSHLY

Unlike Austria, Rumania or any other East European country, South Africa this week took definite steps to suppress the anti-Semitic movement there. Six years’ imprisonment was imposed by the court in Johannesburg upon Harry Victor Inch, the Nazi Grey Shirt leader, for forging "protocols" which were spread as authentic documents showing that the Jews control the world.

These forged documents defaming the Jewish race will now cost Mr. Inch not only his liberty but also his prestige as a Nazi leader. His organization may be dissolved by the South African authorities and the sentence of the court may serve as a precedent in the case of another forgery of anti-Jewish "protocols," trial of which is to be resumed at the end of this month in Berne.

NEW OUTBREAK IN ALGIERS

The good news from South Africa was marred this week by the sad news from Algiers that new anti-Jewish outbreaks have taken place there. These outbreaks were not as monstrous as those of last July, when Jews were slaughtered, but they nevertheless led to looting Jewish shops in Setif and to a sharp clash between the police and native Algerian soldiers who attempted to prevent the police from dispersing the enraged mobs.

News about anti-Jewish pogrom propaganda has also reached New York from Manchukuo, the Japanese buffer state. Japanese officials are charged by Jewish leaders with employing White Russian Czarist elements in Manchukuo and encouraging their anti-Jewish activities. The anti-Jewish propaganda in Manchukuo has reached a degree which is considered very dangerous for the Jewish population there, especially in Harbin.