Anti-semitic Agitation Rises in Bulgaria: Jew-baiters Use “protocols”

(Jewish Telepraphic Agency)

A rise in anti-Semitic agitation in Bulgaria is causing deep concern among the leaders of the Jewish community in the Kingdom.

The main factor in disseminating this propaganda is the organization. Rodna Zaschita. and its organ of the same name. Editions of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are being circulated. in addition to other pamphlets blaming Jews for all imaginable misfortunes which have befallen Bulgaria. Travelling agitators visit the villages to incite the poasantry. In Sofia placards were posted in which the population was urged to hoycott the Jews. The police removed these placards.

The center of the anti-Semitic agitation is Tartar Bazardzhik. The peasant population in the neighborhood of this town is prevented by force from selling their produce to the Jews. Presants owing money to the Jewish merchants are urged not held yesterday to hear the report of Dr. Schapiro, member of the Central Committee of the Russian Ort, on the position of the Jews in Russia. Dr. Brodnitz said the German Jews were following the reconstruction work in Russia with close interest.

The question of the Jewish colonization movement in Russia was also discussed at a reception given in honor of Dr. Schapiro by Dr. Bernhard Kahn, European Director of the Joint Distribution Committee.

Dr. Schapiro complained that a wall had been put up between the Jewish social workers in Russia and the Jewish social workers abroad. Russian Jewry consequently felt that it was isolated. Instead of receiving encouragement from outside, it was being discouraged. Jewish public opinion abroad was engaged in discussing the curious question, whether the work in Russia should be supported at all, at a time when all the Jews living in Russia were agreed on the necessity of this work. The matter would have to be cleared up. Articles such as that which had appeared recently in the "Razsviet" sabotaged the whole question. There was not the slightest truth in the suggestion that the Jews in Russia were being artificially stimulated to the Jewish colonization movement, so that the Government should be able to use it as a propaganda instrument abroad. The movement to agriculture had grown up spontaneously, out of the most elementary needs of the Jewish population. The available land and capital were insufficient by far for all the Jews who wanted to take up agreculture, he said.

The situation has now been normalized, so that about five thousand families could be settled on the land each year. Constant efforts were being made to find new areas of land for Jewish settlement. It was hoped, for instance, to settle about ten thousand Jewish families in the area around the Sea of Azov. The first settlers were already in a position to repay the advances which they had received, and they were really repaying them, in order to enable the money to be used for settling more Jews. Instead of hampering such work, the Jews in all countries should join in furthering it, because it was very likely that such an opportunity would not occur again, Dr. Schapiro stated.

A discussion followed in which Dr. J. Brutzkus, Professor B. Brutzkus, Professor Frankfurt, Dr. E. Tscherikover and others took part. Dr. Gergel in summing up the discussion said that no one was, or could he, opposed to the Jewish reconstruction work in Russia. Dr. Schapiro and his fellow workers in Russia might be sure that the overwhelming majority of the Russian Jews living abroad were wholeheartedly with the reconstruction work and would support it.