Anti-semitic Attacks in Roumania As Students Return from Congress

Minister of the Interior Duca in reply stated that the rioters will be punished.

Prof. V. N. Madgearu, a leader of the Peasants’ Party, created a sensation in the Roumanian Parliament Thursday by charging that the Government had deliberately provoked anti-Semitic riots in which two men were killed and many injured to divert public attention from the political crisis, an Associated Press despatch from Bucharest declares.

Madgearu asserted the Government did the same thing in 1923 when there was a movement against the severe provisions of the Constitution.

“The Government deliberately fostered the anti-Jewish demonstrations in the last few days,” said Madgearu, “so as to remove the sanctions taken three years ago against the leaders of the anti-Semitic movement who were expelled from the universities. The Government now asks that these students be readmitted to the universities.”

Prof. Madgearu said that a month ago the Government gave 3,000,000 lei to the university students to support the anti-Semitic movement.

Another reason, he charged, that the Government provoked the present racial agitation in Transylvania was to furnish an excuse for the creation of a new force of 10,000 gendarmes in that territory. He asked the Government why it had taken no precautions to prevent anti-Semitic outrages in the face of the fact that Dr. William Filderman warned the Government that the students were preparing for such disorders.

M. Duca, Minister of the Interior, replied that the Government would make no statement until it learns all the facts.

Madgearu said the students, defying the police and gendarmerie, indulged in the wildest excesses, terminating in their setting fire to a synagogue at Cluj. They seized the vestments of the rabbis, in which they attired themselves in mockery, shouting epithets against the Jews.