Jews in Rumania, after several years of horror under the pro-Nazi Antonescu regime, will now enjoy a period of peace and equality under the terms of the armistice agreement between the Allies and the Rumanian Government, it was emphasized here today following publication last night of the full text of the agreement, which provides for the immediate abolition of all anti-Jewish laws in Rumania.
Rumanian Minister Lucretiu Patrascanu, who signed the armistice pact here an behalf of his government, today assured the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that all Jews in Rumania who were arrested or interned under the anti-Jewish laws, will be released. He tried to minimize the fact that tens of thousands of Jews were massacred in Rumania during the Last three years and that many thousands of them perished in exile in Transnistria. “There were a number of small anti-Jewish pogroms, but most of them took place before 1941,” he told the JTA correspondent.
The position of the Jews in Rumania will be especially secure because of the fact that an Allied Control Commission will supervise the carrying out of the armistice terms. Point six of the armistice pact signed between the USSR, Great Britain and the United States on one hand and Rumania on the other reads.
“The Romanian government will liberate at once all persons independently of their civil status and nationality who are kept under arrest owing to their activity to the advantage of the United Nations or for their sympathy with the cause of the United Nations or owing to their racial origin and will also abolish all discriminatory legislation and restrictions resulting therefrom.”
In addition to this stipulation, the armistice agreement, in a special appendix to paragraph 2 which provides for the internment of German and Hungarian citizens living in Rumania, specifies that this provision is “not to apply to citizens of these countries of Jewish nationality.” Jews in Rumania will also be gratified by the fact that the anti-Semitic Iron Guard organization and similar pro-Nazi and fascist groups are to be dissolved and are not to be permitted in the future.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
