Benes Promises Solution of Staatenlose and Refugee Problem in Czecho-slovakia

Dr. Eduard Benes, foreign minister of Cbecho-Slovakia, today assured the naturalization commission of the senate that the government would solve the problem of the naturalization of the staatenlose, or people without citizenship, because of post-war map changes, in a sympathetic manner. The minister of the interior has already settled 20,000 cases, Dr. Benes said.

The Jewish deputies present at the commission’s sessions expressed the hope that by next year Dr. Benes could promise a definite solution of the problem of the Jewish staatenlose, particularly in Slovakia and Carpatho-Russia as well as naturalization for the Polish and Russian war refugees.

Last May the minister of the interior, Jan Cerny, announced that a bill had been drafted which provided that anyone who has lived within the present boundaries of Czecho-Slovakia since 1910 is eligible to citizenship. An amendment to this bill offered by Jewish members of parliament would make all residents of Czecho-Slovakia since 1915 qualified for citizenship, thus enabling Jewish war refugees to become citizens.

At the same time the government organ in Carpatho-Russia, the Podkarpatske Hlasy, violently attacks the Jewish nationalists for their insistence on the Jews registering themselves as of the Jewish nationality in the forthcoming census. The paper says that Zionism has not brought any good to the Jewish people but “has only led the Jews to join the minorities, who are never loyal to the state majority, and to the promotion of the language battle which never existed before.”

This attack is believed intended to frighten the Jews into declaring themselves as Czechs when the census is taken. In July the government issued a decree permitting the Jews to declare themselves as of the Jewish nationality.