Between the Lines

One after the other, Jewish organizations are being closed by the Latvian government and Jewish institutions liquidated.

Latvia, one of the small Baltic countries, now has embarked outspokenly on an anti-Jewish policy and is wiping out all the rights given to the hundred thousand Jews of the country in 1918 when Latvia was given its independence.

The order issued by the Latvian Minister of the Interior a few days ago to close down the Jewish artisans’ federation in Riga is only one link in the chain of anti-Jewish measures taken recently by the government.

BEFORE AND NOW

Not less than a hundred Jewish public schools and high schools were supported by the government. In 1929 the municipality of Riga alone assigned over a hundred thousand dollars to subsidize Jewish cultural enterprises in the city. A Jewish theatre maintained by the state existed in Latvia. A large Jewish press was published there.

The Fascist revolution during the night of May 15, 1934, has wiped out all these Jewish achievements. Under the slogan “Latvia for Latvians” the new government headed by Karl Ulmanis has proclaimed a policy of pushing the Jews out of their fields of livelihood and of cancelling all the cultural autonomous rights which the Jews had acquired under the previous democratic government.

JEWISH LEADERS IMPRISONED

Today there are no less than eighty Jewish leaders in the jails and in the concentration camps of Latvia. A number of them were members of the Latvian parliament. Many of them were leaders of the Zionist movement. No less than thirty of them are Poale-Zionists.

The Jewish school system in Latvia is now not only no longer subsidized by the government but has practically been put under a censorship. A member of the Agudath Israel is now the person appointed by the government to control the entire Jewish cultural life in the country.

‘JUDENREIN’ PRINCIPLE

A cleaning out of Jews from government institutions has resulted in the situation that not a single Jew is now to be found among the 1,682 officials in the judicial system of Latvia. Not one Jew is to be found among the 4,316 policemen. Not one Jewish notary now maintains an office in this little country of Latvia where Jews enjoyed full civic and cultural rights just half a year ago.

All’ signs in Latvia must now be printed only in the Latvian language. Even such inscriptions as “Kosher” are forbidden and had to be obliterated.

REMOVING JEWS FROM TRADE

Jews have been practically removed within a few months from trading in grain, one of the largest Jewish trades in the country. The anti-Semitic newspaper “Latwis” has practically become the mouthpiece of the

JEWS HELPLESS

Silently but firmly, an anti-Jewish policy is being pursued in Latvia. The country is small and distant from large European centers. The Jewish population of 100,000 there is helpless to do anything for itself. Any investigation into the Jewish situation of Latvia would therefore be most desirable—the earlier the better.