There are three avowed antisemites in the new Government which was formed to-day by Count Julius Karolyi, who has become Premier in succession to Count Bethlen who was head of the Government for the past ten years. They are M. Julius Goemboes, the antisemitic leader, whose appointment to the Government in 1928 caused a great deal of apprehension among the Jewish population, who remains Minister of War; M. Francis Kereszdes-Fischer, the new Minister of the Interior, and a friend of M. Goemboes; and Dr. Alexander Ernst, the new Minister of Education, who replaces Count Klebelsberg.
The new Minister of Education has already announced to-day in taking over his office that he will extend the numerus clausus now enforced at the Universities, also to the Secondary Schools, though not for religious motives, he adds, but for economic reasons.
Only about a fortnight ago, one of the Jewish Deputies in the Hungarian Parliament, Deputy Pakots, introduced a resolution into the Chamber, urging the abolition of the numerus clausus as a measure of economic rehabilitation of the country.
The Jews of Hungary, his resolution says, are forced by the operation of the numerus clausus law to send out of the country five million pengoes every year to help to maintain the Jewish students who are compelled to go abroad to study at foreign universities, because they are denied the right of study in their own country. If the numerus clausus law is abolished and the Hungarian-Jewish students are enabled again to attend Hungarian Universities, instead of travelling abroad, all this money will stay in the country and go to provide employment and economic opportunities, and help to restore economic stability.
The resolution was printed on the order paper of the House, and the Government was expected to declare its attitude on the subject at one of the early sittings of the Chamber.
The retiring Minister of Education, Count Klebelsberg, who defended the numerus clausus before the League of Nations in 1925, when he had to answer the indictment of the late Mr. Lucien Wolf, has since effected a modification of the numerus clausus law, and had promised further modifications. In May of this year, when he was attacked by the Liberal Opposition leader, Deputy Rassay, for retaining the numerus clausus, he declared in the House that when the numerus clausus was enacted in 1920, he had opposed it more than Deputy Rassay had done. I did not vote for the numerus clausus law, he added. I did not vote on the question.
In November 1928, Count Klebelsberg published an article in the Hungarian press in which he said that the numerus clausus had done more harm than good to Hungary, acting, he said, like a back-firing rifle. The numerus clausus law, he said, in appealing to the people to accept its modification as inevitable, has been disastrous to Hungarian interests. It has ranged the great world press and international opinion against Hungary, and the regularly recurring attacks upon the Jews at the Hungarian High Schools have added to the force of the anti-Hungarian voices abroad. A further consequence, he went on, is that we make no progress with our complaints to the League of Nations, against the oppression of the Hungarian minorities in the new States. Whenever we complain of the treatment of the Hungarian minorities, we are reminded of our anti-Jewish laws.
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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.
