Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative. Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.-Editor.]

The statement regarding the Hungarian numerus clausus made by Education Minister Count Klebelsberg to Jacob Landau, director of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, when the latter interviewed the Minister recently in Debreczin, is commented on by the “Wiener Morgenzeitung” of September 16.

Terming the modifications of the numerus clausus in Hungary, announced a few weeks ago by Count Klebelsberg, as “obviously a most infamous swindle” and a bid for Jewish apostacy rather than a modification of the anti-Jewish restriction, the “Morgenzeitung” observes: “That the Hungarian government has no intention at all of modifying the numerus clausus against Jewish students appears also from the interview given but a day before yesterday in Debreczin. The director of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Herr Jacob Landau, spent a few days in Debreczin and had a talk with the Education Minister. In a statement, which was published in the Vienna press and elsewhere Herr Landau declares that the Education Minister had stated that the numerus clausus is to be regarded as a provisional measure which will become automatically void as soon as it will no longer be necessary. Count Klebelsberg, however, denies that he made this assertion to Herr Landau, and says such an assertion is senseless. He declares, moreover, that the numerus clausus is a transitional measure made necessary as a result of the conditions created by the Treaty of Trianon. As soon as this necessity disappears the numerus clausus will become of itself superfluous.

“That is clear enough!” the paper adds. “The Jews must wait until Trianon and the conditions created by it are removed from the world. Until then there can be no abolition or amelioration of this anti-Jewish law. At most, to appease Geneva and in order to trap the Jewish vote into the government net at the next elections, an ordinance is issued to hold the anti-Semitic law in strict abeyance. The only question is, will the League of Nations and the Jewish organizations be misled by this deceit.”

The statement of Herr Lederer, president of the Budapest Jewish Kehillah, that the Hungarian Jews want no “foreign intervention” on the part of Jews in other countries in the question of the numerus clausus, is condemned by the “Day” of New York.

Declaring that Herr Lederer’s assertion is “foolish and undignified” the paper, in its Sept. 29 issue, writes, in part: “Jewish rights, human, political and now also national, are not anyone’s exclusive interest. They are important, broad principles which touch the whole Jewish people. Even from the standpoint of ‘separate interests’ it is not permissible that one Jewish group should fling aside rights which have a general Jewish importance. Even from the egostic point of view the Polish Jews, for instance, cannot remain indifferent when the Hungarian Jews do not ask for any rights at all, because such an attitude can be used in Poland against the Jews there.”