Rumania’s anti-Semitic policy has caused virtual stagnation of business, declares G.E.R. Gedye, New York Times Central European correspondent, in the third of a series of dispatches from Bucharest on the Rumanian situation.
Quoting a leading non-Jewish industrialist as predicting that “Rumania will be completely ruined” if the present regime remains in power another six months, the dispatch declares it is self-evident that when 80 per cent of a country’s commerce — the proportion in Jewish hands — stops dead, it means national disaster.
The process of stagnation is working from the bottom upward, Mr. Gedye asserts, with small Jewish dealers converting their stocks into cash, while large manufacturers are sacrificing stocks for cash and attempting every device to export capital. Non-Jewish enterprises are equally involved in the debacle, it is stated.
“That this is occurring, is admitted everywhere,” the report says, “the anti-Semites attributing it to a wicked Jewish boycott and the remainder of Rumania accepting the more natural explanation that the Jews, not knowing whether loss of citizenship, expulsion and confiscation may be coming tomorrow or not, have ceased every business activity and are preparing for the worst.”
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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.
