Eisenhower Condemns Mass Arrests of Jewish Leaders in Rumania

President Eisenhower today strongly condemned the Rumanian Government for the mass trial of Jewish leaders in Bucharest and emphasized that the United States is “concerned” with Rumania’s violation of basic human rights.

The President made his views known in a message sent to a public meeting held here tonight at the Hotel New Yorker to protest the secret trials and imprisonment of 150 Jewish leaders in Rumania. The meeting was arranged by the American Jewish Congress, in cooperation with the United Rumanian Jews of America and the Far-band-Labor Zionist Order of America.

“The free world,” President Eisenhower said in his message, “is profoundly aware of the sufferings of Jewish leaders in Rumania–many arrested several years ago, some recently sentenced to long prison terms. Their ordeal is the proper concern of all free men who strive to create a world of equal justice and equal freedom for all mankind.

“The American people have frequently protested violations by the Rumanian Government of the basic human rights and freedoms of the Rumanian people. We are concerned with these violations not only on moral grounds, but on legal grounds as well, for in February 1947 the Rumanian Government signed with this country a Treaty of Peace wherein it pledged itself among other things to secure to all persons under Rumanian jurisdiction, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, the enjoyment of human rights and of the fundamental freedoms. “

RUMANIAN JEWS PERSECUTED BECAUSE OF RELIGION, EISENHOWER SAYS

“In this most recent wave of persecution, Jewish leaders have been imprisoned not because they have violated any law, but simply because of their religion, ” President Eisenhower emphasized. “The sentence of these leaders of a defenseless minority is a warning to others that in Rumania today no man is free to worship according to his conscience.

“The Government of Rumania already stands accused before the tribunal of world opinion for its violation of human rights. By these new acts it has proved again how justly its despotic rule deserves the condemnation of all who love freedom and justice.”

The principal speakers at the protest meeting included Rep. Kenneth B. Keating, Rep, Emanuel Celler, Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, and Louis Segal, general secretary of the Labor Zionist Order of America.

Rep. Celler announced that he had introduced a resolution in the House calling upon the U.S. Congress to “express its condemnation of the Communist Government of Rumania for its persecution of the Jews of Rumania and express its abhorrence and revulsion of the criminal treatment of the minority people.”