The general question of Staatenlose is causing considerable anxiety, and we hope that a considered report will be able to be made in due course, Mr. O. E. d’Avigdor Goldsmid, the President of the Jewish Board of Deputies, said at to-day’s meeting of the Board, when Mr. Julius Jung, the Secretary of the Federation of Synagogues, asked to which country the Staatenlose of Czecho-Slovakia were recently deported, and whether the Committee had made any enquiries.
Enquiries have been made, Mr. Goldsmid said, but no information is yet to hand.
Mr. H. A. Goodman, the Secretary of the Agudath Israel World Organisation, called attention to the situation in Lithuania in regard to the order dismissing alien employees. The action of the subordinate police officials in carrying out the order, he said, was creating a serious situation and the general effect of the order might result in some 50,000 or 60,000 Jews starving because of the deprivation of work. The Lithuanian order was a dangerous example to other countries.
Economic pressure, Mr. Goldsmid answered, is inducing many countries to do what they can to protect their own citizens The question of the Lithuanian order is not entirely a Jewish question, but it must inflict serious hardship on a number of aliens who are Jews in Lithuania today. While I can understand that a country should protect its own citizens, I don’t think that the method in this case will commend itself to the Board or to public opinion throughout the world, and I hope that some opportunity will be given of making necessary representations to the Lithuanian Government before the order comes into effect.
The Committee is giving renewed consideration to the problem caused by the large numbers of persons without nationality, of whom, in consequence of the complications of the Peace Treaties, there are still many thousands in the Succession States of the late Austrian Empire, the Report presented by the Joint Foreign Committee to the Board says. The hardships of these unfortunate persons will be aggravted, the Report continues, if, in consequence of the world economic crisis, legislation is generally adopted, on the model of that proposed in Lithuania, Poland, and elsewhere, to exclude aliens from employment in the countries in which they are resident.
A full report on this subject, it is added, will be presented in due course.
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