Governor of Carpatho-russia Sees Emigration As Way out for Jews of That Province

The solution to the economic difficulties of the Jews of Carpatho-Russia, formerly part of Hungary, but now a Czechoslovakian province, is for a part of them to emigrate to other countries, according to a statement attributed to the governor of the province, A. Beszkind, by the newspaper, Kelet Ujsag, published in the Czechoslovakian town of Uzhorod.

The governor is quoted as having said that he “views with real anxiety the critical situation of the Jews in Carpatho-Russia because the rate of Jewish increase is comparatively high while the opportunities for earning a living are decreasing. The Jews are being deprived of their opportunity to earn their daily bread because the non-Jewish inhabitants are creating their own trading organizations. There is no way out except for a part of the Jews to emigrate to other countries.”

In addition to the economic difficulties of the Jews of Carpatho-Russia most of them are further handicapped by a lack of citizenship. The bulk of the Jews living in this province are either war refugees who came into what is now Czechoslovakia since 1915 or those who have been deprived of citizenship in their former countries as a result of the map-shifting that followed the World War.

Last May the Czechoslovakian government drafted a new naturalization law that would grant citizenship to all applicants born in territory now belonging to the Czechoslovakian Republic and also to those living in Czechoslovakia since 1915. If adopted this bill would make citizens of the Jewish war refugees and the Jews of Carpatho-Russia and Slovakia.