Hungarian Jewry Between Two Fires: Communists and Socialists Stirring Up Unemployed and Distressed R

The Jews of Hungary are becoming extremely apprehensive over the future, finding themselves placed between two fires, victims on the one hand of the agitation of the Communists and the Socialists among the unemployed workers and the distressed peasantry, as a result of which constant attacks are being made on food-shops and restaurants, as well as other shops, and since a large part of the Jews of Hungary are shopkeepers and traders, they are suffering disproportionately because of this vandalism, and victims on the other hand of the renewed antisemitic propaganda which is now being conducted with a virulence unknown for years, by the Awakening Magyars and the other antisemitic groups, which openly incites the economically hard-hit population to help themselves to Jewish possessions.

While the antisemites are holding up the Jews as such as responsible for the economic misery in the country, the Socialists and Communists blame the shopkeepers and traders, which in the end amounts to the same thing. People are being induced to believe that the only way to improve their conditions is to diminish the Jewish rights and to deprive the Jews of everything they have, and to push them out of their professions and occupations and to turn these over to pure race-Magyars.

Qualified observers give it as their opinion that the antisemitic propaganda now is no less violent than it was in the worst days of the antisemitic White Terror, which followed the overthrow of the Communist regime.

The new Pungarian Government, it is admitted, does not desire to have its position complicated by antisemitic outbursts, and will do its utmost to prevent terrorism. At the same time, the economic position is desperate, and people doubt whether the Government will have sufficient authority to hold the extremists on both sides. The attention of the Government has been drawn to the danger by both Jewish and non-Jewish circles, and the Government has assured them that it will take energetic measures to nip the danger in the bud before the situation grows out of hand.