Jewish Deputies in Roumania Vote Against Government on Address: Deputy Fischer’s Indictment of Jorga

The Jewish Party welcomed the present Government not with enthusiasm but without any prejudice against it, Deputy Dr. Theoder Fischer, the President of the Jewish party in Roumania, said speaking in the Chamber in the debate on the address.

The Jewish Parliamentary Club, in its declaration on the address last year, he went on, presented a number of minimum demands concerning the development of the Jewish ethnic minority in the country, and expressed its hope that the Government would give effect to them. Up to the present, however, the Government has given no sign of any intention in this direction. Jewish pupils in the State schools are still not released from lessons involving writing on the Sabbath and on Jewish Festivals.

The Address this year, he went on, said no word about the promise held out at the beginning of the last Parliamentary session that there would be an expansion of the scope of the Under-Secretariat of State for Minorities, whose functions continue to be undefined and unclear. The very modest subsidy for the minority schools agreed to by the last Government has been cancelled by the present Government. Most regrettable ### all, he said, is the failure to deal with the regulation of the problems which have arisen as a result of the shortcomings of the Citizenship Law of 1924. The indifference of the Government towards this fundamental state question is most deplorable. Roumania is the only State in which 14 years after the war there are still tens of thousands of people who are Heimatslos, although they possess all the qualifications entitling them to citizenship.

The absurdity of the existing provisions of this law are seen in the fact, Deputy Fischer said, that even the Patriarch, the former Regent of the country, is not a Roumanian citizen, and citizenship rights can be acquired only by a formal act of naturalisation.

Turning to the financial legislative measures proposed by the Government, Deputy Fischer complained that they are all born of the spirit of crisis, and yet none of them are designed to combat the crisis and alleviate the misery arising out of it and thus restore the economic health of the nation.

For all these reasons, he concluded, the Jewish Party expresses profound distrust of the present Government and will therefore vote against the Reply to the Address.