Jewish Deputy Offers Evidence Showing Roumanian Officials Back Anti-semitic Movement

Documents purporting to show that officials of the Roumanian government are openly supporting the anti-Semitic movement were submitted by Michael Landau, a Jewish member of the Roumanian parliament, to the congress of Bessarabian Jews called at Kishinev to take steps to organize for the self-defense of Roumanian Jews. Deputy Landau charged that while the former Liberal government was the first to encourage anti-Semitism in Roumania, the present Maniu government had bitterly disappointed the hopes the Jews had in it, since it, and particularly the minister of the interior, Dr. Vayda Voevod, have supported and helped the growth of the anti-Semitic movement.

Among the confidential government documents offered as evidence by Deputy Landau was the report of the police inspector to the government after the incidents at Targu-Fromus. The inspector had reported that it was necessary to disband forcibly all of the Jewish organizations as a means of quieting the country, since the Jews have created “economic, political and cultural organizations for the purpose of oppressing Roumanians and destroying the Christian elements of the country.”

A second document, the minutes of a meeting of peasants held in the village of Cinciuleni, near Kishinev, just before the congress of anti-Semitic students was forbidden, indicates that the chief of the gendarmerie in this village declared himself ready to cooperate in a raid of the peasants upon the Jewish population in order to rob the Jews of their property. Another piece of evidence to bear out his charge reported the suspension of two policemen because they had pointed out the ringleaders of the anti-Semitic disturbances in Balaceana, and the promise of anti-Semitic students to have the policemen reinstated if they would withdraw their testimony.