Jewish Situation in Many Countries Caused Increasing Anxiety During Past Year Annual Report of Anglo

The Jewish situation in many continental countries caused increasing anxiety during the past year, says the 59th. annual report of the Anglo-Jewish Association issued for the annual meeting of the Association to be held on Sunday, May 3rd, under the chairmanship of the President, Mr. Leonard G. Montefiore. The world economic crisis, the report proceeds, affected in a marked degree the great number of Jews who are engaged in commerce and industry. It depressed still further that large section which had already found it difficult to cope with postwar economic conditions, and naturally tended to diminish the resources of charitable and relief organisations whose task was already sufficiently difficult. Moreover, the deterioration of economic conditions led, as always, to the increase of political unrest, one consequence of which was the virulence of propaganda against the Jews. Unfortunately, antisemtism did not always end with insult or social discrimination, but in more than one country resulted in violence.

The continued uncertainty throughout the year of the position in Palestine, it adds, also did much to render more gloomy the aspect of Jewish affairs.

It is in Poland that the adverse economic situation has had the most disastrous effects, and the political grievances of the Jews have been overshadowed by the more urgent necessity of earning the daily bread, it is stated in the report of the Joint Foreign Committee presented by the Secretary, Mr. J. M. Rich, which is included in the report. Harrowing stories of the poverty of once-prosperous Jewish merchants are all too common, and the middle and artisan classes are alike in an unenviable position.

The Hungarian Community for the first time made an appeal for economic assistance to its coreligionists abroad. Its political situation had much improved. The numerus clausus law had been modified in 1928, and though there are still complaints that a numerus clausus is being applied in practice, the Jews of Hungary breathed more freely than at any time since the war.

The Committee has no large funds at its disposal for relief purposes, the report explains, and could only watch with sympathetic interest the beneficent activities of organisations such as the Joint-Ica Reconstruction Foundation. The stringent limitations placed on immigration by most of the countries hitherto regarded as countries of immigration materially diminished the effectiveness of one of the normal safety-valves for economic pressure in Eastern Europe. The economic crisis in the United States was an additional cause for anxiety, for it is from that country that post-war Jewish philantropic activities have drawn a very large part of their support.

In a long review of the situation in Roumania, the Joint Foreign Committee report sets out as the chief grievances of the Jewish population the failure of the Government to amend the Nationality Law, under which many thousands of Jews in the Annexed Provinces were treated as “stateless”; the refusal of adequate State subventions to the Jewish Communities and schools; and the difficulties placed in the way of Jewish teachers obtaining appointments in Jewish schools, on the ground that they had not been trained in the Roumanian normal schools (to which they had been denied admission).

Reference is made to the antisemitic outbreaks in Roumania last summer, and the fire at Borsha, and it is recalled that in consequence the Joint Foreign Committee again deemed it advisable to address a strong Note to the Roumanian Government. It was pointed out that during the past five years the attention of successive Roumanian Governments had been called to the main cause of the insecurity of the position of the Jews, the reckless toleration extended to a violent and anarchical agitation against the Jewish population and their religion, and the unchecked circulation of a libellous and incendiary literature in which the Jews were held up to undeserved popular hatred and contempt. A long telegraphic reply was received from the Roumanian Government stating that the antisemitic activities were the work of a few individual pseudo-students; that the Government had always closely followed their movements, and that the adoption of a not too stringent policy had given “certain satisfactory results” for over a year. Measures were being taken for the immediate arrest and trial of the agitators. The apologia was to some extent based upon the allegation that the outbreaks were the result of usurious treatment of the agricultural population by Jewish banks. This legend was assiduously spread in authoritative quarters. Yet it was demonstrably untrue. The rates of interest were dictated by the large banks, scarcely any of which were in Jewish hands, while at Suceava, for instance, where the antisemitic agitation was particularly menacing, only two of the twelve banks in the town were in Jewish hands, and it was the non-Jewish and not the Jewish banks that held land mortgages.

AUTHORITIES IN GERMANY SHOWN THEMSELVES WELL ABLE TO CONTROL SITUATION.

The striking success of the antisemitic Hitlerists at the German elections in September caused great alarm among the Jews of Germany, the Joint Foreign Committee report continues. Anti-Jewish demonstrations did indeed take place in Berlin in October, but the authorities showed themselves well able to control the situation.

Anxiety was also caused among the Jews of Austria by the election of Prince Starhemberg as leader of the antisemitic Heimwehr, which seemed likely, under his guidance, to become an avowedly anti-Jewish organisation. At the General Elections which took place in October, the Hitlerists greatly increased their votes, but did not achieve the anticipated success. The tension was eased by the formation of Dr. Ender’s Cabinet, which marked a return to the normal and diminution of the influence of the Fascist bloc.

In Czeche-Slovakia the Jews were the victims of assaults in Prague towards the end of the year, though these attacks were rather anti-German than anti-Jewish. The difficulties of the “stateless” Jews of Czecho-Slovakia in obtaining naturalisation excited some comment, and a project for a compulsory Sunday closing law in Bratislava gave rise to alarm among the Jewish traders.

Towards the end of the year the Committee also communicated with the Greek Foreign Secretary on the subject of the disabilities of the Jewish population of Salonika resulting from the Sunday Closing Law in force in that town.

The report goes on to deal with the situation in Soviet Russia, and in speaking of the arrest of the Minsk Rabbis reveals that the Joint Foreign Committee vainly endeavoured to secure the intervention of the Foreign Office, which pointed out that the matter was solely one of domestic jurisdiction and, furthermore, intervention might well adversely affect the interests of the persons concerned. This policy of the Soviet Government was not directed only against the Jews, it is added, and the sufferings of members of other denominations led to a demonstrative agitation and public meetings of protest in England and abroad. The Soviet Government seems to have been impressed by the strength of public opinion manifested in these demonstrations, and many of those arrested were released.

The Committee, the report states, also considered reports of the injurious effects on the Jews of Russia of the Soviet Government’s new economic policy and its application to agriculture. It was feared that it would have the most disastrous effects in the new Jewish colonies in the southern provinces and in Siberia. The policy was, however, not specially, directed against Jews, and it was deemed inadvisable to take any public action.