News Brief

Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service

The official Government organ “Indreptarea” is for some time calling upon the Jewish organizations in Roumania and the leading Roumanian Jews to deny the reports of anti-Semitic agitation and disturbances in Roumania which are being published in the Press abroad. In this connection, the “Curierul Israelite,” the organ of the Union of Roumanian Jews writes: “The ‘Indreptarea’ omits to specify which reports it has in mind, and to what extent those reports give an exaggerated or tendentious account of the facts. Nor do we know what Jewish organizations and leaders it has in mind.

“The former Liberal Government, the Government, not its organs, approached, under similar circumstances, the Union of Roumanian Jews, which then issued a statement correcting the various reports current at that time in the foreign press. If the ‘Indreptarea’ makes this demand of the Union of Roumanian Jews and its leaders, it must be said that the Government itself has made it impossible for the Union to say anything, for the following reasons: 1. The authorities have carried out searches at the offices of the Union and in the private homes of its President. 2. When the arrest of the President of the Union was demanded in Parliament in connection with these police searches, the Government did not consider it necessary to make a proper reply although it was fully aware of the fact that the searches had revealed nothing incriminatory. 3. A month has gone by since the searches took place and the members of the Executive Committee of the Union of Roumanian Jews are still being constantly summoned to appear before the military prosecution in order to report themselves. In these circumstances, it is obvious that any statement by the Union of Roumanian Jews with regard to the reports about the anti-Jewish disturbances in Roumania which are current in the foreign press, would be subject to suspicion of having been made as the result of pressure exercised by the military authorities, and under fear of a court-martial.”