Leader Urges Rumania Jews ‘adapt’ Selves

Dr. William Fildermann, president of the Union of Rumanian Jews, is against “stupid” assimilation, he wrote in A. B. C., Bucharest daily.

“I am for the political assimilation of the Jewish population of Rumania within the Rumanian nation,” Dr. Fildermann stated. “By this I mean absolute, selfless, unconditional identification with all interests of the Rumanian state and people.

“Such assimilation is possible and realizable. Because the achievements of equality of rights have in one European country been swept away by a storm, it would be naive on this ground to draw conclusions against my thesis.

FOR “ADAPTATION”

“On the other hand, I am against the stupid assimilation of those who interchange ‘assimilation’ — by which we understand ‘adaptation’ —with ‘annihilation.’ I am against those who deny their proud origin from a people that found God in its infancy, who deny their faith, the faith that produced all the religions of civilization, and will for all time remain the foundation of all the religions of the civilized nations.”

Asserting that the Jewish community constitutes “without question” a religious and ethnic minority, Dr. Fildermann continued:

“I fail to see that this should give the majority people the right to deny the Jews complete equality of status, or the minority people the right to demand anything else than this complete equality of status.

“RIGHTS FOR DUTIES”

“The formula on which the State is built reads: ‘Rights for duties.’ Therefore, the origin and creed of the inhabitants of the country cannot be any legal criterion for the exercise of rights, or the fulfillment of duties.”

He argued against creation of a Jewish political party on the grounds it would bring about a cleavage between the Jews and the rest of the Rumanian nation and recommended an organization “which stands outside the general political conflict.”