The League of Nations, under pressure of the Rumanian Government’s threat to tear up the Minorities Treaty if “urgency procedure” is applied to Jewish petitions against Rumania at the Council session opening tomorrow, is not inclined to apply this special procedure, it was learned today.
(“Urgency procedure” gives representatives of minorities the right to call the League Council’s attention to treaty violations directly, without the necessity of introduction of the question by a Council member.”)
The League Secretariat opposes the invoking of this procedure, which would provide for speedy action, advancing the consideration that new elections scheduled in Rumania for the beginning of March may change the composition of the government.
Istrate Micescu, Rumanian Foreign Minister, had warned that if the Jewish petitions were recognized by application of the emergency procedure at the Council session, Rumania would scrap the Minorities Treaty, signed after post-war annexations had brought large minority groups into Rumanian jurisdiction.
Diplomatic circles did not treat Micescu’s threat seriously, pointing out that repudiation of the Minorities Treaty would involve Rumania, which has a large Hungarian minority, in great difficulties with Hungary.
However, Jewish organizations are now considering the raising of the question of Rumanian Premier Octavian Goga’s anti-Semitic, anti-minority program on the Council floor by individual members, should “urgency procedure” not be adopted, since a number of members are ready to raise the question.
PETITION ASKS LEAGUE INTERVENTION
Re-establishment of the legal status of the Rumanian Jews is asked of the Council in a petition of the World Jewish Congress executive committee, published yesterday, which declares that the Jews are already being deprived of their rights by the anti-Semitic Bucharest Government.
The petition, one of several such submitted by Jewish organizations, is accompanied by numerous documents, among them a memorandum refuting the Rumanian Government’s official statistics regarding alleged post-war Jewish illegal entry into Rumania, and photographs of official decrees published in the Rumanian press.
Rejecting the allegation that a quarter to a half million Jews entered Rumania after the war, the petition declares that while 851,000 Jews inhabited the present Rumanian territory before the war, the number has now dropped to 738,000.
No Jewish mass immigration into Rumania has occurred, the document asserts, citing figures of the Nansen International Office that not more than 11,000 Russian refugees, Jewish and non-Jewish, were living in Rumania in 1936, and also Rumanian Government migration statistics showing a constant reduction in the number of foreigners in Rumania.
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