Lithuanian Aide’s Friendliness to Jews Irks His Government

The Lithuanian government today prohibited publication of or even comment on an interview granted the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by Minister of the Interior Stefan Rustaiko on the Jewish question in Lithuania. Two officials of the Ministry who furnished information to the Minister were dismissed from their posts.

In the interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Minister Rustaiko stressed the friendly relations between the Jews and Lithuanians since the fourteenth century, acknowledged the rights of the Jews to cultural and spiritual development which, he promised, will not be violated, declared that the government will not stop the export of Jewish capital to Palestine and is friendly to Zionism, denied that anti-Semitic papers are subsidized by the government, and stated that there is no discrimination against the Jews in commerce and industry, but said that export trade must be supervised by the government in order to open foreign markets.

In sharp contrast to the friendly declaration of the Minister, the Lithuanian government issued a decree purportedly nationalizing the flax export trade, formerly in the hands of the Jews, but actually handing over the industry exclusively to Lithuanian cooperatives.

Hundreds of Jewish merchants lost their only means of livelihood as a result, and the anterooms of the various ministries were filled with delegations of ousted Jewish merchants asking for relaxation of the law. So far all requests for liberalization have been fruitless.

A government decree also can celled the customary $4,000 subsidy for the Yabneh Yeshiva, despite the fact that the school is the only Jewish teachers’ seminary in Lithuania.

Conditions are so bad for the Jews that even the government admitted officially that some seventy per cent of all Lithuanian emigrants are Jews.