The Daily Express assailed Italy’s anti-Jewish regulations as “a harsh and bitter catalogue of injustice, malice and intolerance,” while the English press as a whole refrained from comment on the regulations. The Times, particularly in view of present anglo-italian negotiations, trying to minimize the effect of the measures.
“Viva President Roosevelt!” said the Express in a sharply-worded attack on Italy, hailing the United States Government’s protest to Rome against application of the decree to American citizens and asserting that as a result of the note American Jews would be treated with respect. “Despite exemptions the future conditions of the Jews in Italy will be wretched,” the editorial asserted. They will be outcasts from the social system, “and this is for no wrong that they have done or crime that they have committed, but merely because they were born ‘God’s Chosen People.'”
The Manchester Guardian asserted that the Italian Government had apparently taken over “wholesale” nazi Germany’s “claptrap about racial purity.” Pointing out that the measures are bound to meet with more opposition from the Vatican, the paper added that this, like President Roosevelt’s stern warning, would probably be disregarded. “Evil,” the editorial concluded, “grows self-confident in modern Europe.”
The Times reported from Rome that the purpose of the proposed Jewish immigration to Ethiopia was to divert Jews from Palestine and thus impress the Arabs. The dispatch forecast a new naturalization law forbidding in principle the acquisition of Italian citizenship by Jews.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
