Minorities Treaties Did Not Recognise a Jewish Nationality Dr. Filderman Points Out: Quotes M. Cleme

The minorities have no claim to special rights, but only, to Must treat ### as citizens of the State, Dr. Filderman, the President of the Union of Roumanian Jews, said speaking here last night at the inauguration of the Youth Group of the Union of Roumanian Jews.

Referring to the formation of the Jewish Party, he said that such parties in Poland and elsewhere had caused great trouble to the Jewish populations. He quoted in support of his argument the letter which the late M. Clemenceau had sent to the Polish Government at the time of the conclusion of the Minorities Treaties, to show that the Treaties did not constitute any recognition of the Jews as a separate political community within the State. They only provided for the maintenance of Jewish schools and the protection of Jews in their religious observances.

Dr. Filderman also read a declaration which the late Prime Minister, M. Julius Maniu, had made in which he had spoken in the same way of the Alba Julia Programme, and the Minorities Treaties, insisting that there was no intention of giving national autonomy to the minorities. M. Maniu had always spoken, on the contrary, he said, of the need of Roumanianising the Transylvanian towns, which are mainly inhabited by Jews and Hungarians. That was an infringement of citizenship rights, and yet people were strangely enough invoking Maniu’s Alba Julia Programme and his supposed sympathy with the Minorities Treaties.

In Poland, the driving of Jewish national politics, Dr. Filderman said, had destroyed the cohesion and the economic rights of the Jews. The pass to which it had brought them was illustrated by the fact that not less than 30 lists were being put forward for the prospective Jewish Community elections in Warsaw. On a similar occasion in Czernowitz 12 lists had been put up; while in Bucharest, when the Jewish Community elections took place last year, there was only one Jewish list, which had been elected without opposition. In Greece the Nationalist Jews had first demanded a separate Jewish electoral college, but afterwards when they realised what it implied they had with-drawn the demand and had asked to be included in the general electoral college. Nationalistic Jewish policy, he contended, led to shipwreck and bankruptcy.

He repudiated every form of aggressive nationalism, Dr. Filderman said, no matter from which quarter it came, and he would not approve it because it came from Jews. The Union of Roumanian Jews believed that the Jewish demands could be achieved only through working together with the Roumanian people, under guarantee from the Government, and not by entering into blocs with other minorities, which meant fighting against the Roumanian people and parties.

M. Clemencoau’s letter referred to by Dr. Filderman was quoted by the late Mr. Lucion Wolf in a reply which he published in 1928 to an article written by Professor Dubnov on “A New Jewish Diplomacy”. Professor Dnbnov has founded some spiritual suggestions, he wrote, on the assumption that by the Minorities Treaties the Jews have become “national minorities” in their respective countries and that in some mysterious way their Jewish nationality has thus come to be recognised by the League of Nations. The exact reverse is the case.

In 1919, Mr. Lucien Wolf wrote, the Peace Conference had before it a petition asking for the recognition of the Jews as a separate nationality, but it took no notice of it. It did not, however, limit itself to this passive attitude. When it came to draft the minorities treaties it recognised – probably in view of the aforesaid petition – that ho doubts should be allowed to subsist as to the exact national affiliations of the minorities dealt with in those compacts. Thus in the very first of the treaties, the Treaty with Poland, the minorities were throughout referred to as “Polish nationals who belong to racial, religious, or linguistic minorities”. Before signing the Polish Treaty, M. Paderewski wished to be quite sure that he was doing nothing which would imperil the political unity of the Polish State and nation and asked M. Clemenceau for further definite assurances, especially in regard to the Jews. These assurances were given by M. Clemenceau on June 24th., 1919 on behalf of the Supreme Council of the Allied and Associated Powers. After a short review of the clauses of the Treaty relating to the Jews, M. Clemenceau wrote as follows: “These clauses have been limited to the minimum which seems necessary under the circumstances of the present day, viz: the maintenance of Jewish schools and the protection of the Jews in the religious observance of their Sabbath. It is believed that these stipulations will not create any obstacle to the political unity of Poland. They do not constitute any recognition of the Jews as a separate political community within the Polish State.”

The formula of the Treaty with Poland, which is-also a definition, Mr. Lucien Wolf wrote, was repeated mutatis mutandis in all the Minorities Treaties, and remains on record in them to this day.