A motion has been put down in the Senate to wind up the Under-Secretariat of State for Minorities, which was established in April 1931, when the present Prime Minister, Professor Jorga, came into office, and which is still held by the original inoumbent, Deputy Rudolf Brandsch, one of the leaders of the German Minority Party in Transylvania.
The motion which will come up for consideration when Parliament reopens in the autumn, is signed among others by one of the Jewish Senators, Dr. Asra Berkovits, the editor-in-chief of the “Independence Roumaine”, and by Senator Sandor, who represents the Hungarian Minority in the Roumanian Parliament.
When the Department for Minorities was established a year ago, with Deputy Brandsch as the Minister in charge, Dr. ayer Ebner and Dr. Theodore Fischer, on behalf of the Jewish Parliamentary Club, visited the Premier, Professor Jorga,
and expressed satisfaction at the innovation and at the choice of Deputy Brandsch for the office, adding the hope that the Government would create in the new Ministry a sub-Department for Jewish Affairs, under the direction of an elected representative of the Jewish population. Nothing was done, however, in this direction.
Dr. Filderman, the President of the Union of Roumanian Jews, in an interview at the time with the J.T.A. said that M. Brandsch’s person was a guarantee that he would engage in a proper and beneficial policy towards the minorities, adding, however, that he was definitely opposed to a special minorities statute, which he would regard as a misfortune. The rights of the minorities, he said, can be very well maintained within the framework of the existing laws, and develop with them, while to fix them in the form of a special statute would cause dissatisfaction among all sections, and for the minorities it would be a hindrance to their development.
In December the Transylvanian Jewish daily “Uj Kelet” forecast that Deputy Brandsch would resign as a protest against the Government’s attitude in regard to the minorities. Deputy Brandsch complains that the Government has kept none of its promises made to the minorities, the paper said. The schools of the minorities have not been given the necessary assistance, and the Department for Minorities which it created, has not been given any power to change matters in this regard.
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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.
