The German Volksgruppe (minority group) today served notice on the Hungarian Government that it would no longer submit to Hungarian censorship but would organize a special Volksgruppe censorship.
The Deutsche Zeitung, German minority organ, recently published numerous items specially banned by the Hungarian censor and which were not printed in Hungarian papers. One of these was the interpellation made by the Nazi deputy, Dr. Ferenc Rainiss, in which he asked Interior Minister Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer to explain why the Government “allowed the majority of cinemas in Hungary to remain in Jewish hands.”
The Interior Minister yesterday replied in Parliament, denying the Nazi thesis and backing up the denial with statistical date. Refuting the Nazi charge that there were 78 movie licenses in Budapest, “the majority of them under Jewish control,” the Minister stated there were only 48 licenses, of which only 13 had been granted to Jews. All these Jews, he said, were war veterans or widows or orphans of war veterans, therefore specifically exempt from penalties under the anti-Jewish legislation.
Nazi deputies greeted this explanation with jeers and shouts that “Jewish influence” was responsible for the original box-office failure of the anti-Jewish “House of Rothschild” picture.
Nazi organs ascribed the box-office failure of the picture to a “Jewish boycott” favoring American pictures. They succeeded in forcing a return engagement and the film is now playing in 62 theaters throughout Hungary.
The Deutsche Zeitung announced that leaflets had been distributed in provincial towns demanding immediate showing of another anti-Semitic picture, “Jew Suss.” “This is not an advertising campaign,” the newspaper said, “but constituted a manifesto clearly demonstrating the anti-Jewish spirit brought by the Nazis to the Hungarian population.”
The Nazis are pressing a campaign to prevent the showing of “Jewish-American” films and to tie up the Rothschild.” The attacks in Nazi organs have become so violent that the Jewish community was moved to protest to the Interior Minister.
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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.
