No Violence to Jews, Carol Declares in Interview with Associated Press

King Carol told the Associated Press in an interview in Bucharest, reported here today, that “the first and important point of our policy will be that there shall be no violence to Jews.”

The A.P. quoted the King of Rumania as follows:

“A Jewish problem? Yes, we have one, and we are wrestling with it. How, ultimately, the problem is to be met is not altogether clear, but the first and important point of our policy will be that there shall be no violence to Jews. Of that we are certain. . . .

“It is understandable that the United States should be interested in developments here, because you yourself have many Jews, certainly more than we.

“It is understandable that in some quarters there might be concern. But it may be stated on the highest authority that Rumania contemplates no inhumanities.

“How in all its phases the problem is to be met cannot be stated definitely now.”

Asked by the A.P. correspondent whether there was a prospect of mass deportations or of colonization of Jews in some other regions of the world, Carol said that matter had not received the detailed study of the Rumanian government.

“We should be relieved, of course, to see some of our Jews leave voluntarily,” he acknowledged. “But there has been no study of the possibility of sending them in numbers and no thought of where they might go.

“Such an approach to the problem hardly is to be taken by Rumania alone. It would be a matter for international action, and no one yet has taken the initiative in it.”

G.E.R. Gedye, Central European correspondent of the New York Times, in the second of a series of articles on the Rumanian situation from Bucharest, declares:

“Among the many differences between the Jewish question here and in Germany the most important is that while Germany’s 500,000 Jews played a comparatively minor role in the economic system of a highly developed industrialized population of 66,000,000, here the commercial and industrial machine of a very backward peasant country of 19,000,000 has been built up by 750,000 Jews. State employment being closed to them, Jews are forced to concentrate in commerce, medicine, law and the press.

“Although Rumania as well as Russia and Poland has been the home of pogroms, the Rumanian peasantry is not naturally anti-Semitic.

“Being largely analphabetic, the peasants are susceptible to demagogy and it is no harder for Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader of the Nationalist League, today than for the Bojars (feudal lords) of old, to divert peasant resentment of its grinding poverty from the wealthy, luxurious-living classes to the Jews. M. Codreanu has borrowed revolutionary phrases from communists and anarchists promising expropriation, imprisonment or hanging of Jews, grafters and capitalists, intending of course, to fulfill only those directed against the Jews.

“By appointing Octavian Goga Premier, King Carol has transformed a mystical creed of hatred into a state system. And since the system is rooted and draws its strength from Germany, the change has world-wide significance.

“So far anti-Semitism is manifested in working economic ruin against the Jews rather than in open violence, although there is enough of the latter, especially in the university.”