The careful elimination from the Vienna bar of all immigrant lawyers who came into the country after the War, was advocated in an authoritative statement made public here today.
The statement rejects the proposed plan of establishing the Bar Association on a racial basis. Racial discrimination, it says, is alien to the tradition and spirit of Austria, which is a Catholic country. At the same time, it is necessary to curb the number of “non-Aryan” elements that are entering the legal profession in Vienna.
Jewish lawyers here viewed this statement with great alarm. A majority of Viennese lawyers are Jews, and many of them are prominent in the Bar Association.
This new declaration, it is felt, is merely a subterfuge to eliminate Jews from the legal profession.
Recently the government ordered a change in the election procedure of the Bar Association. Henceforth, the government decreed, officials of the Bar Association must be appointed instead of being chosen by direct elections. Thus the government plans to make it virtually impossible for Jews to hold office in the Bar Association.
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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.
