Roumania Attempts to Answer Jewish Charges in League Memorandum

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

A defense of the attitude of the Roumanian government in the continuous mistreatment of Jews in Roumania was made in a memorandum submitted by the government to the Secretariat of the League of Nations, it was learned here from a statement made public in the “Nene Fieie Presse” by Mitilenu, the Roumanian Minister to Austria.

The statement of the ambassador owes its publication to his desire to counteract the effect of the protest of Austrian Jewry against the Roumanian government, adopted at a meeting held Sunday night under the auspices of the joint Austrian Jewish Committee at Olympic Hall. To refute the charges against the Roumanian government, the ambassador quotes as his evidence the report of the self-styled American investigator of Jewish conditions in Roumania, Col. Lytton G. Ament, and also the alleged report of the statements of Rabbi Niemirower in the Roumanian senate, the accuracy of which was previously denied.

The ambassador also discloses in his statement the contents of the memorandum of the government to the League, in which it makes reply to the petitions submitted to the League in behalf of the London Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Jewish Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and the French Alliance Israelite Universelle.

The Roumanian government, it appears, makes several arguments against this petition. First, it contests the right of the Paris and London Jewish organizations to intervene in behalf of Roumanian Jewry. Second, it states that the government has already expressed its disapproval of the “sporadic anti-Semitic accidents and it is doing everything possible to put an end to these accidents.” Third, the memorandum presents what it claims to be a review of Roumanian Jewish history since 1820.

In this part of the memorandum the Roumanian government alleges that the economic dominance of the Jewish population in Roumania has been growing. It also charges that ” a part of the Jewish population is inclined to call forth social unrest, while another part is bent on exploitation of the poor and rich. No one, however,” the memorandum states, “identifies Roumanian Jewry as a whole with the profiteers and traders. Moreover, in accordance with our policy with regard to the Jewish population, all Jews in Roumania were granted equal rights, traders were given amnesty and 10,000 Russian Jewish refugees were given the right of asylum in Roumania.”

The fourth argument of the memorandum is that the Jewish religion was given adequate representation in the Roumanian Senate, the fifth, that Yiddish schools were erected, and the sixth, that Jewish private schools were subventioned.