Roumania’s Granaries Full but Jews Face Starvation, Prober Reports; Government Animated by No Good W

While the granaries of Rumania are full, the Jews of that country are faced with starvation, is the report made by the well-known American Journalist. Pierre Van Paassen, who on behalf of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency visited Rumania.

“There is no exaggeration in the statement,” Pierre Van Paassen states, “that Jews are perishing of hunger. Cases are being brought to the attention of the Jewish charitable institutions every day. Nobody in Rumania, except the blind fanatics of the Christian Anti-Semitic League headed by Professor Cuza denies that the plight of the Jewish population is fast approaching panic-conditions. As the shadow of the general economic crisis in the country deepens, black night of hopelessness is already settling on the Jewish population. Kishinev is a city of dreadful gloom today. Jewish Czernowitz is in tears. There is no way out. Relentlessly and inexorably death by starvation is bearing down upon the majority of the Jews in Rumania. . . A nameless terror grips one’s soul, one grows mute at the sight of so much suffering.

JEWS STARVING TO DEATH

While there is no famine in Rumania at present, Jews are starving to death every day in Czernowitz and Bels and Kishinev and Galatz and Bucharest. Within sight, within touch of plenty and abundance, little Jewish children are wasting away. Men are keeping up a brave front for the time being. They say they have seen worst times—times when even their Rumanian neighbors were starving. The Rumanian peasant isn’t starving just now, but the Jew is.

FOREIGN COMPETITION STIFLING

“The grain lies in the elevators of Galatz. American competition on the European markets keeps it there. Wholesale Russian dumping has cut off other markets in Rumania. Stagnation in trade has set in. Russia is underselling Rumanian wood. Russia and Venezuela are flooding Europe with oil. Russia is crippling Rumanian fisheries. Russian caviar has reappeared on Montmartre restaurant restaurant tables after an absence of fifteen years. It costs fifty percent less than Rumanian caviar. The Rumanian fisher still has fish, the peasant still has kept a little grain for home use, he has immediate access to the forest. He keeps warm and in food. His cattle isn’t suffering. His gayly embroidered leather clothing needs no renovation for years. He is not prosperous but he isn’t destitute either.

“But the Jewish merchant who sold to the Roumanian peasant on credit last year and the year before is not getting paid. The peasant cannot pay his debts. The Jewish merchant has no cattle to slaughter, he has no milk, he has not that little store of grain for home use. The Jewish trader and merchant are caught. When the fam### raged in Bessarabia a few years ago, the Jews were the worst sufferers. Today without a famine, with the very reverse of famine existing in the country, the Jew is suffering again.”

M. Van Paassen who has made a thorough study of the situation in Roumania, especially as regards the Jew, has approached various non-Jewish individuals in order to obtain as impartial a viewpoint as possible.

GOVERNMENT HINDERS COOPERATIVES

In speaking of the Maniu Government and the limitations it has placed upon an important unit of national economy and prospective prosperity, the Jewish Cooperative. Movement, supported by the Joint. Distribution Committee, he says, “the Jewish Cooperatives were doing excellent work. There were about 20 centers in Greater Roumania a few months ago. They were beginning to enable a section of the population of the country to establish itself upon a firmer economic basis and to venture into new undertakings, chiefly agricultural. The Cooperatives were proving a boon to the hardpressed Jews. It was confidently hoped they would widen the sphere of their activity in many other directions. They certainly harmed no one’s interest. It is difficult to conceive how the betterment of a part of the community could possibly harm another group.

“Yet this is exactly what the Maniu Government pretends by way of excuse for its high-handed and injustifiable action in forbidding the extention of the Jewish Cooperative Credit Movement. In limiting the Cooperative system the Government is actuated by the firm belief, I was told, that the Jewish Cooperatives are engaged in unfair competition with other Roumanian citizens. . . There are many non-Jews who will readily admit to having benefited indirectly and considerably from the activities of the Jewish Cooperative.

MANIU GOVERNMENT ANTI-SEMITIC

“Failing any coherent reason for the Government’s action in this respect, except the lame and untenable assertion about disloyal Jewish competition, one is reluctantly forced to constate the existence of a strong anti-Semitic tendency in the Maniu Administration. I say reluctant, because the Maniu Government has managed to create an impression abroad of democratic integrity and egalitarian principles. It has repeatedly been pictured in the press of America as the direct opposite of the former Bratianu oligarchy, with its semi-dictatorial family regime. . .

MANIU TRICKED JEWS

“Never were the Jews of Roumania more thoroughly tricked than by the apparently benevolent M. Maniu. When pressed for his reasons of the astonishing political volte face, M. Maniu emitted this lame and for a statesman, thoroughly unworthy statement:

“Under the Maniu Administration the Jews of Roumania have lost more than they gained at the cost of years of strenuous and ceaseless fighting for their liberty. They are exactly where they stood half a century ago. They have lost hard-won economic advantages and they have lost religious freedom. They are menaced today not only by the general critical economic condition of the country, but they are living under a Government which is animated with no good feeling towards them.”