Unless something startling — a war, for example — takes place within the next ten years, the Jews of Europe are facing a decade of suffering without parallel in their history.
The above prediction has been made before. It has been made by European notables. It has been made frequently of late by visiting American notables who have returned here with tales of intense suffering they have encountered in Jewish communities throughout the continent. It has been made by statesmen and by preachers, many of them speaking more from hearsay than from personal knowledge.
Yesterday, however, the prediction was made by a man who spoke with the authority of a trained newspaperman who has seen many more things than he is permitted to relate, a man who knows Europe like a district reporter knows his “beat.” It was made by Boris Smolar, chief European correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, who arrived here earlier in the week to undertake some work in connection with the agency.
A mild-mannered, soft-spoken man, small of stature, with graying hair and brown eyes that sometimes reflect the suffering he has seen an entire people subjected to in many lands, Mr. Smolar is perhaps the world’s leading authority on Jewish affairs in Europe. Speaking from the conviction and with the authority that comes from close observation over a period of more than ten years, a period in which he has seen at first hand how the flame of anti-Semitism has swept across one border after another with the speed of a prairie fire, Mr. Smolar had the following to say:
“If there is no such startling event to interrupt the trend as it now is, I can see for the Jews of Europe during the next ten years suffering even worse than they have experienced in the past ten years.
“This will be so not only in Germany, but in Austria, in Poland, even in Czechoslovakia and in Hungary, nations considered friendly to Jews, In fact, all Central and Southeastern Europe will display the effect of the anti-Semitic propaganda now rampant in all Europe.”
The League of Nations, Mr. Smolar said, is proving disappointingly ineffectual in alleviating the hard-pressed condition of the Jews on an international scale.
In Poland, he pointed out, approximately one million of the three million Jews there are reduced to a state of beggary. There, he said, it is not a question of the Jews retaining their political rights. The all-absorbing question there is the problem of providing bread.
“Thousands of Jewish families,” he declared, “are actually in such a condition that bread is a luxury rather than a mere necessity.”
The situation of Jewry in such countries as Lithuania and Latvia, Smolar pointed out, is rapidly growing worse. In Lithuania, formerly friendly to the Jews, non-Jewish traders are succeeding in their attempts to squeeze their Jewish competitors out of business.
In Latvia, the plight of Jews is even worse, Smolar said. There many of the country’s leading Jews have been arrested and thrown into jail. Zionist units, particularly youth organizations, have been closed by the government and liquidated. Jewish traders are seriously hampered in the export field by a new decree which licenses exporters. Licenses are being issued chiefly to non-Jews with the result that the Jewish exporters are being forced out of business.
On the question of Germany, Smolar was extremely pessimistic. Hitler, he indicated, seems to be more firmly entrenched than many observers believe him to be. The reign of terror employed by the Nazi regime is so powerful a weapon that a revolt is unlikely because it is physically impossible of achievement. Everybody fears to express his thoughts to his neighbor or closest companions.
And the same fear that is holding Germany’s millions in thrall will serve to swing the Saar back to the Reich at the forthcoming plebiscite, Smolar predicted.
The only possibility he sees of the Saar not reverting to Germany is if the League of Nations fails to get Germany to pledge specifically protection for Saar minorities. The League of Nations, he pointed out, has not yet answered France’s demand that it exact such a pledge from Germany. At the next meeting of the League of Nations Assembly, this promise will be one of the chief subjects of discussion. And if Germany fails to comply with the expected League request, the refusal, Smolar declares, may become a major issue in deciding it to defer the plebiscite indefinitely and keep it under League control.
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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.
