Speaking in Parliament in reply to Senator Joseph Sandor, one of the Hungarian representatives, who had complained that the authorities had refused to permit the Hungarian students at Cluj University to organise a national Hungarian Students’ Union, the Prime Minister, Professor Jorga, said that he was against the idea of University students organising on a national basis, and stood rather for the fraternisation of the various national elements of Roumania. The students can join together in students’ unions, the Premier said, in so far as the aims of these students’ unions are not contrary to the principles of morality, public order, and the security of the State. An organisation of students on the basis of nationality will not be to the liking of all, he went on. The University should not widen the differences between the nationalities, but should unite them, by proclaiming the friendship and brotherhood of the people, and not hatred and enmity. We are building a new world, he said, a world established on a new basis. We are building this new world on the principle of love and justice, in which all will be united in the service of the fatherland.
The Democratic press welcomes the Prime Minister’s declaration, pointing out that it makes impossible the introduction in Roumania of a racial students’ rights law, such as is being introduced in Austria, and is demanded in certain other countries.
The conditions that prevail in the Roumanian Universities do not accord, however, with Professor Jorga’s declaration, they point out.
The Deputies of the Jewish National Parliamentary Party, on the other hand, fear that Professor Jorga’s intention was to say that the minority nationalities must allow themselves to be gradually absorbed into the body of the Roumanian majority. This would be contrary, they say, to Professor Jorga’s recent assurance in Parliament – that the Government respects the national distinctions which exist in Roumania, and does not intend in any way to obliterate them.
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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.
