Stormy Debate on Jewish Question in the Roumanian Parliament

An extensive debate on the Jewish question in Roumania developed in partiament Friday when the government party and the defeated Liberal party engaged in a verbal fight over their respective relations to the Jewish question in Roumania.

Ontawian Goga, poet and former Minister of the Interior, leader of the anti-Semitic forces, attacked the Ma(##) government for its election pact with the Zionists. “I am no anti-Semite, although my opponents cause me of that in the press,” he stated. “What we cannot understand is how the government could conclude an agreement with the ex-territorial Zionist party,” he stated.

The present Minister of the Interior, Vajda, replying to Goga, stated: “You as well as Doca were in the habit of telling the Jews faltering words when you were in need of Jewish (##). Soon, however, you provoked agitation and excesses. We concluded a pact with the Zionists and spared ourselves the need of sending apologetic telegrams to London and New York. Similarly, we do not come with apologies to representative Jewish visitors from England and the United States, a thing which you always had to do. Our policy of sincerity is obviously the better one. Besides, it is useless to argue in a parliamentary manner with Filderman’s vote getters who are responsible for the Oradeamane riots, who misused the students as a pawn in a mano(##) to excite the masses and to play one nationality against another,” Vajda stated.

Goga, continuing the argument, termed the Zionist movement a “parasitic manifestation” which he compared to Magvarism. He attacked popular franchise as being useful only to “the enemies of the country” in which he included the Jews. At this point a storm arose in the House. The Jewish deputies protested vigorously-Theodor Fischer, Jewish deputy, exclaimed: “In 1927 you concluded an agreement with the Jews of Bukowina. Only you, Goga, are responsible for the fact that the Jewish youth of Transyhania speaks Hungarian because of your closing the Jewish schools where Roumanian was also taught. The government’s pact with the Zionists is merely an official sanction of Jewish equality.”

Numerous Roumanian deputies in exclamations made testified to the Roumanian patriotism of the Transyl(##) Zionists.

Vajda, who again took the floor, (Continued on Page 4

added that the viewpoint of the National Peasant Party is that the Jewish question in Roumania must be solved in a spirit of humanity, while the Averescu party and the Liberal party negotiated with the Jews hesitatingly and without sincerity.

The debate was interesting in more than one way, compelling the Manin government to take a stand on the Jewish question in the House. The only unpleasant feature was the remark of Vajda, who interrupted Goga by saying. “If you hate my Jewish partners. I hate your Jewish partners.”