The Swedish liberal press came out today with a warning not to take seriously the systematic propaganda which the Hungarian Government is now carrying on in neutral countries in an attempt to make believe that the Jews are well treated in Hungary.
The papers recall that Hungary was the first country in Europe where organized persecution against Jews was started soon after World War I. This resulted in thousands of Jews being massacred in 1919 and in anti-Jewish riots later in the Hungarian universities where a numerous clauses for Jewish students was introduced.
The Gotesborgs Handels, a liberal evening paper, charges that Cardinal Seredi, head of the Catholic Church in Hungary who came out recently against the anti-Jewish persecutions in Nazi Europe, has never taken a direct and active stand against the anti-Jewish propaganda conducted by the priests throughout the country.
Another Swedish paper publishes an article describing the compulsory labor service at the Russian front to which Hungarian Jews have been driven. The Hungarian Government is charged in this article with “large scale attempts to extirpate the Jewish youth, particularly intellectuals, by sending them unarmed to death and captivity.”
“Large numbers of letters are now being received by the Swedish Red Cross from Jews in Hungary whose relatives have disappeared on the Russian front doing labor service in the ranks of the Hungarian Army,” the article states. “Forced into menial service as laborers on the front instead of being permitted to serve in the armed forces, were Jewish doctors, engineers, writers, teachers and lawyers. The last hope of their relatives is that the Swedish Red Cross may succeed in finding out their whereabouts.”
The article concludes with the charge that when Hungarian troops carried out the massacre of Yugoslavian Jews in the Hungarian-occupied Yugoslav city of Novi-Sad, they did not spare even the Hungarian Jews who were holders of Hungarian passports.
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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.
