The Jewish Question in Czecho-slovakia: Statelessness Ritual Murder Horak Case and Compulsory Sunday

The Jewish situation in Czecho-Slovakia was dealt with at length in Parliament to-day by Deputy Dr. Angelo Goldstein, member of the Club of Jewish Deputies, in succession to the late Dr. Ludwig Singer, in the course of the debate on the Budget.

The Jewish Party will vote for the budget, he said, but there were a number of complaints to which he felt it necessary to draw attention.

There was the question of the Staatenlose. As a result of the Great War, they had created a class of people who have no homeland and are consequently subject to many restrictions in matters of education and of obtaining a livelihood and they are also not adequately provided for in the matter of security of life and property. Tens of thousands of these people are Jews. In the case of the former Hungarian territories, there was the Lex Derer, but this facility did not apply to the historic lands. The result was that they had a state of affairs which permitted that the head of a family with four children, living in Maerisch-Ostrau since 1903, who had acquired his homeland right in 1910, had to submit three separate applications before he was given his citizenship, and then one of his sons was excluded from the grant. This son had since obtained a doctorate of medicine, and although he had done his term of military service in the Czecho-Slovakian army, he had not yet been given his citizenship. These unfortunate people are being used like toys by arbitrary officials, Deputy Goldstein complained. They are the victimes of conditions in which the authority of the State is being misused for party politics.

The Jews of Carpatho-Russia have special reason for complaint in this respect, he went on. The administrative authorities in Carpatho-Russia are serving the interests of the reactionary elements among the Jewish population. Our demand for the democratisation of the franchise in the Jewish Communities is ignored. We hope that in this question we shall find more understanding from the present Minister of Education and Public Worship.

It is in the spirit of the Carpatho-Russian administration also that it has been possible in this province to conduct a ritual murder trial, he continued. This is a matter in which I want the Minister of Justice and the Minister of the Interior to interest themselves.

Then there is the case of the Horak trial, he proceeded. The directions given by the judge to the jury are such as to awaken the utmost apprehension with regard to the impartiality of the law. The Jews are not out for vengeance, he said, but they do not want the cloak of justice wrapped round crimes which imperilled the very foundations of the State.

Another case of inequality before the law was the compulsion which was put on the Jews who constitute the greater part of the commercial population to pay church taxes. It is against the spirit of liberty of conscience, he said, and it is the more unjust because the religious requirements of the Jews in the historic lands are being but meagrely provided for in the budget and have been subjected to a four-fifths reduction. We Jews cannot look on passively at such a state of affairs, and we shall demand our remedy from the Minister of Public Worship. We Jews have no State theological faculties or seminaries where we can train our teachers and it is only with the greatest difficulty that we have been able to maintain our Hebrew school system in Carpatho-Russia entirely by the self-sacrifice of the Jewish middle classes.

There is further the Compulsory Sunday closing Ordinance in Bratislava, Deputy Goldstein concluded. We Jews demand that the Government should take our special conditions into account and that Sabbath-observing Jews should not be compelled to submit to conditions which are a violation of the principle of liberty of conscience.