The Union of Roumanian Jews and the Jewish Nationalist Party

The respective views of the Union of Roumanian Jews and the Jewish Nationalist Party were discussed this week at length in the offices of the Minister of the Interior, M. Argetoianu, between Dr. Filderman, the President of the Union of Roumanian Jews, and Mr. A. L. Zissu, the Jewish writer and industrialist, who came to propose an electoral pact with the Government on behalf of the Jewish Party. The Minister asked that Dr. Filderman should be present during the conversation and should explain the views of his organisation.

M. Zissu said that he did not oppose the election pact concluded between the Government and the Union of Roumanian Jews insofar as it concerned the elections to the Chamber, but he asked that the Jewish Party should have the pact for the elections to the Senate. In the elections to the Chamber, he explained, the Nationalist Jews would conduct their campaign independently, and count their own votes.

The Union of Roumanian Jews was a fiction, he went on, creating an impression of power not by the number of its adherents, but by the intelligence and the exceptional energy of its leader, Dr. Filderman. The Union of Roumanian Jews, he claimed, did not have 2 per cent. of the Jewish votes behind it. Since Dr. Filderman was neither a religious nor a national Jew, he said, what he was concerned with was only the desire to become a Minister, and not the interests of the Jewish cause.

In the presence of M. Argetoianu, M. Zissu then turned to Dr. Filderman and said: Though I hold no Mandate to do so, I take the responsibility upon myself of offering you the Presidency of the Jewish Party, and I am certain that I shall find unanimity for my proposal.

Dr. Filderman, in his reply, producing figures in support of his contention, said that at all the elections held till now, 90 per cent. of the Jewish population had followed the lead of the Union of Roumanian Jews. The attempt to form a Jewish National Party had been made during the last Municipal elections, when the Party had secured only 350 votes. There was really no Jewish Party, he said; it had no candidates, no delegates and no funds.

Dr. Filderman offered to lay M. Zissu three to one that the Jewish Party would not poll more than 2 per cent. of the Jewish votes.

It was very strange also, he said, that although he was told that he was not a Jew, either from the religious or from the national point of view, M. Zissu was, nevertheless, offering him the Presidency of the Jewish Party.

In 1925, Dr. Filderman said, we refused the seats in Parliament offered to us by General Averescu, and in 1928 we refused the seats offered to us in Parliament by M. Maniu, because in both cases the seats did not carry with them a guarantee that the Government of the day would deal properly with the Jewish population. To accept seats in Parliament without such a guarantee would be fraudulent. He had repeatedly been offered the Presidency of the Jewish Party, he went on, but he would rather have his hands chopped off than accept honours which could attract only vain people. He was not out for any honours, and he could not accept a position which would make him the executioner of the Jewish population by calling such a Party into existence or standing at its head.

The Jewish party had tried to form a bloc with the minorities against the Roumanian Parties, and now it was begging the Government for seats in the Senate, thinking in that way to obtain the approval of the Government for the formation of the National Jewish Party and to utilise that as propaganda for the elections to the Chamber.

He had risked his life in the interests of the Jewish population and had refused millions which had been offered to him, Dr. Filderman proceeded. He had never insisted on becoming a Deputy, let alone wanting to be a Minister, although M. Argetoianu would readily confirm the fact that he had been offered a Ministry, and not the least important Ministry. He had refused it because the time had not yet come to accept such honours.

The Union of Roumanian Jews, he concluded, stood by the whole pact, both for the Chamber and for the Senate, but the Government was free, if it preferred, to enter into a pact with the Nationalist Jews, if it seemed to the Government that they represented any body of opinion.

M. Argetoianu thereupon told M. Zissu that he had failed to convince him. From his own political experience he knew that both at the time when the Union of Roumanian Jews was in pact with the Government and when it was in opposition to the Government the Jewish votes had been cast in the way recommended by the Union of Roumanian Jews. He had asked Dr. Filderman to take part in this discussion, he said, and it had only strengthened his own convictions. The pact between the Government and the Union of Roumanian Jews would remain as it was.