War Tension Has Eased Pressure on Jews in Hungary, Eckhardt Holds

The war, by centering public attention on immediate life-and-death problems of national existence, has to some extent eased the position of the Jews in Hungary and elsewhere in the Balkans, according to Dr. Tibor Eckhardt, head of the Independent Agrarian Party and formerly chief Hungarian delegate to the League of Nations, who is visiting the United States.

In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today at the Waldorf-Astoria, Dr. Eckhardt, himself known several years ago as an anti-Semite and former president of the Jew-baiting Union of Awakening Magyars, reported that Nazi agitation has become “less conspicuous” in Hungary, probably, he thought, “because the Germans are busy elsewhere.” Nevertheless he said the Jews were suffering severely as a result of Hungary’s “Second Jewish Law,” enacted a year ago. Dr. Eckhardt, who supported the law as a whole while opposing many of its provisions, said it had resulted in 40,000 to 50,000 Jews losing their livelihoods.

“The law was neither reasonable in its provisions nor useful in its effect,” he said. “It was passed under the revolutionary pressure of the Nazis and under the influence of the Munich agreement which seemed to deliver that part of Europe completely to the mercy of Germany. The public’s state of mind after Munich made the path of Nazi propaganda easy, and of the anti-Nazis difficult.

“The law had good consequences in only one respect, that it lessened the influence of Nazi propaganda. The manner of administration of such a law makes a big difference in its effect. I don’t see any tendency to unreasonableness in the way the Hungarian Government is going about it. It is not being carried out by dictates and decrees, but by negotiations and agreement. You won’t see any inhumane actions or heartrending scenes in its enforcement. If it had been the Nazis who enforced it, if they had attained power on this issue, there would have been a different story.

“It’s a big sacrifice for the Jews, but if they are left in peace and not bothered I believe they will be able to adjust themselves, and in time the more obnoxious provisions will be modified or allowed to lapse — and the country will be rid of the issue.”

The Hungarian Jews are hardest hit in the field of commerce, Dr. Eckhardt said. However, he maintained, economic developments in Europe tended to eliminate the individual trader and middleman in favor of big State-controlled corporations, so that the Jews were losing their position in this field in any case.

The Hungarian peasants, who formerly sold most of their crops to Jewish traders and bought a large part of their necessities from them, did not welcome the change, Dr. Eckhardt added.

“The peasants preferred doing business with the Jews rather than a State corporation,” he said, “because the small trader was more accommodating.”

Among the peasantry, constituting 64 percent of the population of Hungary, there is no anti-Semitism, Dr. Eckhardt declared. It centers, he said, in the cities, particularly Budapest, and among professional men, the middle class and students. The younger generation was seriously infected, he said. He attributed the development primarily to the fact that professions and business were overcrowded owing to the reduction of Hungary’s territory after the first World War, coupled with the fact that the Jews, “half of whom immigrated within the past fifty or sixty years,” held a disproportionate position in business and professional life.

“The same thing would have happened if it had been Irishmen or any other group of aliens,” Dr. Eckhardt maintained.

However, he said that the same Nazi forces which had promoted anti-Semitism now appear as a menace to Hungary’s national existence. The Balkan peoples are all afraid that the war will spread to them, Dr. Eckhardt said, hinting that they feared repetitions of the “treachery coup” in Norway.