News Brief

While Austrian Jewry awaits anxiously the outcome of President Roosevelt’s proposed international conference on refugees a new and disturbing light has been thrown on the general emigration situation here which may seriously limit the United States’ own ability to participate in whatever plans are adopted.

It is generally assumed that the Austrian quota of 1,400 will be merged with the German quota of 25,000, but it now seems that this will not prove as helpful as was at first thought. The reason lies in the small percentage of Austria’s 200,000 Jews who were born within the pre-Anschluss, post-war territorial limits of Austria.

While no exact figures are available, it is reliably estimated that between twenty and thirty per cent fall in that category. Since the American immigration, quotas are based on the place of birth, it is expected that extension of the German quota to Austria will not open the doors to 70 to 80 per cent of Austrian Jewry.

The bulk of Austrian Jews were born in territories which are now part of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Rumania, and must, under the present regulations, enter under quota of those countries. At best, only a fraction of the quotas are ordinarily available for use here.

Informed observers, however, point to a way out of the dilemma which would require no more than a State Department administrative order. This would be for the American immigration authorities to substitute, under certain conditions, a pre-war map of Europe for today’s map in order to determine a would be immigrant’s place of birth. Under these circumstances, a Jew now living in Vienna but considered a Pole, might be declared an Austrian because his native town at the time of his birth was a part of the Austrian empire.

What conditions the State Department might wish to establish in connection with such an order is difficult to foresee, but undoubtedly the length of residence in Austria would play a part. It must be recalled that of the vast migratory currents started by the war, hundreds of thousands of individuals settled down in new homelands and adopted the language of their adopted countries.

It is interesting to speculate whether the Nazis will now describe those post-war immigrants domiciled in Austria as foreigners and attempt on that basis to drive them from the country. There is some ground for the speculation since the revision of citizenship practiced by Rumania and Poland seems currently favored as a method of “passing the buck” on the Jewish problem. It would be ironic were America and Germany, with opposite and different purposes, see eye to eye on the question of nationalities.