“baccalaureate” is Roumanian Form for Anti-jewish Numerus Clausus

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

“The Baccalaureate” is the Roumanian form of a secret numerus clausus against Jewish pupils, it now develops when registration for the new term has ended.

It appears that in order to avoid the introduction of an official numerus clausus Understate Secretary Angelescu introduced a “baccalaureate” system whereby all pupils applying for enrollment are to be examined by special professors for matriculation. This move put the pupils of all the national minorities in Roumania and particularly the Jewish pupils at the mercy of the anti-Semitic professors. The result of this arrangement was that seventy percent of all the pupils of the national minorities in Roumania applying for admission were flunked on the examinations. When the results became known a group of parents submitted a protest to the Roumanian Minister of Education demanding that the “baccalaureate” examinations be cancelled and that the pupils be given another chance under fair conditions. This protest was disregarded by the Ministry, with the result that all the Roumanian pupils passed the examinations, while only 30% of the German and Ukrainian pupils and 15% of the Jewish pupils were passed.

When the results of the examinations were made public, a group of pupils of the national minorities in Czernowitz, Bukowina, directed an inquiry of the cause of their failure. Instead of showing the reasons, the professors refused to make any reply and instead made anti-Semitic speeches. The pupils organized and demonstrated against the examining professors who are in the Cuza movement. The professors interpreted this as a “dangerous Jewish attack on two Christain professors.”

Twenty Jewish pupils of the secondary schools were arrested last week in Czernowitz under suspicion that they plotted an attack against anti-Semitic professors. The news was suppressed by the Roumanian censor, the full facts not being available until now. Even the liberal Roumanian newspaper, “Glasu Bukovinu,” accuses the Jews of arranging a state-subversive demonstration and charges that the initiative of this demonstration was given by the private secretary of the Jewish deputy Ebner. Special police detachments were despatched to the Jewish quarter of Czernowitz and detectives arrested the Jewish pupils.

Following these developments, Deputy Ebner and Senator Kluger, together with the German and Ukrainian deputies, issued a manifesto declaring that the entire incident was fabricated by the anti-Semites for political reasons. The Jewish deputies also telegraphed to Prime Minister Averescu, Minister of the Interior Goga, and Minister of Justice Cudalbu, giving the facts of the arrest of the Jewish pupils, who are all between seventeen and eighteen years old, and demanding their release and the punishment of the anti-Semitic students for anti-Jewish excesses in Czernowitz.