Zelea Codreanu’s election to Parliament in the district of Piatra-Neamtz, has caused a tremendous outcry in Parliamentary circles here, and the National Peasants’ Party, which constitute the Government under M. Julius Maniu, is putting a formal resolution calling for the annulment of the election by declaring that they refuse to sit together with a murderer.
For a whole month before the elections, the paper reported, the entire district was swamped by hundreds of Codreanu’s followers, who went about among the peasants conducting a furious anti-Jewish agitation, telling them that the Jews are to blame for the economic crisis, that the Jews exploit the peasants, and because of the Jews the peasants are poor, and that if Codreanu was elected, all Jewish possessions would be seized and distributed among the peasants.
Piatra-Neamtz, which has elected Codreanu to Parliament, has several times been the scene of anti-Jewish troubles. In 1928 the Jewish cemetery there was desecrated, and piteous scenes took place, the relatives of the dead buried there weeping and lamenting on the graves. Jews from all over the country came on pilgrimage to the desecrated cemetery, and telegrams of protest were sent to the Government and to the Patriarch Miron, the head of the Roumanian Church, demanding protection for the Jewish cemeteries.
One Yom Kippur the synagogue in Piatra-Neamtz was attacked during service by students who threw stones into the synagogue, and eighteen Jews who went out and thrashed the ringleaders were arrested and sentenced.
Last December the Jewish population of Piatra-Neamtz was thrown into a state of panic by the announcement that Professor Cuza was coming there with a group of antisemitic students to appear in court in connection with legal proceedings that were in progress in the town between a Christian worker and his Jewish employer. Finally, the Prefect intervened, and on his representations the central authorities in Bucharest announced that Professor Cuza would not be allowed to go to Piatra-Neamtz.
In Hungary, when Commandant Ivan Hejjaz, the leader of the pogromist bands which went about murdering Jews during the White Terror, was returned to Parliament a few years ago, a large number of Deputies declared that they would refuse to sit together with a self-confessed murderer, who had openly boasted of massacring Jews, and his election was invalidated.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
