Wholesale arrests of Nazis were reported today following proclamation of a ban on Major Ferenc Szalasi’s Hungarian Nazi Party by Premier Paul Teleki’s new Government. Major Szalasy himself is serving a three-year prison term for subversive activity.
Among those seized in widespread raids by the police were civil servants revealed to be members of the party despite a law specifically forbidding such membership. A force of 600 policemen operated in Budapest alone. No resistance was reported anywhere. Detectives had been watching the Nazi group since the recent bombing of the Great Synagogue here, in which twenty Jews were wounded.
“The Government will take no action against political movements working within the framework of the laws,” Interior Minister Franz Keresztes-Fischer announced, “but the Hungarists (Nazis) formed a center of illegality.”
Meanwhile, Jew-baiting was denounced in the Lower House by Dr. Charles Rassay, leader of the National Liberal Party, who warned that the proposed anti-Jewish legislation would have disastrous consequences for hundreds of thousands of non-Jews. The Hungarian Nazis, he said, had expressed discontent with the Premier’s new policy and had warned they would resist any attempt to water down the anti-Jewish measures.
A resolution for modification of the anti-Jewish bill was scheduled to be introduced in the Lower House by Count George Apponyi.
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.
