Both houses of Parliament voted by large majorities today to grant an appropriation, recommended by the financial commission, of $125,000 to assist in retraining of Jewish refugees in Sweden.
The vote was taken after a bitter attack on the Jews, made by Deputy Wallen of the Farmers’ Union, had stirred general indignation in the Lower Chamber. Terming Jews “parasites and Asiatic people not fit to live with Swedes,” Wallen demanded that the refugees be re-emigrated from Sweden as quickly as possible and without retraining.
Wallen was sharply rebuked by the leader of his own party, who declared that the Farmers’ Union rejected anti-Semitism as an “intellectual plague.” Publisher Z. Hoeglund of the daily newspaper Social-Demokraten expressed general disgust with the speech, declaring that Wallen had introduced anti-Semitism into Parliament for the first time. Socialist Deputy Vought pointed out that political and religious refugees constituted the most valuable of settlers and warned against stripping Europe of all intellectual traces by throwing them on to America.
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.
