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225,222 Rumanian Jews Deprived of Citizenship, Official Count Reveals

November 26, 1939
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A total of 225,222 Jews, or more than 36 per cent of those examined, have been deprived of Rumanian citizenship under the revision of naturalization lists, according to official figures made public here today. Of the 617,396 examined, 392,174 were accepted as Rumanian nationals. The total Jewish population is estimated at 900,000.

The revision, held contrary to the minorities safeguards in the treaties under which Rumania annexed Hungarian and Russian territories after the World War, was instituted during the anti-Semitic regime of the late Alexander Cuza and recently completed.

The action means economic ruin for the 225,222 Jews and their families, since deprivation of citizenship imposes upon them the status of aliens remaining in the country on sufferance, without the right to work and, in addition, subject to a special levy.

The Rumanian Cabinet, in recently issuing a statute extending citizenship to inhabitants of the provinces annexed after the war, declared that “Jewish inhabitants of these territories are excluded.”

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