After many months of delay and conflicting decisions, the Ministry of the Interior today announced that 3,000 Sub-Carpathian Jews now in Czechoslovakia will be granted Czechoslovak citizenship.
In a communication to the Council of Jewish Communities the ministry said that the Russian repatriation authorities have agreed that all persons who registered as “Jewish nationals” in the census of 1930 will be granted Czech citizenship under the Russian Czech agreement.
The difficulties of the Sub-Carpathian Jews began last year when Czechoslovakia ceded the Carpathian area to the Soviet Ukraine and negotiated an agreement under which Czechs and Slovaks living there could choose Czechoslovak citizenship. The treaty did not mention Jews and the authorities, therefore, ruled that Jews who registered as such in the 1930 census could not apply for Czech citizenship.
Following protests by Jewish leaders, the government promised to reconsider this decision and halted the threatened repatriation of the Sub-Carpathian Jews. However, this decision was reversed and re-reversed several times and on several occasions local authorities began deportation proceedings against the Jews.
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.
