Fearing damage to Hungary’s economy, the Government has suspended its projected expropriation of 500,000 acres of Jewish-owned farm lands and has given permission for reemployment of Jewish physicians in the official health insurance system, it was learned today.
The Agriculture Ministry informed Jewish owners of farm lands, it was learned, that they might continue development of their lands as before. Previously the Government had planned to expropriate 500,000 acres of land and distribute it among Hungarian peasants.
At the same time the Health and Hospital Accident Insurance Institute suspended application of the anti-Jewish law to permit employment of Jewish doctors and reemployment of former employees who had been discharged on racial grounds. It is understood the order was deemed necessary because of the acute shortage of physicians in Hungary especially in Transylvania, from where Rumanian doctors had fled before the Hungarian occupation.
The changed policy regarding the Jews was believed to be due to tardy realization that expropriations and other anti-Jewish measures were damaging Hungary’s economy.
According to one report, the Germans, after observing the devastating effects of the anti-Jewish laws in Rumania, advised the Hungarians to cease applying the racial law here in order to salvage what remains of Jewish agriculture and industry for the benefit of the European “new order.”
The Sud-Ost Echo, German economic weekly published in Vienna, last week decried the “anarchy” existing in Rumania at present, as a result of “the destruction of Jewish commerce, industry and agriculture.”
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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.
