The Government measure to restrict Jews to a 20 per cent quota in the nation’s economic life was believed today assured of easy passage when it is voted on this Thursday after a week’s discussion in the Lower House.
Deputy Johan Makkai of the Reform Generation Party, declared the bill had the warm support of 8,000,000 Hungarians. He said it carried out the intentions of the late Premier Goemboes.
The bill was supported by Dr. Nagy von Tasnad, president of the Government party, who asserted that it did not deal with the Jews as a religious unit but as a distinct national element. The term “race,” he said, was unknown in Hungarian law. Declaring Jews were unequally distributed among the various occupations and trades, Dr. von Tasnad added: “It is an unhealthy situation when Jews from 50 per cent of Budapest lawyers, more than half of the engineers and doctors, 36 per cent of journalists and 28 percent of actors.” Application of the proposed law, he said, will enable the Christian majority to take a suitable part in the country’s economic and cultural life.
Karoly Peyer, leader of the Social Democratic party, stressed the harmful effect of the proposed law abroad. The Hungarian people, he said, are not anti-Semitic, anti-Semitism having become a “post-war hobby of Hungarian gentlemen.” He added that it was not a Hungarian product but was imported from abroad.
The bill was severely criticized by Deputy Moeller of the Christian Social Party, who said it did not go far enough. Moeller declared Jews should be restricted to a five per cent quota.
Meanwhile, the bill was denounced in a manifesto issued by 59 persons prominent in Hungarian cultural life. The manifesto declares: “The proposed law does not humiliate Jews so much as it does the sons of the Hungarian middle class, for it implies they can obtain employment in their own country only at the price of depriving a section of their own fellow citizens of their civil rights.” Those fellow citizens, the manifesto continues, “have been the pillars and creators of Hungarian culture.”
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