B. CONDITION OF THE JEWS IN Though little change has taken place since the last meeting in the condition of our brethren overseas, three events which have recently occurred have in them potentialities for a distinct and lasting betterment. These events, in their chronological order, were (1) the agreement said to have been arrived at, in June last between the Polish Cabinet and the Jewish deputies in the Sejm, (2) the determination reached at the conference of representative American Jews held in Philadelphia on September 13, to renew the work of social and economic reconstruction in Eastern Europe which had been prosecuted under the auspices of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee since 1914, (3) the various security treaties and arbitration agreements, entered into by the leading European States at Locarno, Switzerland, during October. These three unusually important matters will be treated at greater length in their proper place in the following brief survey of European conditions affecting our brethren during the past year. 1. WESTERN EUROPE In England, due to the anti-Jewish propaganda of 19201922 and to the widespread unemployment, an anti-alien psychology, analogous to that noticeable in the United States, prevails to such an extent that Jewish organizations felt called upon to send a delegation to the Home Secretary in order to endeavor to prove to him the injustice of this attitude. The campaign of some extremists among the supporters of humane societies against Schehita, the Jewish method of slaughtering animals, was not resumed and two non-Jewish experts, after an exhaustive inquiry, declared the method unexceptionable. France loomed up, during the past year, as a possible haven for immigrants desiring to engage in agriculture and industry, her man-power having been so tragically depleted by the World War that she welcomes additions to her productive population. Arrangements have been made for the admission of several thousand Jews from Roumania, whose settlement on the land and in certain industrial centers is to be facilitated by the Government. In Italy, a new school law did not find favor with Jews because it prescribed religious teaching in the elementary schools according to Catholic beliefs. Peril to Jews lurks also in a campaign against Freemasonry, with which, following the myth stimulated a few years ago by the London Morning Post, some Fascisti newspapers charge the Jews to be in alliance. A movement to collect a fund for the erection of a monument to Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, codifier and physician, was launched in Spain, the Government of which also promulgated an interesting decree, offering Spanish citizenship to all those descendants of former Jewish-Spanish subjects who are willing to comply with a few simple formalities. It is not yet known how this invitation has been received by the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Mediterranean basin who trace their ancestry to Spanish forebears and who still speak the language of Cervantes. The Jewish community of Lisbon, Portugal, has inaugurated a movement to reclaim for Judaism the children of the thousands of Marranos, or cryto-Jews, who, though the proclamation of the Portuguese republic and the abolition of a state church has freed them of the necessity of doing so, still are outwardly conforming Christians, though they clandestinely practise certain Jewish rites. A committee in Lisbon has appealed to the foreign Jewish communities for help in this direction. 2. CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE Coming now to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the picture becomes darker, for in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Roumanian the post-bellum anti-Semitic reaction is still in vigorous sway. There were none of those pogroms which have stained so many pages of European history with the blood of the innocent and defenseless, and, except in Austria and Roumania, there were no riots. The saddest feature of the picture is that the younger generation, especially the students at universities, appear to have assumed active leadership in this vicious and brutal movement. In Austria, students rioted against Jewish lecturers, in one case against a professor whose family has been Christian since the middle of the eighteenth century. In Germany, cemetery vandalism was perpetrated, and fanaticism rose to such a pitch that even a monument erected in Potsdam by Emperor Frederick William in 1852, in honor of the gifted French-Jewish actress, Rachel Félix, was pulled down and shattered. Students at the University of Frankfort cavalierly decided to exclude foreign Jewish applicants; in another university the students forced a Jewish teacher to resign; and the Prussian Minister of Education ordered school authorities not to appoint Jews as school superintendents. Because the poetic genius Heine was a Jew, his works are banned in many of the high schools and colleges. In both Austria and Germany, a movement is afoot to establish "Aryan" theaters, from which all traces of "Semitic" influences are to be avoided like a pestilence. You are all familiar with the disgraceful disorders in Vienna which attended the convening of the Zionist Congress there last summer. Hungary perhaps is the darkest spot in the Jewish picture of the past year. The Education Law of 1920, embodying the shameful numerus clausus, is still in effect. The Government instituted proceedings against the Jewish community of Budapest for appealing to Jews in other countries for funds for the victims of this barbaric device. Though this prosecution was withdrawn, one of those responsible for the appeal in which the numerus clausus was justly called "a mockery of all culture and all human rights," was found guilty of having insulted the Hungarian nation and was sentenced to a year's imprisonment. The Council of the League of Nations has for some time past given consideration to this abuse and it is altogether likely that the Permanent Court of International Justice may ultimately be called upon to pass upon the legality of this violation of the letter and spirit of the Minority Treaties. In view of the government attitude, it is not surprising that students in one university went on strike against the admission of Jews, that Jews were attacked during divine worship on the Day of Atonement, and that the Government granted amnesty to sixty-four "Awakening Magyars" who, in 1919, murdered as many Jews of Kecskemet, pardoning them on the ground that they "acted under patriotic excitement"! It would be unfair to the vast majority of good men and women in Europe to allow the impression to prevail that these outrages went on without protest. Both the Swiss and German societies of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom condemned anti-Semitism as "the sin of the civilization of the twentieth century"; a Hungarian Roman Catholic cardinal castigated against the antiSemites; and a Hungarian deputy denounced the numerus clausus. But protests were and are likely to continue to be futile so long as the government maintains its present attitude. In Roumania, the Jews seem to be in the same unhappy state as in Hungary, with the difference that in the former country the Government is not openly on the side of the Jew baiters, although it has refrained from suppressing their pernicious activities and has done nothing to abate the mischief occasioned by the articulation of libelous publications, cartoons and pamphlets inciting hatred and animosity against the Jews. A university student who assassinated a police prefect for doing his duty and apprehending several students who had murdered two prominent Jews was acquitted by the court and permitted to go up and down the land inciting the populace to perpetrate new outrages. An officer in the Roumanian army who was accused of deliberately killing a number of Jews who were crossing the Dmiester, though he confessed on the trial that he had acted at the instance of a superior officer in high command, was likewise acquitted. Several university professors are actually leading the youth in what they pronounce a "holy" war against the Jews, and quite recently police authorities discovered that these vicious malcontents were laying plans for a modern St. Bartholomew's Night, upon which all Jews were to be exterminated. The self-confessed inspirer of these outrages is the notorious Cuza, formerly professor of the University of Jassy. After the murder of the police prefect, the Senate of the University held a meeting and adopted a resolution in which it declared that the crime "has shocked the conscience of the body of teachers of this high institution for culture and education," and that "this crime is a result of a definite school of thought which is led by Professor Cuza, a school |
