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Jewish Situation Again Serious in Roumania As Agitation for Excesses is Renewed

March 20, 1928
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(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

A spectacular method of producing material evidence of the anti-Jewish excesses at the University of Bucharest was employed by the Jewish deputies, Filderman and Bercovici, in their frantic effort to make the Roumanian Government realize the results of the new anti-Semitic excesses and the imminent danger of anti-Jewish riots on a large scale.

The deputies brought one of the Jewish students who was seriously injured on the university campus during the excesses Thurday into the Government house, where the Council of Ministers was in session. It was at this meeting that the cabinet issued strict orders to prevent the occurrence of new riots.

A new interpellation was introduced into parliament by the Jewish deputy, Straucher, concerning last weeks excesses.

The extent of the danger to Jewish life and property and the methods employed by the anti-Semitic students in last week’s outbreaks were graphically described in the text of the interpellation introduced into parliament by Dr. William Filderman, president of the Union of Roumanian Jews.

Alexander Cuza, notorious leader of the Roumanian anti-Semitic students, has come to Bucharest with a group of pogrom agitators who have undertaken to stage the new riots, according to a report in the Roumanian liberal paper, “Lupta.”

“The Jewish students at the University of Bucharest were brutally beaten all day long,” Dr. Filderman’s interpallation declares. “I have submitted to the Minister of Interior and Education, memoranda giving full details and containing the names of the culprits. No one, however, was arrested. Today, the anti-Semitic students, while distributing proclamations inciting to mass excesses at the Foundation Carol, pointed revolvers at the Jewish students, others used knives, shouting: ‘Keep quiet, Jews, or you will be killed.’ We have submitted these proclamations to the chief of police.

“I ask the Government whether it is willing to defend the life and property of its citizens. I inquire whether it is compatible with reason to declare that the Government is capable of protecting order even in the smallest villages and to claim ignorance of what has occurred on the next corner. The real reason for the unceasing riots is the indecision of the Government, which promises to punish those gulty, but leaves them unpunished and grants amnesty through a backdoor method to those sentenced, as was the case in Jassy,” Dr. Filderman declared in his interpellation.

The “Lupta,” writing editorially on the situation, asks whether Roumania needs another edition of the Cluj and Oradeamare riots. “Cuza, together with a group of notorious instigators, have come to Bucharest and again begun work to stage new riots. Of this, we suspect the Government is well informed. Notwithstanding this, the Minister of Education repeats his worn out phrase about ‘closing the university.’ This time, however, the responsibility of the Government, was established ahead of time,” the newspaper writes.

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