Why Have We Created a Jewish Party in Roumania: Dr. Ebner States His Case

Why have we created a Jewish Party for Roumania, and why are we putting up our own Jewish lists to the elections? ex-Senator Dr. Mayer Ebner, the President of the Jewish Parliamentary Club in the last Parliament, asks in an editorial which he publishes to-day in the “Ost-Juedische Zeitung”, of which he is editor.

The issues of the “Ost-Juedische Zeitung” for the last 12 years, he proceeds, and the experiences gained during the last 12 years of our Roumanian citizenship supply the answer, and we shall find it necessary to repeat what has often been said before, in order to explain why we have created the Jewish Party and set up the Jewish List.

We are best understood in the Bukovina, because we Bukovinian Jews felt ourselves in Austrian times, too, nationally and politically nothing else than Jews. We considered ourselves a Jewish nothing else than Jews. We considered ourselves a Jewish nation, recognised as such side by side with the Bukovinain Germans, Roumanians and Ukrainians. We are accustomed to conduct our politics as Jews, as an equally-entitled factor, and not as a national appendix of other parties. In the post-war period we Jews of the Bukovina began to assimilate to the political customs of Roumania. We enrolled in the Roumanian parties, or else while we did not formally join these parties, we stood by them through thick and thin, considered ourselves as the representatives of the Jews and spoke in the name of the Jews. The Nationalist Jews selected the method of a political cartel with Roumanian parties. It was essential, the surrogate of a national Jewish policy. Too weak and too divided among ourselves, and having no link with the Jews of the other three provinces, we had to seek affiliation with Roumanian parties. They all promised us programmes, and if, like the National Peasants Party, they did not expressly pledge themselves to any points in a programme they invoked their Party programme of Alba Julia, which promised well. It transpired that none of the Government parties intended seriously to carry out what they had promised. We honestly gave our aid tin the elections, receiving only a few seats.

That was the experience, too, of the Union of Roumanian Jews, which talks so much of its programme agreement with the Liberals. If we have read, however, the speech which M. Carp delivered in the Senate in October 1928, we shall realise how little influence the Union of Roumanian Jews had on the Liberal Government. He complained, for instance, that Dr. Filderman, had despite the promise given him not been able to obtain the appointment of a single Jew to the judiciary. of other more general matters there is no need to speak.

All the parties disillusioned us. None acted up to their promise. They did not act up to the promises which they made to the country as a whole, let alone the Jews. The Roumanian Parties looked upon the aid given them by the Jews in the elections as a tribute due to them, a view of the situation which was reinforced by the attitude of the Union of Roumanian Jews. They contributed largely to this mentality. They preached, and continue to preach, that the Jews must neither participate in a minorities bloc nor put up a list of their own. What is allowed to the German Magyars, the Ukrainians or Bulgarians is prohibited to the Jews. The Jew must go into the elections only at the side of the Roumanian parties, and because we preach emancipation from this mentality, the Union of Roumanian Jews dubs our policy a ghetto policy.

The Jewish list is not only a symbol of liberty, it is a symbol of peace, Dr. Ebner goes on. For the Austrian and Hungarian politicians make use of the Jews to drive them as a wedge among the nations. In Bohemia we were exploited by the Germans against the Czechs; in Galicia by the Poles against the Ukrainians; in Transylvania by the Magyars against the Roumanians, and everywhere this shameful part which we were made to play created irreconcilable enemies for us. The powerful antisemitism of the Transylvanian Roumanians is due, not least to the fact that he Jews as hyper-Magyars supported the Magyarisation efforts of the dominating Hungarian nation. It was not a good thing for us to be a political tool in the hands of the strong against the weak, and in the same way we must to-day guard against playing off one Roumanian Party against the other. We reap enmity from our opponent and we get no thanks from ally.

THE FAILURE OF THE MINORITIES BLOC

The minorities bloc, Dr. Ebner writes further, is dead. It died still-born. It never before had so much chance of success as now, or reason for existence as now, when the National Peasant Party had failed in regard to the minorities. The present Government, however, demonstrated its political superiority by appointing an Under-Secretary for Minorities. It took the wind out of the sails of the minorities, and the minorities allowed it to be taken. To let you into a secret, even if Dr. Brandsch’s appointment had not taken place, there would be no minorities bloc. I shall explain why when the time is more fitting.

What I would like to know is, why do the minority representatives year after year go to Geneva in early September for the Minorities Congress, if at decisive moments they cannot find a way of joining together inside the country and using their political strength for definite demands. Geneva is rhetoric; Geneva schieves nothing; it is in our own country that we must put demands, and if we do we can achieve something, only we must be unanimous. The great moment has come and it has found little people.