Rumanian Government Charged with Failure to Implement Election Promises to Jews

The Rumanian Government was charged today with failure to carry out the promises made to the Jews during the general election campaign.

The charge was made by Mishu Benvenisti, president of the Jewish Party, at a public meeting at which the present position of the Jews in Rumania was discussed. Recalling the whole-hearted support the Jews gave the present government during the elections, Benvenisti said that since the elections, Rumanian Jewry has been subject “to many deceptions.” He pointed out that so far none of the promises made by the democratic bloc which backed the government during the elections, have been fulfilled.

The citizenship law has not yet been modified in accordance with Jewish requests, he declared, nor has action been taken on state pensions for victims of pogroms and for families whose bread winners have died in deportation in Trananistria. He charged that the persons chiefly responsible for the Jassy pogroms have been released and that only minor criminals are being held. He asserted that many fascists are still at large and are employed by government offices and as teachers in the universities.

Referring to reports that prominent members of the cabinet have made the solution of the Jewish problem in Rumania conditional upon securing $100,000,000 from American Jews for the relief of non-Jews in the famine area of Rumania, Benvenisti said: “If there is anybody who must pay a price of reconciliation in Rumania it is not the Jewish people but the Rumanians who partly committed and partly tolerated the crimes against Jews.”

(Last week Premier Petre Groza denied a statement to this effect attributed to him by Reuters. In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he said that he had been misquoted.)

Benvenisti announced that Jews in Parliament as well as political Jewish groups will start concerted action to force the government to fulfill its election pledges.