The Maccabaean

THE die is cast. Rumania's army is about to join the millions of soldiers involved in the gigantic European war. And the forty thousand fighters of Jewish blood in the ranks of this Rumanian force will certainly give a helpful hand to the probable conquest of Transylvania. These forty thousand Jews will, by their unconsciously enthusiastic participation, provoke the unexpected enslavement of hundreds of thousands additional Jews. The Jews of Bukowina and Transylvania will help to increase the number of the victims of Rumania's savage policy toward her subjects of our race. If it were an argument that a quarter of a million Jews are too insignificant in comparison with the millions of Polish, Russian, and Galician Jews —to deserve the close attention of our American brethren, we comfort ourselves with the very sad thought, that, at the end of the European struggle, we shall find almost a million Jews in the grasp of a Greater Rumania, intoxicated with pride and success and deaf to reason.

Through the insistence of Waddington, the French ambassador, at the Congress of Berlin, after the Russo-Rumano-Turkish war of 1877-8, the European powers granted the independence of the principality of Rumania, on condition that she emancipate her Jews. The following is the text of articles 43 and 44 of the Treaty of Berlin, July 13, 1878:

“Article 43. The High Contracting Parties recognize the independence of Rumania, subject to the conditions set forth in the two following Articles.

“Article 44. In Rumania the difference of religious creeds and confessions shall not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and political rights, admission to public employments, functions, and honors, or the exercise of the various professions and industries in any locality whatsoever.

‘The freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship shall be assured to all persons belonging to the Rumanian State, as well as to foreigners, and no hindrance shall be offered either to the hierarchical organizations of the different communions, or to their relations with their spiritual chiefs. The subjects and citizens of all the Powers, traders or others, shall be treated in Rumania without distinetion of ereed. on a footinz of perfect eauality.”

This was clear and indubitable. Rumania gained her freedom on this essential condition. The small and weak state, barely delivered from Turkish mastery and scarcely enjoying the brightness of liberty, performed, however, her first independent duty by deceiving the great powers singing the treaty of her redemption. At the time Rumania was weak and insignificant. Her feeble voice could hardly be heard in the tumultuous concert of Europe. "The only attitude of a little state when Europe imposes a condition is to accept it with pleasure," said the Ambassador of Rumania

in an interview with Von Buelow. Rumania was “modest and ‘umble.’” Now, how will she discuss the matter after annexing Transylvania and Bukowina, when she will be a power almost of the geographical size of Italy, with a population of ten or twelve million inhabitants? How talkative Rumania will then become, how proud, how stubborn!

To obey the Treaty of Berlin, Rumania’s obvious duty was to emancipate at once her subjects of Jewish faith. She should have called a Constituent Assembly, which should have inserted in Rumania’s Constitution a special paragraph legalizing the situation already acquired by the Jews. As Vasile Boerescu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his note sent to the European powers, August 28, 1879, wrote: “The Jews who will not obtain immediate naturalization, will not be aliens, but will remain what they always were—a category of Rumanians, that is, Rumanian subjects. From now on there will be in Rumania three categories of Jews: aliens, Rumanian subjects. and eitizens.”

The chief pretext for Rumania’s hesitation in granting immediate citizenship to the Jews was, as she told the European governments, that the Jews form a class of unassimilated individuals. Rumania utilized a fragment of the Arabian Nights—to be euphemistie. A population which established itself two hundred and fifty years ago (quoting only from anti-Semitie sources) could not be an unassimilated element, and in fact was not. Non-assimilation was only the pretext of Rumania to deceive the European powers and, we must agree, it was a very simple argument. Because in certain small towns of Moldavia, the Jewish tradesmen wore black caftans instead of the peasants’ white blouses, they were supposed to have been unassimilated. That was not why the Rumanian political parties could not give them rights. As a proof, from that time Rumania’s policy has been to refuse them the opportunity to assimilate. Education was denied them, and is to-day. The official schools were closed to their children. And the “unassimilated” Jew wearing the black caftan, with his feeble resources, made greater sacrifices to instruct his children in the language of his step- country.

The Constituent Assembly met and the famous Article 7 was adopted. The European powers recognized Rumania’s independence, Italy being the first to believe in her sincerity in dealing with her Jews. And Article 7, which was meant by Europe for the redemption of the Jews, turned out to be a weapon against them and effaced at a single stroke even the former legal situation, reducing them from the category of Rumanians to mere aliens subiect to expulsion.

In fact, Rumania's modification of the former Article 7, which provided that non-Christians could not obtain Rumanian citizenship, was not enacted for the purpose of obeying the Treaty of Berlin. Rumania manufactured a new Article 7,