Rumania continued its anti-Jewish policy during the war. Rumanian Jews were registered and supervised as aliens, because, owing to defective registration, they could not prove that they were born in Rumania. Many elderly persons were born in places where no registers were kept. There were no registers before 1866, and it was only in 1880 that the whole country began to keep such registers. This brings us directly to the Jewish clause of the treaty with Germany. The German Government had led the Jews in Germany to believe that it would protect the rights of Jews in the treaty. But the treaty merely stated that those Jews hitherto considered aliens were to be naturalized by law if they could prove that they and their parents were born in Rumania, or that they had taken part in the war, either in active service or in army service (Hilfsdienst). Such a clause could only open the way to further equivocations. By the addition of this clause to the general statement that differences of religious faith shall have no influence on the legal rights of inhabitants, and in particular on their political and civil rights, the treaty of 1918 actually went back from the position taken by the treaty of 1878. It is not even found possible to make the officers of a regiment in Rumania give a Jewish soldier the paper necessary to prove that he has served in the army.
The letters to the Author, in which the two Entente Powers (England and Italy) expressed their desire to rectify this unjust state of affairs, are as follows:—
Foreign Office,
June 15th, 1918.
Sir,
In reply to your letter of the 3rd instant, relative to the question of Jewish rights in Rumania, I am directed by Mr. Secretary Balfour to state that His Majesty’s Government fully realize that the enfranchisement promised to the Jews in Rumania under the recent treaty is less liberal than that by which the former Rumanian Government had publicly pledged themselves. They take this opportunity of assuring your Organization that they are most anxious to do everything in their power to secure a just and permanent settlement of the Jewish question in that country.
I am, Sir,
Your most obedient, humble Servant,
(Signed) W. Langley.
N. Sokolow, Esq.,
35 Empire House,