Around the Black Sea / Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania

by William Eleroy Curtis

One of the first acts of King Carol when he came to the throne of Roumania in 1866 was to provide a constitution which guarantees civil and religious equality and freedom to all citizens of Roumania; free compulsory education, the right of petition, the right of public meetings, and specifically provides that the difference of religious creeds shall not be used as a ground for exclusion or incapacity in the enjoyment of civil and political rights or the exercise of any of the professions, trades, or industries.

These provisions were still further guaranteed by the powers of Europe in a treaty signed by all of them at Berlin at the close of the war between Russia and Turkey in 1878. Article thirty-four of that treaty specifically mentions the Jews. This treaty proclaimed the equality of all creeds before the law for the special purpose of regulating the Jewish question in Roumania, but its provisions were promptly nullified on the pretext that all persons living in Roumania who did not profess the Christian religion were aliens and therefore the provisions did not apply to them.

This theory has been the basis of all legislation and regulation in Roumania since that time. The Jewish subjects of Roumania who had assisted in the revolution for liberty, who had been cordially commended by their neighbours and their king, disappeared from existence with a stroke of the pen. Thenceforth there were no Roumanian Jews, and all Jews who happened to be in Roumania were declared outlaw aliens, not subject to protection.

To emphasize this action a series of raids upon Jewish settlements was organized, and the hunting down of the Jews began. The most brutal atrocities were committed. Thousands of families were driven from their homes, and in many cases their houses were burned over their heads. These raids were led by officials and policemen and soldiers, and for months they were general throughout Roumania. The barbarities shocked the Powers of Europe to such an extent that energetic remonstrances were addressed to the Roumanian government, and a change of the ministry occurred. But while the violence was suspended, except at intervals, the object of driving the Jews from Roumania was attempted by legislative measures.

The guarantee of protection in the Berlin treaty has never been recognized. Every Jew has been declared an alien, although his ancestors may have lived in the country for twenty centuries. No Jew can be naturalized except by act of parliament; they are prohibited from holding government positions; they are not allowed to organize corporations or joint stock companies; they are shut out of the learned professions; they cannot be bankers or brokers, agents or forwarders, or engage in any similar classes of business; they cannot engage in manufacturing, and cannot work in factories; they cannot be employed upon railroads; and there is a law providing that no one shall employ a Jew without also employing two Roumanians, which practically prohibits them from earning wages in the small industries and on small farms.

Jews are prohibited from owning farm land, and the renting of land to a Jew is forbidden. No Jew can keep a drug store, or be a veterinary surgeon; they cannot be employed in the sanitary service of the state or municipality; they cannot be received as free patients in hospitals, except in cases of great urgency; no Jew can peddle merchandise in Roumania, or sell liquor, or tobacco, and nearly every other mercantile occupation is closed to them.

The free schools are for Roumanians only; Jews must pay tuition fees, and even then they cannot be admitted if Christian children want their places. A law passed in 1898 debars Jews from all professional and agricultural schools and admits them only to schools of commerce and of the arts and trades to the number of one fifth of the average attendance, and then they must pay tuition, where Christian students are admitted free. Where they have founded schools of their own they are hampered with the most exasperating regulations and are required to keep open on Saturdays and on other Jewish holidays.

Although the Jewish population is not recognized by law, the young men are compelled to serve their time in the army, just as if they had a legal existence, but no Jew can be an officer; they are excluded from pensions, and in barracks and camp they are required to perform menial service, to clean the streets and the closets and to carry off the garbage.

A Jew has no standing in court; his testimony is not accepted; when he is a defendant he has no right to employ counsel or question a jury. It is not necessary to recite other features of the peculiar laws and regulations which are intended to drive the Jews from Roumania by making it impossible for them to earn a living there. It is sufficient to say that a Jew is not recognized as having a legal existence; he is an object of persecution as well as contempt and has no redress for any ill treatment he may suffer in body, mind or estate.

These persecutions have driven a large proportion of the Jewish people from Roumania to the United States and other countries. Emigration is their only hope, and the number of arrivals at the ports of the United States in 1902 caused Secretary Hay to call the attention of the civilized world to the inhuman treatment of that race in Roumania by making a formal protest. The pretext for this unusual action was the large number of emigrants that had been driven to this country under conditions which rendered them unfit for citizens of the United States and were likely to make them a burden upon public and private charity.