Monday, Jun. 06, 1949
Back in Business
Hungary's Communist government recently reopened Kis Tarcsa, notorious Nazi concentration camp near Budapest. Of its 8,000 present inmates, 90% are Jews.
The Communists do not necessarily persecute the Jews for the Nazis' racial reasons, but mainly because so many of the Jews are small businessmen, i.e., bourgeois "class enemies." One example: of Budapest's 19,000 clothing and textile stores, 18,000 are owned by Jews. Many of the stores have already been driven into bankruptcy by heavy taxation and government-operated shops which make a point of underselling them. The rest of the Jewish stores will shortly be expropriated, according to Hungarian Economic Boss Zoltan Vas, himself a Jew.
Most Hungarian Jews want to emigrate to Israel, but have been forbidden to do so. Some get out by paying a $750 fee to an underground railroad operated by Zoltan Vas as a sideline. Meanwhile, the Hungarian government, which is negotiating the terms of a trade agreement with Israel, is using the Jews for bargaining purposes. It has declared that it will permit the Jews to emigrate, but with a sharp proviso: the property each emigrant takes with him is balanced off against bananas, lemons and other future imports to Hungary from Israel.
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