Rumanian Exodus

The exodus began last September. On the holiest of Jewish holy days, Yom Kippur, word spread through Bucharest synagogues that after six long years their prayers had been answered. The Communist Rumanian government was registering Jews for permits to leave for Israel.

Since then, in a hushed movement that all sides are anxious to minimize, some 10,000 Rumanian Jews have crossed the Iron Curtain carrying exit papers for Israel. In Rumania, long known for its virulent antiSemitism, the Jews get little help from anyone. During the Nazi occupation, their numbers were reduced from 757,000 to 430,000; after World War II about 60,000 were allowed to emigrate to Israel. Today's flashes of anti-Semitism stem partly from the prevailing economic discontent, and from resentment of those Jews who became Communists after the Russians took over--the Russians reasoned that Jews were safely anti-Nazi. Now exit was made as tough as possible for everyone who applied.

Jews who first applied as much as four years ago line up daily in front of the Ministry of Interior, often remaining overnight in the street to be sure of getting admittance next morning. Applicants have to shuffle through 80 different government tax offices collecting the signatures of 80 uncooperative clerks attesting that they have settled all tax claims.

Jews often tip the mailman to bring the return reply to them, rather than to the concierge, who is usually a Communist agent and apt to use the knowledge to grab the applicant's apartment or his possessions. When finally ready to go, emigrants must surrender all money and documents, and submit an inventory of their permitted 154 lbs. of luggage (132 lbs. for children). Furniture may not be taken with them, and it may not be legally sold. The emigrants are required to write and often to rewrite statements that they had never had it so good as in Rumania. As a last indignity, at the frontier, all cigarettes are taken from them.

In Israel last week, where Rumanian Jews were arriving at the rate of 6,000 a month, authorities estimated that 100,000 of the 250,000 Jews left in Rumania would, if allowed, join the exodus to Israel over the next months. This flood would easily top the 40,000 that Poland let out after its 1956 thaw, and would leave Russia's 3,000,000 as the only big Jewish community remaining in Eastern Europe. Rumania's action, says one Israeli official, "promises to be bigger than the Spanish expulsion of 1492."

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