The Polish Government has decided to create a special Under-Secretariat of State for the affairs of the national minorities in Poland. It is reported that Senator Koschnitza will be appointed to the new post.
The Polish press carried a denial of the reports recently circulated that the Government intends to take diplomatic steps toward the abolishment of the national minorities treaty.
Poland, in establishing the new office, follows in the footsteps of Soviet Russia, Lithuania and Ukrainia, who were the first states in Eastern Europe to recognize the needs of national minorities, by establishing special Departments for them.
The leaders of the national minorities in Poland, to which belong the Germans, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and Jews, are greatly interested in this sudden decision of the Polish Government. The fact that the Government gives recognition of the existence of a minorities problem might indicate either a reversal of its former position that there were no national minorities in Poland and that all the inhabitants ought to be considered Poles, on that the new office has been created for the purpose of checking national feeling.
In this connection, the fact that the man slated for the new post is a leader of the National Democratic Party, known for its extreme chauvinism and anti-Semitism, is significant.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
