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Jewish and Polish Workers in Warsaw Demonstrate Together on May Day: First Time for Many Years Joint

May 4, 1931
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For the first time for many years the Jewish and Polish Labour Organisations here held a joint May Day celebration to-day, and unlike the experience of past years no incident occurred. In previous years, the participation of Jewish workers’ in the May Day demonstration was always made the occasion of an anti-Jewish outbreak by the Fascists, and it was complained that the members of the Polish Socialist Party not only did not protect their Jewish comrades but actually joined in the anti-Jewish hunt, which used to claim many Jewish victims in dead and injured. For some years now the Jewish Labour Parties have in consequence been holding their May Day demonstrations separately, confining them to the streets of the Jewish quarter. To-day, however, the Jewish Socialist Party Bund, which recently joined the Second Socialist International, to which the Polish Socialist Party belongs, joined its demonstration, together with the Right Poale Zion, which also belongs to the International. There was a great deal of fraternisation and greeting at the meeting-place in the Grzybow Place, where the demonstrators assembled to set out on their march.

The Bundist mottoes were “Down with Fascism” and “Rights for the Workers”; the Poale Zion mottoes wore “Long Live the Socialist Heholuz”, and “Long live the Histadruth” (the Palestine Labour Federation).

The Left Poale Zion held a separate demonstration in the Jewish quarter, which, too, passed without any disturbances. Their motto was “Long live the solidarity of the Jewish and Arab workers”.

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