training, there would certainly be no numerus clausus, and perhaps there would not even be any excesses.
How can there be liberty of education when certain faculties have adopted decisions to practice religious discrimination? Have the University authorities made any stand against the disgraceful excesses? Have they given any protection to Jewish students who were being brutally beaten? Have the criminals who were caught been punished? Has there been any protest by our scientists and learned men against the moral infamy and the spiritual degradation of these University outrages?
Deputy Minzberg, of the Agudath Israel, the President of the Lodz Jewish Community, who is a member of the Government Party, strongly supported the bill, contending that the autonomy of the Universities is an anachronism. When there are anti-Jewish excesses all the Universities made possible by the passiveness of some of the professors, and when liberty of education means the liberty to attack defenseless fellow citizens and colleagues, then there is no point in maintaining liberty of education, he said.
Two National Democratic Deputies, Staniszkis and Winiarski, denounced the bill as a blow to the principle of liberty of education.
The National Democratic organ, “Gazcta Warszawska”, commenting on the discussion, writes:
“The Minister of Education makes no secret about it, that his bill is aimed at preventing the anti-Jewish manifestations at the Universities. What he wants to do is to make it possible for the Jewish students to attend lectures without fear of attack. We are convinced that the stream of Jews flocking to the Polish Universities is not beneficial to Poland, but is very harmful, and that we must make use of every method possible to put a stop to it.
“We are not going to discuss the ethics of the thing with M. Jedrzejewitz. But we know that if the autonomy of the Universities is abolished the Jewish students will be able to attend the Universities and to work in the laboratories with a feeling of security. And naturally, the result will be to bring a bigger stream of Jewish students flocking into the Universities. Those young Jews who today go abroad to study, because they are afraid of the anti-Semitism at the Polish Universities, will have nothing more to fear, so they will stop in Poland. Worse still: we shall get masses of young Jews coming to Poland from other countries, from Germany, Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Roumania, Lithuania, and Latvia, where anti-Semitic feeling is restricting their numbers at the Universities, and where nobody even contemplates abolishing the autonomy of the Universities in order to enable Jews to obtain education.”
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.
