To be continued tomorrow
it possible to pass laws and ordinances which undermines the Jewish economic status; it creates for the government an opportunity to snatch legally all possible chances of livelihood from the Jews; it gives it the assurance that it can do as it wills with the Jews because nobody in the country will protest.
The Jews of Poland realize that the present course of the Polish government aims at their economic ruin. They cannot, however, help themselves. They are in a vise and do not see the slightest means of escape. All that Jewish leaders in Poland can do is to knock on the doors of the various Government officials and beg for the temporary postponement of the anti-Jewish laws; for permission for the Jews to breathe freely another few months; for the law to be withheld a few weeks. They don’t even dream of completely erasing anti-Jewish laws from the books. The Jewish leaders are not the people who can demand that, nor would the Polish government listen to their demands.
COMMISSION PROPOSED
Something must be done, therefore, for Polish Jewry, if the Jewish world does not want to see a million Jewish beggars in Poland this winter.
A Jewish commission from other lands to come to Poland for an official investigation of the outspoken, economic anti-Semitic course of the Polish government, would be a great aid in this respect. A Jewish commission from other lands would be able to influence the Polish government whereas Jews here cannot. The commission would be able to compile a list of all the anti-Jewish laws and publish them in the form of a “black book” which would shock the non-Jewish world. This commission would be able to bring the condition of Polish Jewry before the League of Nations, to which Poland is responsible on questions of minority rights. The foreign Jewish commission would be able to accomplish much more than all the Polish Jewish leaders for whom the Polish government has not the necessary respect, and who have not the necessary access to the Polish government.
SPLIT INTO FACTIONS
Polish Jewry is split into several factions. It cannot represent itself. It has not the necessary influence with the government. The government does not reckon with it and does not find it necessary to listen to its protests.
Altogether different, however, would be the situation of a committee of Jewish representatives of other lands. With such a committee the Polish government would be the situation of a com-take the commission more seriously than it has Polish Jewish leaders. The Polish government would not like to be faced with an unfriendly world-wide Jewish public opinion. It would reconsider whether it pays to proceed with the present economic campaign against the Jews or whether its anti-Jewish program should be eased for a time.
A Jewish investigating committee to be sent to Poland must be the course of action undertaken by American and English Jewry.
To send such a commission to Poland is only one of the measures necessary to save Polish Jewry in its political and economic destruction. Other methods must also be found. Means of relief. Means of reconstructive aid. Means of credit and small loans. Means must be found to save the storekeeper, the artisan, the unemployed worker and all those other Jews who now wander about Poland without livelihood and who do not know what the morrow may bring.
There are now in Poland a million unemployed Jews without any source of income. A million future Jewish beggars.
On the streets of Warsaw, Lwow and Cracow, I found young Jewish men and women with children on their arms, standing with outstretched hands in lines in front of restaurants, waiting to beg a penny or two to buy bread. Only a dry piece of bread.
They are bedraggled and barefooted. Hunger is imprinted plainly on their faces. Yet there is food everywhere. Every third store in Lwow is a grocery store. Every fifth door on the main streets of Warsaw is a restaurant, a coffee house, or a fruit and food market.
In this wealth of food—food not at all expensive—there are in Poland now hundreds of thousands of Jewish homes where dry bread is a luxury; where whole families live on bread and onions; where ten cents a day is a lot of money; where children do not know the taste of milk.
No one takes any notice of these unfortunate families. Especially not the government. There is no government relief for unemployed Jews. There is no protection against hunger for Jews.
BEAR ON JEWS ONLY
In the meanwhile more rules are prepared in the government offices with mathematical precision. They are so calculated as not to bear an anti-Semitic character but yet to affect only the Jews. The geneal tendency is to strengthen the economic positions of the Polish non-Jewish population at the expense of the Polish Jewish population.
It is not a difficult task for a government to concentrate its powers on the destruction of the economic security of a portion of its people which has no one to whom to appeal. The economic destruction of the Jewish population of Poland is, therefore, carried out by the Polish government with conscious ruthlessness and without any consideration for the three million Jewish citizens. This government policy of economically ruining the Jews is progressing from month to month because, on the one hand, it receives insufficient opposition from the native Jews and from Jews of other lands, and on the other hand, it is openly commended by all existing political parties in Poland, even by those parties which on other issues are bitterest opponents of the present regime.
The Nara, the Polish anti-Semitic National Radical party, is now deadened and suppressed. The government’s anti-Semitic course, however remains unchanged. The anti-Semitic trend of the present regime will continue whether the Nara exists or not. Only strong intervention from Jewish organizations of other countries can stem the present tide to any extent. Such intervention should have taken place long ago. Now, however, it is inevitable.
Jewry in America and England must not look on indifferently while a million Jews in Poland are tuned into beggars. Something must be done for Polish Jewry.
And the sooner, the better.
To be continued tomorrow
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.
