On November 7, Rabbi Dr. Joshua Thon, Polish Zionist leader and deputy in the Polish Sejm, opened the budget debate in the Polish parliament with the following speech condemning the Polish government for its attitude to-ward the Jews. Dr. Thon is president of the Jewish club of Deputies.
Gentlemen! It might be interesting to quote, at the very beginning of my speech, an example of how those who stand at the head of the government speak and act and of how they should not speak and act. The other day, for instance, the Premier delivered a speech over the radio not, as should have been the case, before the Sejm! —into which he injected, as though in passing, a modest but really clever remark that his advice to the village and to the peasants was to cultivate the land as little as posible and in that way lead to a rise in the prices of agricultural products. I think the Premier should rather have spoken, not of prices, but of the hunger. For prices are nothing more than an economic function, but hunger is painful.
If I, Gor forbid, were premier, I should rather have said that there might be as many agricultural products as possible and people might have enough to eat. In the words of the Premier there is something which gives much more food for thought and which fills us with anxiety. Namely: favoring the farm at the expense of the city!
CITES PAY FOR ARMS IN AGRARIAN POLAND
True, Poland is, primarily, an agrarian country, and the farms need to be strengthened, but if we wish to occupy the position of a great power and spend almost a Billion for military purposes (761 million openly and the rest under various positions) —we should also remember that it is the city which gives most of the money for this, and not the farm. Then why shouldn’t the city enjoy the same protection from the government as the farm?
But among us the city is treated as though it were the step-child of the government. It is only when money is required, when taxes need to be collected that the city plays a major part. But such a method can very quickly disappoint, for even the mulcting has its limits. Soon there will be nothing to take from the city. I often ask myself: What is the psychological background for such a monstrous attitude towards the city? And it seems to me that the reason for this attitude should be sought in what these days is called, not very elegantly but therefore very poetically, “Jewish flood.” Yes, it is this “flood” which calls forth the inimical attitude towards the city.
Yes, this is a flood in which Jews are drowning. We are feeling it too strongly. We see the Jewish misery growing from day to day and assuming forms so sharp they cannot be any sharper. The gentlemen who sit on the government benches and are responsible for the fate of the realm must finally realize that three million persons cannot be condemned to destruction!
NOT A CONSISTENT WAY TO GOVERN
But what do we see? Our government is continuously exerting all its intelligence—of which it has a considerable amount—to cut off from the Jewish population economic branch and source of labor. Apparently it thinks that not until then will it govern wisely, and only then will it have the proper form when it succeeds in depriving the Jews of another source of income, another economic branch. But that is not a consistent way to govern.
It happens among us that Jewish social institutions are intentionally so persecuted that they must be destroyed, or are degraded to such an extent that they are forced to close. Or it happens that the subsidies by which a number of Jewish institutions have benefited and were thus enabled to exist, such as the professional schools, are withdrawn.
The general situation is, therefore, this: The government does not only not give any support to help for the proper development of the Jewish economic institutions. It brings its iron hand down upon them, in order to hinder them and keep them from becoming firmly established.
DECREES ARE CHOKING THE HEBREW SCHOOLS
The same is true of the Hebrew school system. This is developing by itself, receiving no-support from the government whatsoever and no subsidies. But what comes of it, when the curatorium comes and says to the schools: “Stop having the character you now have.” In other words, “Stop being Hebrew schools!” And is it not the same when the Warsaw curatorium comes and commands the Tarbuth to conduct its teaching in Polish and to give Hebrew subjects as non-required subjects during special hours? That means choking the life of the Hebrew schools, where teaching in Hebrew is the vital element.
The chicaneries on the one hand and the complete lack of support on the other hand are in sharp contrast to what Minister Beck said in Geneva: that the minority accord is not necessary for Poland because he treats the minorities in Poland as well as if the minority accord did not exist.
THE ATTEMPT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS WITHOUT AID
I do not know, that may be exaggerated loyalty. But so long as I have anything to do with Jewish politics in Poland we shall not bring our complaints to the forum of the League of Nations. At home I shall fight to the last, but I shall not go to others for help. I prefer to say here in the Sejm, or in the minister’s cabinet, all that I have to say. But I shall not come to Geneva with charges, and after all it is a fact that there is not a single charge of ours at Geneva. We have tried to solve our problems differently
On November 7, Rabbi Dr. Joshua Thon, Polish Zionist leader and deputy in the Polish Sejm, opened the budget debate in the Polish parliament with the following speech condemning the Polish government for its attitude to-ward the Jews. Dr. Thon is president of the Jewish club of Deputies.
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.
