The expected happened. The Polish Senate yesterday adopted the revised Polish constitution abolishing the proportional electoral system. This means that henceforth Jews will have practically no chance for election to the Polish Parliament as Jewish representatives.
The Jewish population in Poland—ten per cent of the entire population — will thus have to remain mute. Having no representative in the Parliament it will no longer be in a position to voice its grievances except through the Yiddish press.
Little as the Jewish deputies in the Polish Parliament could influence Polish politics, their voices nevertheless were embarrassing to the government. The recent address delivered by Dr. Joshua Thon, in which he pictured Jewish privation in Poland and criticized the government for the heavy taxation system, has not yet been forgotten by many in Poland and abroad. The same is true with regard to the address delivered recently by Deputy Rotenstreich.
Now, with the voting system changed, the Polish government will be spared any further such embarrassing addresses. With no Jews in the Parliament the Jewish question can hardly come up for discussion there.
The fact that the Polish Jews will be able to voice their plight only through the Yiddish press, their remaining channel for reaching the world abroad, is of little consolation. Everybody knows that the Yiddish press in Poland is thoroughly censored although no official censorship exists in Poland.
The full text of the revised Polish constitution is not yet obtainable. It is therefore difficult to say at the present moment whether the paragraphs in the old constitution concerning the protection of the minority rights have also been affected. In renouncing Polish national minority obligations, Colonel Beck, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared last September in Geneva that these international obligations are not necessary because they are already guaranteed by the Polish constitution. It is, therefore, to be hoped that Col. Beck’s statement will be substantiated also by the new constitution.
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.
