The only hope of the surviving Jews in Poland is emigration, Jacob Pat, executive secretary of the Jewish Labor Committee, who has just returned from a trip to that country, reported at a press conference here.
“It does not matter to them where they go, as long as they are permitted to enter any country,” he said. “They would leave for Palestine, for the United States, or for any country where they could live among Jews.”
Anti-Semitism is prevalent throughout Poland, Mr. Pat declared. He pointed out that the Government is doing its best to check it, but asserted that it faced an impossible task in view of the fact that a very large majority of the Polish population his deeply anti-Semitic. “Many Poles cannot forgive the fact that there are still Jews left alive today in their country,” he reported.
Despite the terror under which the surviving Jews live, they are making every possible effort to re-establish their communal and cultural life, the Jewish Labor Committee representative stated. He added that large transports of Polish Jews are arriving from the USSR to Poland. He estimated that there are at present about 80,000 Jews in Poland, including many who are still afraid to admit that they are Jews and who use non-Jewish identity documents.
Many of the 4,000 Jewish children who survived are still in Christian homes and must be “bought” from the Poles who gave them shelter during the Nazi occupation and who are now asking compensation, Mr. Pat said. He added that during his stay in Poland he personally “liberated” forty-two Jewish children from Polish peasants by paying the cost of their maintenance during the occupation years.
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.
