Poland’s only Yiddish daily, Folkstimme, is being forced to publish lengthy excerpts from speeches by Egypt’s President Nasser and other Arab leaders in addition to denunciations of “Zionists” by Polish Party and Government officials and demands for the dismissal of Jewish officials for alleged Zionist sympathies, it was learned here today.
The paper, organ of the Jewish Cultural Association, only yesterday published a statement of allegiance and loyalty to the Polish regime. But it was obviously under intense pressure to condemn Zionism, which it originally failed to do and is therefore being fed, and made to publish, anti-Zionist items from PAP, the official Polish news agency. One passage that appeared in the paper today, read “we demand the dismissal from their posts in the administration and in public bodies, the various Zionists who falsify the true purpose of Polish history and Polish culture.” This, and excerpts from Nasser and other Arab speeches, carried the PAP credit line. There was no editorial comment from the paper itself.
(New York Times correspondent Jonathan Randal reported from Warsaw today that “the Cultural Association of Polish Jews bowed to official pressure and publicly condemned what the regime has termed a Zionist-directed anti-Polish slander campaign in the West.” Mr. Randal reported further that a resolution adopted by Party members in Szczecin (Stettin) demanded the purge of “those Jews who are cosmopolitan to the point of not being able to choose between Poland and Israel.” He quoted the newspaper, Kurier Polski, in reply to foreign critics who have accused the Warsaw regime of anti-Semitism: “It is not our fault that among the open trouble mongers who attempt to create disturbances in the country, among the creators of abuse and errors, among those guilty of negligence, economic as well as educational, were a certain percentage of people of Jewish origin. Should we permit them to go ahead because they are Jews?”)
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.
