An anti-Semitic volcano is bubbling below the surface in the underground within the Polish Communist Party, it was learned here today in reliable quarters. The whispering campaign against the Jews in the party, which has as its objective the current leadership of the Polish Communist Party and the Polish Government, has become bolder.
It began in 1956 after the visit to Warsaw of Soviet Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev and was for a time suppressed through the personal intervention of Wladislaw Gomulka, first secretary of the Polish Communist Party. Though anti-Semitism is suppressed in public life and legally banned by both party and government, it is being kept alive by anti-government elements who attempt to discredit the government by associating it with the Jews.
The number of politically and ideologically trained Communists within the party is small, the majority consisting of narrow, prejudiced pre-war Polish officials who blame the Jews for their own failures and shortcomings. Corruption and misappropriation of public funds and property is widespread and these facts occasionally emerge in the open.
The anti-Semitic elements within the government machinery blame their Jewish colleagues for this abuse of office. In actual opposition to a government which they serve for opportunistic reasons, these officials attempt to undermine the position of their superiors by picturing them as “obedient tools of a Jewish conspiracy against Poland.”
The anti-Semitic campaign even extends to the Jewish wives of non-Jewish ministers who are accused of leaking state secrets to foreign correspondents of Jewish origin. Jewish department heads are charged with appointing and promoting Jews exclusively, and Jewish officials are said to be using government cars for private pleasure driving and arranging priorities at state-owned holiday resorts for Jews.
One characteristic of the whispering campaign is that it is directed in part against Jews who long age quit Poland for Israel. A similar smear is aimed at Polish Jews who died in Hitler’s murder mills and are now being held responsible, in whispered slurs, of many of Poland’s pre-war misfortunes.
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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.
