Any Chance of Jews Benefiting by Reclamation of Pinsk Marshes? : Direct Question Put to Polish Minis

Jewish public opinion anxious to further the productivisation of the impoverished Jewish masses is greatly interested in the project of draining the Polysian marshlands and the possibility of Jews benefiting by the settlement opportunities that would be opened up there. Is there any chance of the Jewish population being settled on some of the reclaimed land in Polysian and engaging in agriculture like other people? Mr. Bernard Singer, a journalist on the staff of the Yiddish daily “Unser Express”here, asked the Minister of Agrarian Reform, Professor Kozlowsky, in the course of an interview.

If you speak of colonising openings for the Jewish population, the Minister replied, I must begin by pointing out that attempts to settle Jews on the land were made already in the days of Polish independence, and in a number of cases with satisfactory results. We have also old Jewish colonies in Poland, which grew up after the Polish partition. Besides, there are no legal restrictions in existence which could hold up or prevent the settlement of Jews on the land. The enjoyment of complete equal rights by the national minorities in Poland guarantee this, and a still greater guarantee is the traditional tolerance of the Polish State, which does not recognise any restrictions in this matter.

Obviously, the Minister went on, the colonisation work must be conducted on economic lines, on the principle that the people who settle on the land must be trained for agricultural work, and devote themselves exclusively to agriculture. When I speak of Jewish colonists, I have in mind people who are able and willing to devote themselves entirely to working on the land, because we intend to utilise this land solely for the settlement of such persons who want to engage in land work and to live exclusively by their own labour.

I have received the draft Statutes of a Jewish Society for Agriculture and Colonisation, the Minister added, and I shall have them approved.

The work of draining the swamps, the Minister explained, is dependent on our obtaining the necessary credits. Such big investments cannot be provided for in the annual State budget, but must be found by foreign capital. The Polysian swamps, he went on, contain several kinds of rich turfland, which could be used after reclamation as rich pasture land or rich meadows, for growing cereals and vegetables. -The tests carried through by the experimental station in Sarni have yielded results which exceed all expectations. The reclaimed Polysian turf fields will give us a tract of land of the finest quality, in no way behind the “black lands”, and suitable primarily for large-scale dairy-farming, cattle-breeding, etc. Polysia is as large in area as some of the smaller European countries, and constitutes a vast reservoir of land for our landless and insufficiently landed classes. The local population will be able to utilise the reclaimed areas only to a small extent, and the land will have to be thrown open to the poor population of other parts of the country.

The Ministry of Agrarian Reform in its work of improving the agricultural conditions has had in mind only economic motives and gives no need to national or religious questions. In proof of this you have the amelioration work in the adjoining Volhynia, which is settled by Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Germans and Jews. Polysia will be populated in the same say and by the same methods when the drainage works have been completed. About 160,000 families could be settled on the reclaimed land to engage in agriculture alone, but their activity would lead to a general revival of the whole area, the establishment of new industries and commerce and the building of towns, so that in the course of time we estimate that about 3 million people could be settled on this area, the Minister said.