A year’s imprisonment for three of the accused, six months for nine of them, and acquittal for the other 13, is the sentence of the Warsaw District Court handed down to-day in the trial of 25 persons, 23 Jews and two non-Jews, who have been charged with rioting in February 1931 at the Medem Bundist Children’s Sanatorium at Miedzeszyn, near Warsaw.
In December 1930, three members of the domestic staff were dismissed from the Medem Children’s Sanatorium, which is run by the Jewish Social Democratic Party, the Bund, and is named for the Bundist leader, Vladimir Medem, who died in New York in 1923. They had refused to take orders from the Administration of the Sanatorium, arguing that as Proletariane they would not be ordered about by a bourgeois. They were dismissed, and when the Bundist trade union refused to take up their case, they turned to the rival Communist trade union, which made an is sue of it.
A crowd of Communists broke into the Sanatorium, demanding the reinstatement of the dismissed employees, and a sum of a thousand zlotys as compensation for them.
The news of the Communist invasion was sent to Warsaw, where it caused hundreds of Bundists to proceed to the Sanatorium, which is not far outside the city, and the Communists were repulsed. After several weeks the Bundist guards were withdrawn, in the belief that the matter was finished with, but on the night of February 12th., about 200 Communists arrived at the sanatorium, and forced an entrance against the resistance of the staff. Several shots were fired. Windows were smashed, telephone and electric wires were cut, and many rooms were completely wrecked. The police arrived half an hour after the invasion and arrested four people. Two people, Mrs. Goldberg, 22 years of age, and Aaron Blechman, 24 years of age, were found wounded, and other wounded persons were removed before the arrival of the police. The Administrator of the Sanatorium, Mr. Galinsky, was also wounded.
The Children were carried to the upper floors by the staff, and escaped injury.
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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.
