The Polish Government is proceeding as ruthlessly as before to deprive Polish Jews of their means of livelihood by cancelling their trading licences, the Yiddish daily “Najer Hajnt” here declares to-day, repudiating its own report published on the eve of Christmas (quoted in the J.T.A. Bulletin of Dec. 28th.) in which it predicted that the Ministry of Finance would give the Jews of Poland a Christmas gift by agreeing on the intervention of the Jewish representatives not to withdraw any tobacco or spirit trading licences from Jewish holders with the coming of the New Year, but would automatically renew all licences on payment of the licence fees.
On the contrary, we now learn, the paper writes, that of the 1,300 licences for selling alcohol or tobacco which have still remained in Jewish hands, no less than 600 have been cancelled, and the rest have been prolonged only till July 1932. All our expectations have thus been disappointed, the “Hajnt” concludes, and the Government seems determined to clear all Jews out of the Government monopoly enterprises, and in these desperate times to add hundreds more of Jewish families to the already large numbers of those who have lost all means of sustenance.
The withdrawal from Polish Jews of trading licences in Government monopoly articles was one of the grounds of complaint in Dr. Cyrus Adler’s presidential address to the 25th. annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee held last month.
When Poland, in line with its Socialist policy, he said, launched its campaign of etatism, or Government monopoly of industry, thousands of Jews who had been engaged in these industries, like salt, tobacco, and alcohol, were dismissed, and non-Jews are employed in their places.
Discrimination has been generally complained of, Dr. Adler added, in the collection of taxes, in the granting of licences for the operation of all kinds of businesses, in the letting of public contracts, and in the operation of laws which handicap Jewish artisans.
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