Fighting Between Jewish Communists and Jewish Socialists in Poland: Communists Break into Bundist Ch

The conflict between Jewish Communists and Jewish Socialists of the Bundist Party which broke out last December over the dismissal of three members of the domestic staff of the Bundist Medem Children’s Sanatorium at Medzeshin, named in commemoration of the Bundist leader Vladimir Medem, who died in New York in 1923, was reopened by the Communists to-day. About 200 Communists broke into the Sanatorium, forcing an entrance against the resistance of the staff. Several shots were fired, although it is not clear on which side the shooting began. 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 persons. 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, is also wounded.

The children were carried to the upper floors by the staff, and escaped injury.

The trouble at the Sanatorium started with the refusal of a few of the dmoestic staff to take orders from the Administrator of the Sanatorium, arguing that they are proletarians, and as such could not take orders from a bourgeois. They were dismissed and when the Bundist trade unions refused to take up their case, they appealed to the Communist Union, which decided to make an issue of it.

A crowd of Communists broke into the Sanatorium, demanding that the dismissed workers should be reinstated, and claiming on their behalf a sum of a thousand zlotys. The news of the Communist invasion reached Warsaw, where it caused hundreds of Bundists to proceed to the Sanatorium which is not far outside the city, and the Communists were repulsed. Apparently the Bundists thought that the matter was now finished with and withdrew their defences, the Communists taking the opportunity to renew the attack now.

Clashes between Bundists and Communists are frequent in Poland, sometimes resulting in fatalities, usually arising out of Labour disputes started by the Communists, to which the Bundists refuse to give their recognition, the Communists in such cases denouncing the Bundists as blacklegs and attacking Bundists continuing at their work.