An exodus of Jews from Poland, “rivaling in numbers the Exodus from Egypt in Biblical times, ” is under way, the New York Times reported today from Warsaw. “In recent months, ” Times correspondent Sydney Gruson wrote,” the trickle of Polish Jews to Israel has become a flood. It has included Communists and non-Communists, manual laborers and doctors, office workers and professors.”
The Polish authorities no longer are trying to halt it either by persuasion or by with holding passports, Mr. Gruson stated. The number of passport requests already has passed 25, 000, it said, and no let-up is in sight, he added. Estimates of the number of Jews in Poland vary between 35, 000 and 70, 000.
Mr. Gruson stressed the fact that there is no longer an effort to hide the existence in Poland of what Juliusz Burgin, a leading Communist, described as “raving anti-Semitism. ” He also quoted the Communist newspaper Po Prostu as writing: “We are witnessing the self-liquidation of the Jewish community that has existed in Poland for nearly 700 years.”
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