Intellectuals Petition Polish Embassy for Warsaw Repudiation of Anti-semitism

Former Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith and Prof. George Wald, a Nobel Prize winner, headed a group of 55 American scholars and artists who signed a petition urging the Polish Government “to repudiate unequivocally all anti-Semitism, including that disguised as anti-Zionism,” it was revealed today. A delegation presented the petition to Ambassador Jerzy Michalowski at the Polish Embassy here. Others who signed the petition included Prof. Simon Kuznets, of Harvard, Pulitzer Prize winning writers, Bernard Malamud and Justin Kaplan; William Alfred, the playwright; I.F. Stone, editor of the I.F. Stone Weekly; and members of the faculties of Harvard, Brandeis, University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Wellesley College and University of California.

The petition notes that the undersigned “have been watching with growing dismay, the thinly disguised anti-Semitic campaign pursued in recent weeks by certain elements of the Polish Government and press.” It said that “the foreign policy of Poland and its relations with the State of Israel are a matter for Poland alone to decide.” But, it added, “world opinion cannot remain silent when the memory of three million Polish Jews who perished in Poland during World War II is insulted, and the dignity and security of the small remnant of this community is jeopardized for the sake of political expedience.”

The petition pointed out that “such appeals to the basest instincts of the most ignorant elements of society have been in the past the classical method employed by discredited reactionary governments.” it seems to us outrageous,” it added, “that a socialist Government should resort to methods typical of reactionary regimes. We urge the Polish Government to repudiate unequivocally all anti-Semitism, including that disguised as anti-Zionism.”