J. D. B. News Letter

very large extent with bitter complaints.

“I declare here that the Jewish population is in addition to the general crisis suffering from a specific crisis, for the specific ways of life of Polish Jewry make our distress more acute. Trading and artisanship, the principal sources of Jewish economic life, are weighed down tenfold more than any other branches of economic activity in this time of general catastrophe. Polish Jewry has recently been reduced to total ruin. About a huindred thousand trading enterprises have been shut down. The economic crisis and the policy pursued by the guilds have caused large numbers of artisan workshops to close down. If you add to this several hundred thousand Jewish unemployed workers, you will find that there are a quarter of a million Jews in Poland who are earning nothing at all. That means more than a third of the entire Jewish population in the country. Under such conditions there should in a normal society be a complete reorganization of the economic structure of the Jewish population. The process of pauperization and declassation of the Jewish masses is making rapid strides, and there seems no hope of improvement.

“There are people who say that there are a great many Jewish merchants, and look at them with envy. The National Democrats always talk of the rich Jewish merchants in their anti-Jewish boycott propaganda. But in a normal society Polish Jews should be proportionally represented in the other branches of economic activity, into which no Jews are permitted to enter. We cannot even dream of such a thing. On the contrary, we hear that the Jews ought to be driven out of Poland altogether. Or we are told that beating Jews is the way to regenerate Polish youth.

“There was a time when the creator of National Democratic ideology told the world that the Jews are an international power, and to break their power Jews should be beaten and boycotted.

“Now the Grand Mandarin of the National Democratic Orders says that the Jews have ceased to be an international power. So again, beat and boycott the Jews because they are not powerful enough to retaliate. Whatever you do, beat and boycott the Jews.

“What are we Jews to do? How are we to obtain the money to pay the enormous burdens of taxation that you impose upon us? Things with us are bad, so bad that we can no longer endure them.”

There is one other matter, which even at this moment of utter desperation we have the courage to declare, said Deputy Minzberg. It concerns the political relationship towards Jews as citizens, and we say that we will rather have in this respect the lean years which follow the Pilsudski regime since May 1926, than the fat years which preceded it.

But the Government must realize the economic distress. For no less despairing than the situation of those merchants and artisans who have been ruined is the situation of those merchants and artisans who have still managed to keep their heads above water. The policy of etatism and monopolization of production and trading strangling the whole of the mercha### class, and most of all the Jewish merchant class.

What is the attitude of a section of the tax officials towards the ruined taxpayer. Let me illustrate. On a Thursday night, about 4 a.m., a tax official breaks into a Jewish bakery while they are in the midst of baking Chalas for the Sabbath, and levies a distraint for arrears of taxes. He seizes the whole of the flour there, and the business is ruined. This is not a solitary case. It is the system carried on by some tax officials who are ruining industry and trade, and the result is that it hits the Government revenue. How can people go about their work when at any moment all they have may be seized by distraint, and their business ruined?

The only traders who are safe are those who have nothing left to distrain. And the tax offices keep shouting that there isn’t enough revenue coming in. How can there be if you destroy the source?