The new Polish constitution has been adopted by the Polish parliament with the passive support of the Jewish deputies. Though in theory it contains no distinctly anti-Jewish clauses, in actual practice the new constitution will tend to restrict the rights of the Polish Jewish community still further. Yet the Jews themselves voted for it.
PILSUDSKI STRENGTHENED
The new constitution represents a tremendous victory for Pilsudski. But his victory has not been due to his personality alone. The whole tendency in European politics has been away from democracy and towards dictatorship. Everywhere there has emerged a desire for a “strong man.” Poland has now followed suit.
The man in the street has paid little attention to this constitutional change. The word “constitution” has lost the all-important significance it had only a few years ago. People have seen that a constitution, with a little legal juggling, can be made to be whatever the group in power wishes it to be. In Poland, in particular, people saw that even the best constitutions could not make them happy, or give them prosperity. And when a new constitution was proposed, the general attitude was: “A little less democracy? More power to the president and to the Senate, and less to the citizen? Well, let’s try it, things can’t be much worse, and they might be better.”
The same applies to the Jews. They saw that the old constitution, which in theory gave them exactly the same rights as the Poles, had in practice enabled them to be deprived of just those rights. They saw that it made it possible for the Jews of Poland to be reduced to an undreamt of degree of poverty and suffering. They saw that to have equal rights on paper was a very different thing from having them in actual practice.
And so the Jews raised no strong objections when they were deprived of some of these theoretical rights. The number of Jews entitled to vote in the elections to the Senate has been reduced to a few dozen. Will Jews be represented at all in the Senate? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but probably the latter. It will be a matter of luck rather than parliamentary democracy. A community of 3,300,000 Jews will remain practically without representation in the governing body.
The Jews of Poland have seen their rights and their power reduced more and more in every successive Sejm. The new constitution will inevitably strengthen this downward trend.
But there is one other reason for the acquiescence of the Jews. The new constitution strengthens Pilsudski and reduces the chances of the anti-Semitic “Endeks” gaining power to a minimum. And while Pilsudski’s government has shown no particular love for the Jews, it has at least not been violently anti-Semitic. The Jews of Poland have merely chosen the lesser of two evils.
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