Jewish Position Will Improve with Country’s Progress, Envoy Says

The position of the Jew in Poland is certain to improve as Poland continues to recover from its post-war depression in which it lost nine-tenths of its capital, is the opinion of Tytus Filipowicz, Polish Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States.

With the aid of American finance, Poland is recovering. It has in the decade since the conclusion of the World War rebuilt 2,000,000 buildings which were destroyed during the hostilities, the majority of which were in towns with a large Jewish population.

It is true, he said in the course of an interview with the representative of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, that the economic condition of the Jew is not very good. The co-operative movement is developing strongly in Poland, and it is unfortunate that under this economic reorganization, which is eliminating the middleman, the Jew, whose principal occupation was that of a middleman, should be the principal sufferer. The Government of Poland is doing its utmost to relieve this situation by speeding up the process of liquidation of ghettos and raising the level of the Jewish population through proper education and technical training to an extent that may enable it to make a decent living in walks of life other than that of the small tradesman.

He denied emphatically that there was anti-Semitism in Poland with the knowledge and sanction of the government. Asked whether or not there was discrimination against Jews in government employment, he expressed his disbelief that this was possible and asserted his willingness to undertake (Continued on Page 4)

In Poland every man has equal rights. This is one of the principal results of the War. The abolition of the old Czarist restrictions has placed the Jew on a parity with all other citizens of Poland, he said.

Poland, whose population is increasing at the rate of about 400,000 a year, has to find new means of providing for this increase. There are two ways in which the new hands can find proper employment, and both of them are constantly before the Government. One consists in the development of the great natural resources of the country through its industrialization, in order that the excess of rural population may be absorbed by the industrial and mining centers. This task can be greatly facilitated by the influx of foreign investment capital into Poland, where it has always found liberal returns. The other is to find, temporarily at least, outlests for emigration. This latter problem has created an additional complication as far as the Jewish population is concerned. Out of the total of 200,000 which emigrated annually before the enactment of the immigration law in the United States, a large percentage of which were Jews, only about 50,000 can leave Poland at present to find means of livelihood elsewhere. It will be, therefore, readily understood that the necessity of absorbing 150,000 people a year in a country which had to recover from the destructions of war and its aftermath constitutes a difficult problem, the solution of which, however, is proceeding more and more satisfactorily.