Assurances that equal citizenship rights are granted to Jews in Poland were made by Jan Ciechanowski, Polish Minister to the United States, speaking at the Brooklyn Jewish Centre on “The Present Situation in Poland.”
The Jews were invited to Poland in the fourteenth century after their expulsion from Spain and Portugal, he said. They lived peacefully with the other people of the country until its partition by Germany and Russia whereupon the governments discriminated against them. Since the creation of the new Poland, Jews have had equal rights with other citizens, he said.
The minister declared that while there were isolated cases of persecution of Jews, the Government was not responsible for them and tried to stop them. He said the Jewish problem in Poland is now one of psychology, in which figures the difference in the manner of the way the Jews live, their difference in dress and their aloofness from other Poles. He said these things cause resentment in the rest of the Polish population.
He stated that he hopes with “time and great tact on both sides, with the spreading of education, enlightenment among the masses, and by introducing a gradual process of sincere cooperation on the part of the Jewish section of the population with the rest of the nation,” the Jewish problem will be solved satisfactorily. He said Poland wanted the Jews to remain there.
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