Large numbers of placards have been appearing in the last few days on the walls of the working-class districts of the big industrial city of Lodz, and the neighbouring towns of Pabianice and Belchotov, reading: “There are 250,000 Polish workers in Poland who are unemployed and breadless, while there are three million Jews walking about in Poland, eating up the bread that belongs to the Polish workers”.
Knock them on the head, and put a stop to this in-justice, the posters urge the Polish workers.
Already the incitement is beginning to have dangerous consequences. In Pabianice, the non-Jewish unemployed standing outside the employment exchange attacked the Jewish unemployed, two of whom, Pinchas Grinstein and Yiddel Fershter, were seriously stabbed.
The Jewish unemployed in Pabianice have appealed to the Jewish Community, asking it to see that the Jewish unemployed should be paid their unemployed dole elsewhere, so that they should not be exposed to the possibility of further attack at the labour exchanges.
In Belchotov, the non-Jewish unemployed also set upon the Jews, driving them out of the labour exchange, and then running through the streets shouting “Beat the Jews; loot the Jewish shops”. The Jews of Belchotov were thrown into a panic, and began hastily to close their shops and bar their doors and windows. The police came on the scene immediately, however, and dispersed the mob.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
