Jews Angered by Use of ‘j’ on Tax Bills

The use of the letter J on tax bills sent to Jewish taxpayers by the Montreal Urban Council has revived bitter memories among Jews of Cote-St. Luc, a 95 percent Jewish-populated suburb of Montreal. They say it smacks of the J many of them were forced to wear while inmates of Nazi concentration camps.

The J began to appear on tax bills after a new law that went into effect in Jan. abolished the old system of separate tax lists for Jews, Catholics and Protestants. The assessment bills of Catholics and Protestants are marked C and P in the “religious code” box.

But Jews are more sensitive “because they have been persecuted in my own time, not hundreds of years ago,” Mrs. Celine Polak, spokesman for a group of irate Jewish taxpayers, said at a meeting of the Cote-St. Luc City Council last week. Mrs. Polak, who was born in Amsterdam and was forced to wear the J during the Nazi occupation, asked why the MUC needs to know a taxpayer’s religion. “The Germans wanted the same information. We later regretted that we gave it to them. Many Jews aren’t alive to regret it,” she said.

Mrs. Polak’s 25-member delegation met with Mayor Samuel Moskovitch of Cote-St. Luc. He said the Council would send a protest resolution to the MUC with copies to the 27 other member municipalities, Minister of Municipal Affairs. Premier Robert Bourassa and federal authorities. Nathan Bruker, another member of the delegation, suggested notifying the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. “That’s an American organization, let’s try to keep this in Canada,” the Mayor replied.

Nine more suspects in the Syrian-directed Arab-Jewish spy ring, all of them non-Jews, were charged today in a Haifa District Court with conspiracy to commit acts of sabotage in Israel. Their trial is scheduled to start early next month. They are charged with planning sabotage in Army camps, oil refineries and fuel installations.