Fear that the Jewish population recently settled in Silesia and the western provinces of Poland may be forced out if the three great powers question Poland’s right to that territory as outlined in the Potsdam agreement was expressed by Joseph Winiewicz, Polish Ambassader to the United States, this week-end, addressing a meeting here of the first Inter-American Conference of the World Federation of Polish Jews.
Deploring anti-Semitism in pre-war Poland, Winiewicz said: “As a Pole and a Christian I am sorry to say that we Poles were at times in the past guilty of lack of tolerance toward our Jewish compatriots. It is, however, a characteristic feature of the democratic revival of Poland after the end of hostilities in 1945 to wipe out the remnants of the past, to be tolerant, to treat the Jews in Poland not only as citizens of the same country, but as brothers.”
Dr. Joseph Tenenbaum, president of the Federation, in a speech read for him by Harold I. Fisher, member of the executive, charged that in the matter of Palestine the Truman administration “talks big on small matters and acts small on big matters with a record of good intentions and poor results.” Dr. Tenenbaum pointed out that the 100,000 Jews for whom President Truman requested entrance to Palestine are still in European DP camps and that the 39,000 annual quota for DP immigrants to this country which the President ordered in Dec., 1945, is “far from filled.”
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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.
