Karin Michaelis’s Pilsudski Interview Causes Stir in Poland

The interview with Marshal Pilsudski on the Jewish question in Poland published by the famous Danish novelist. Mrs. Karin Michaelis has roused a storm in Poland.

The “Slovo Pomorske,” a daily newspaper in Thorn, published the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s report of the interview, including the statement attributed to Marshal Pilsudski that his first wife was a Jewess. The following day, the Commandant of the Thorn garrison, Colonel Daczynski, came with Professor Bolinski, the leader of the Government Party in Thorn, to the editorial offices and demanded that it should print a denial of the statement that Marshal Pilsudski had had a Jewish wife. The editor, M. Ruzsanski, agreed to print a denial, but on condition that it was put to him as a request and not as a demand. Colonel Daczynski answered that he was not in the habit of making requests. The editor replied that in that case he would refuse to print the denial. The colonel and the professor thereupon left, threatening that they would take other measures.

The “Novy Dzienik” of Cracow publishes a leading article on the interview. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the entire Jewish press, it says, have re-published an interview from the “Prager Tageblatt” of an interview which the Danish novelist, Karin Michaelis, claims to have had with Marshal Pilsudski. She reports the Marshal to have spoken with sympathy of the Jews, and to have said that his first wife was a Jewess. He thought, however, that there were too many sick and degenerate Jews in Poland, and because Poland had given the Jews a home, both the Jews and the Poles were now suffering.

“It is two years now,” the paper proceeds, “since Karin Michaelis was in Poland. We wonder why the interview has been published only now. It contains also a number of statements which Marshal Pilsudski could not have made, as, for instance that his first wife was a Jewess. This was an invention of the anti-Semites, who thought in this way to discredit the Marshal. Every biography of the Marshal states that his first wife was Maria Yushkevitchchovo, a young widow, whose maiden name (Continued on Page 4)

“The Marshal’s present wife was a great friend of the Perl family to which the late Deputy Perl. the Jewish Socialist leader, belonged. She lived at his house, where the Marshal used to visit her. This gave rise to the legend that she was Deputy Perl’s sister. But this was his second, not his first wife.

“Just as this point, therefore, is incorrect,” the paper proceeds, “we assume that the other points, too, are untrue. Madame Michaelis was probably misled by her poetic fantasy in reporting the Marshal’s words about two years after they were spoken. We cannot believe that the Marshal would express views regarding the Jews like those which she attributes to him. It is impossible that his attitude toward the Jews of Poland should be so like the antiquated ideas of the old polish squirarchy. The anti-Semitic view that it is difficult to live together with the Jews, and the unjustified reproaches that the Jews are not adapted to agriculture cannot possibly have come from Marshal Pilsudski.”