Poland’s Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki announced Sunday night that Soviet Jews can use his country as a stopover on the way to Israel.
“Just as in the Middle Ages Poland gave refuge to Jews fleeing persecution,” Mazowiecki said, “so today Poland will not evade humanitarian assistance to Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union.”
Mazowiecki’s offer was made at a dinner for over 300 people given here in his honor by the American Jewish Congress.
According to Mazowiecki’s spokeswoman, Malgorzata Niezabitowska, Poland’s national airline, Lot, is now prepared to provide charter flights for Jews leaving the Soviet Union.
“I can think of nothing that would develop stronger bonds between Poland and the Jewish community,” said Robert Lifton, president of AJCongress, “than for Poland to be helpful in terms of Soviet emigres in enabling them to get to Israel.”
Israeli officials expect 750,000 Soviet Jews to come to Israel in the next decade, based on the Soviet Union’s current liberalized emigration policies and tighter entrance requirements to the United States.
THREATS OF TERRORISM
Last week, Malev, the Hungarian national airline, stopped flying the emigres to Israel because of threats of terrorism from the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine.
The Hungarian airline also told the Soviet Union to stop flying Jews to Budapest, which recently had become a major transit point for the emigres. The USSR complied, announcing that Aeroflot would no longer sell one-way tickets to Jews bound for Israel via Hungary.
But even before the problems in Budapest, Israel had requested that Poland assist the emigres, according to the Polish government spokeswoman.
The Polish leader’s decision to allow flights to come through his country was seen as “a decision of great moral and political significance that will be welcomed by Jews all over the world,” said Henry Siegman, executive director of AJCongress.
In the Polish prime minister’s only planned address to the Jewish community during his visit, he also decried anti-Semitism past and present.
“We regret the attempts to foster hatred against Jews, as it happened in (Poland in) March 1968, or in the resolution of the United Nations which identified Zionism with racism,” Mazowiecki said.
He added that he was prepared “to restore Polish citizenship to everybody who was at that time forced to leave Poland.
“Now that we are opening up to the world, and after 23 years have restored diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, the time has come to make a breakthrough in the relationship between the Poles and Jews,” he said.
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