No Jewish Support for Polish Government Says Deputy Thon Announcing Jewish Club Will Abstain on Vote

Not for reasons of opposition to the Government, to which the Club of Jewish Deputies takes up rather an objective attitude, but on purely material grounds, the Club of Jewish Deputies is compelled to abstain from the voting on the budget, Rabbi Deputy Dr. Thon, the President of the Club of Jewish Deputies, declared in a declaration which he read out in the Seym to-day on behalf of the Club in the course of the debate on the budget.

The declaration has made an impression in political circles, demonstrating as it does that the Club of Jewish Deputies is pursuing a moderate and restrained policy under its new leaders, without the aggressiveness of Deputy Gruenbaum, the former President of the Club.

The declaration went on to reiterate the Jewish postulates, emphasising the over-taxation of the town population, especially the Jews, demanding State subsidies for Jewish social and religious requirements, in which regard, it stated, the Jews come lowest on the list although according to their numbers they should hold third place, urging a modification of the Compulsory Sunday Closing Law, which compels the Jewish population to rest two days in the week, and complaining of the new draft regulations for Jewish Communities, objecting that they incline towards the clericalisation of the Jewish Communities.

Neither in clerical Austria, nor in Black Czarist Russia has there been so strong a clerical tendency permitted in the Jewish Communities, the declaration said. We shall mobilise all our forces to fight against the rights of individuals to exercise a censorship as to who is orthodox or unorthodox in deciding their rights to belong to the Jewish communities. Only concealed enemies could urge on the Government a regulation of this character, the declaration said knowing full well what sort of a reception it will have from the masses of Polish Jewry, where it must precipitate an internal conflict causing an outburst of indignation abroad, with harmful results to the entire Polish State.

The declaration further demanded the subsidising of the Jewish shool system, pointing to the pauperisation of the Jewish masses, and emphasising that it is impossible to relieve the Jewish economic distress by means of emigration, because practically all the countries of the world are to-day closed against immigration, so that it therefore becomes essential to solve the Jewish problem inside the country.

Twelve years after the German occupation forces left Poland, the declaration proceeded, we saw rising on the horizon the light of the removal of the yellow patch of the Czarist restrictions. But it was not to be. The Bill for the repeal of the Czarist restrictions came up in the Senate Commission and with members of the Government sitting silently by and giving tacit consent the Bill has been referred back for an indifinite period. We shall never consider the abolition of the Czarist restrictions as a concession to the Jews, Deputy Thon concluded, but only as the removal of a stain upon the escutcheon of Polish honour.

GOVERNMENT DETERMINED TO HAVE CZARIST RESTRICTIONS ABOLISHED JEWISH DEPUTIES OF GOVERNMENT PARTY DECLARE TO J.T.A.: EXPLAIN THEY HAVE BEEN AUTHORISED BY PRESIDENT OF GOVERNMENT CLUB TO SAY BILL BE BROUGHT UP AT NEXT SITTING OF SENATE AND ENACTED: INTERRUPT RABBI THON TO DECLARE GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS FOR JEWISH COMMUNITIES ARE SUCH “AS WE WANT”

Deputies Minzberg, Wislicki and Jaeger, and Senator Mendelsoh, the Jewish members of the Government Party, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to-day that they have been authorised by the President of the Government Club, M. Jedrzczewicz, to declare that the Government and the Pro-Government Club of Deputies are determined to have the Czarist restrictions abolished and that at the next meeting of the Senate, the law for their removal from the Statute book will be brought up and carried into force.

When Deputy Dr. Thon, in reading out the declaration of the Club of Jewish Deputies, made his complaint about the projected Jewish Communities regulations, Deputy Minzberg, who is a prominent Agudist and is President of the Lodz Jewish Community, interjected: “We want such communities”.