The Jews of Poland are gradually becoming a more active factor in the work of consolidating the Polish State, writes a prominent Polish statesman, Tadeusz Holowko, recently chief of the Eastern division of the Polish Foreign Office, election commissioner of the government party in the Eastern provinces, and one of the closest friends of Marshal Pilsudski, in the Kurjer Wilenski.
Mr. Holowko, who is expected to become vice-president of the Government Party in the new Sejm, says, “Jews are gradually becoming a more active factor in the consolidation of the Polish State in the Eastern provinces. In a number of election districts there, the Jews could not get a single mandate, even if they voted 100% solid for a #nited Jewish ticket, because of the election regulations. The Jews understand that the government list now combines all who want the consolidation of the Polish State without distinction of nationality or religion.
“The Jews understand that Marshal Pilsudski opened a new era in Poland and that it would have been unthinkable for the names of Mincberg, Wishlicky and Mendelson, and in Lemberg the name of the president of the Jewish community, to be together with that of a Catholic on the Government list before the coup d’etat of May. The exchange of letters between Premier Slawek and Kirschbraun deeply impressed the Jews here just as did the letter of Kirschbraun to Marshal Pilsudski, a letter full of the State spirit and written with dignity and with conscientious emphasis of the attitude of Jewish society.”
Touching on Zionism, M. Holowko says that if the Zionist Executive feels that the Polish government should assist the Zionist movement merely because it is in the interests of Poland that more Jews should emigrate to Palestine, then the Zionist Executive “must turn its interest towards the National Democrats (anti-Semites). They, too, want the Jews to emigrate to Palestine and that they should be treated in Poland as foreigners, as ‘citizens of Palestine’.”
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