The statement that the Polish Government does not regard the Pinsk drainage plan as a Jewish question made by the Minister of Agrarian Reform, Professor Kozlowsky, in his interview with the representatives of the J.T.A. (given in the J.T.A. Bulletin of the 20th. inst.), has been followed to-day by attacks in the Jewish papers here on M. Filipowicz, the Polish Ambassador to the United States, for holding out promises to the Jews of America in his conference with the leaders of the American Jewish Committee in December, about the enquiry on which the Government was engaged with regard to the utilisation of the waste lands of the Pinsk area, stating that the Government was favourably disposed to the settlement of Jews on those lands.
The “Najer Hajnt”, the Bundist “Folkscajtung”, and the renewed Hebrew daily “Hazefirah” severely criticise M. Filipowicz for making such assurances. Professor Kozlowsky’s interview, they say, dispels as fantastic all the expectations which the Jews have had in this direction. M. Filipowicz’s assurance was nothing more than poking fun at a starving and hopeless Polish Jewry, the “Hajnt” says. We have nothing against individual dreamers who take the Pinsk plan seriously, the paper writes, but when the Polish Ambassador in America makes promises, the matter becomes official. We ask, therefore, how could M. Filipowicz promise the American Jews a Jewish colonisation of the Pinsk swamps when the Government here, as is shown in Professor Kozlowsky’s interview with the J.T.A., is not even thinking about it? Why does he feed the world with baseless assurances?
The stories which M. Filipowicz told the American Jews about Pinsk are now completely dissipated, the “Hazefirah” writes in an editorial article. The Kozlowsky interview uncovered the real nakedness behind all M. Filipowicz’s fine talk. There is a big difference between what Polish diplomats say abroad and what the Polish Government thinks here.
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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.
