Poland Seeks Intergovernmental Body’s Aid for Reich Deportees

The Polish authorities are making determined efforts to have the question of Polish Jews deported from Germany and stranded on the frontier taken up by the directorate of the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee, which opens its session this Friday. The efforts follow the apparent reaching of an impasse in the Polish-German negotiations on the deportations and the status of the Polish Jews remaining in Germany, who are feared to be in danger of summary deportation and who the Warsaw Government does not wish to enter Poland.

Polish diplomats were understood to be contacting officials of the Intergovernmental Committee seeking inclusion of the question on the agenda. Ambassador Count Edward Raczynski was understood to have seen George Rublee, director of the Refugee Bureau, but was told that the question was outside the scope of the bureau’s mandate and its inclusion was a question for the Intergovernmental Committee’s members to decide.

The Ambassador subsequently sought to enlist British support on the issue, pointing out that the deportees, left homeless and now living in camps, should be given preferential treatment in any international action for refugees. The British authorities were understood to have replied in the negative on the ground that the 5,000 stranded deportees are Polish citizens who should be admitted to Poland. The Polish Ambassador in Paris was understood to have discussed the question with Senator Henri Berenger, French vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Committee.

The recent Polish press agitation for a solution of “the second Jewish problem” has made an unfavorable impression in official circles here, which view with dismay the efforts to extend the refugee problem to Jews of Polish citizenship now residing in Germany since such action might be an entering wedge for eventual Polish demands for aid in solving the entire Jewish question in Poland by mass emigration.