Poland’s Official Jewish Organ Presents Warsaw Ghetto Uprising As Non-jewish

The 27th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was marked in Poland last week in a manner that sought to obliterate the Jewish character of that suicidal struggle against the Nazis. Folkstimme, the officially sanctioned weekly of the Jewish Social and Cultural Association in Warsaw, wrote, “The battle of the ghetto of Warsaw was a Polish battle in the first place. Those who fought it were Jews but they spilt their blood for the freedom of Poland. This must be remembered and we remember it.” In Vilna, one of the most important Jewish cultural centers of Eastern Europe before World War II, a Lithuanian Jewish partisan leader was honored this week with the publication of his biography. But the book presents Jacob Smuschkevich, son of a well known Jewish family, simply as a Lithuanian. It is published in Russian and there is no Yiddish version. Similarly, a Jewish artist in Vilna, Samuel Razin, is described only as a “Lithuanian painter” in an album of his works just published. The reproductions of his paintings include several on Jewish subjects and several sketches of a visit to Israel the artist made a few years ago. The album appears in Lithuanian with no Yiddish translation.