Tuesday was proclaimed today as a nationwide Jewish day of protest against the verdict of the Radom District Court, which Friday sentenced eleven Jews to terms ranging from six months to eight years on charges arising from disorders in Przytyk last March 9 in which two Jews and a peasant were killed and scores of Jews injured.
Explaining the heavy sentences meted out to Jewish defendants, the District Court said it had been established that the Jews provoked the excesses. The judge declared there was no necessity for any defense action by the Jews and upheld the charges that they had attacked peasants as they returned from the market.
It explained acquittal of four Poles accused of the Minkowski murders on the ground of insufficient evidence against them.
The non-Jewish population of Przytyk yesterday accorded a triumphant greeting to the four Poles who were acquitted of charges that they murdered two Jews during the excesses. The market place was decorated with flowers and a band played popular airs in honor of their return.
A scheduled performance in a Jewish theatre in Radom was cancelled in protest over the verdict, whose severity with the Jews and mildness with the 43 Poles has shocked all Polish Jewry. Of 43 Poles tried in connection with the excesses, four were freed, three were given one-year terms and the remainder six months each. Three of the 14 Jews were acquitted.
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