Polish Jews are fearful of a new “anti-Zionist” campaign–a cuphamism for officially inspired anti-Semitism–as a result of the trial slated to begin this month of 26 university students and lecturers who were arrested in last March’s student demonstrations. Sixteen of the students are Jews accused of a “Zionist conspiracy” to overthrow the Warsaw regime. According to Lajos Lederen writing in the Sunday Observer, the proceedings will amount to a “show trial” intending to link the accused with anti-Communist and so-called counter-revolutionary forces abroad. Most of the defendants are alleged to have signed confessions already providing “irrefutable evidence” of connections with student organizations in West Germany, with Israel and with the Joint Distribution Committee, Mr. Lederer wrote. (According to reports from Prague last week, Czechoslovakian authorities are being forced by the Soviet Union to prepare “show trials” of liberals and Jews to prove the existence of a “Zionist conspiracy” and thereby justify last August’s Soviet-led invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia.) The trial, coming after a purge of Jewish intellectuals and party officials, is bound to force Poland’s remaining Jews to leave the country, Mr. Lederer said, adding that passport applications by Polish Jews have increased to more than 10,000 in the past two weeks.
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