Polish Jews Protest Stigma for Murder of Sergeant

Dissension among Jewish organizations resulted today in issuance of two separate protests against the verdict of the Warsaw District Court stigmatizing the Jewish people for the murder of a Polish army sergeant by a Jew.

One appeal was issued by the Central Committee of the Polish Zionist Organization, the Right Poale-Zion, labor Zionist group; the Hitachduth and the Jewish People’s Party, and the other by the five Jewish members of Parliament, the extreme orthodox Agudath Israel, the Group “B” General Zionists, the Zionist Executives of Eastern and Western Galicia, the Zionist-Revisionists, the Jewish State Party and the Poale-Agudah, orthodox workers’ organization.

The chief reason for the refusal of the first four groups to sign the “united appeal” was their negative attitude toward the Jewish members of Parliament. The Bund, Jewish labor organization, declined to sign either appeal. Jewish circles pointed out that this disunity was damaging, coming at a time when the Jews, faced with increasing persecution, needed consolidation of all their forces.

The Polish-language Jewish daily, Nasz Przeglad, was confiscated by the authorities for publishing the texts of the appeals.

Both documents declare that after an intense anti-Jewish boycott and pogroms, an attempt is being made to damage Jewish honor and the position of the Jews as citizens, assorting that the campaign against the Jews is being given Government sanction.

Both protests denounce assertions that the Jewish people is an enemy of the Polish State and condemn the practice of making a whole people responsible for the act of one individual — the murder of Sorgoan. Bujak in June, 1936, by Judah Leib Chatzkclowicz, for which the Jewish worker has been sentenced to death

mands of all oppressed sections of the population. Anti-Semitism, it is asserted, destroys the basis for peaceful cooperation among various nationalities in Poland. The Polish people are called upon to resist these attempts against the “honor of the Jewish people” and to declare their faith in the ultimate victory of justice.

GOVERNMENT ACTION ASKED TO COUNTERACT VERDICT’S EFFECTS

Government action to counteract the possibly dangerous effects of the Warsaw District Court’s indictment of Polish Jewry in sentencing to death a Jew who last June killed a Polish soldier was asked by Senator Moses Schorr.

Anti-Semitic speeches made during the trial of Chatzkelewicz were cited by Senator Schorr in an interpellation to Premier Skladkowski and the Minister of Justice in the Senate.

Senator Schorr, who is also Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, said “atrocious libels” contained in speeches by Public Prosecutor Zelenski and Nationalist counsel for Sergeant Bujak’s widow could encourage excesses by creating an atmosphere such as prevailed before pogroms at Przytyk, Minsk-Mazowiec and Brzese (Brest-Litevsk).

In the interpellation, Senator Schorr asked:

What measures the Government proposed to take against the Public Prosecutor “who had implicated the entire Jewish people in the crime of an individual;”

What action would be taken against the Nationalist counsel “who had insulted the Jewish religion;”

What steps were proposed to avoid saddling the Jewish people in the future with the guilt of an individual.