Commercial activity throughout Poland was practically at a standstill today as 3,500,000 Jews, joined by thousands of Polish workers, staged a huge general strike as a demonstration against the Government’s failure to check the current anti-Semitic reign of terror.
The strike, one of the most impressive mass demonstrations witnessed in this country since the Mendel Beiliss trial protest in 1912, passed off with only minor disturbances.
Although called by Jewish labor unions, the strike was joined by all classes of the Jewish population. Rabbis, businessmen, lawyers, students and Jewish communal institutions participated. All Jewish and many non-Jewish stores were closed.
Streets of the Jewish quarters in Warsaw presented a picture resembling New York’s Jewish section on Yom Kippur. Jewish schools and banks were shut down. Newspapers did not appear. Every public and private enterprise operated by Jews displayed signs stating, “We demand protection for Jewish life. Down with anti-Semitism.” The signs mention the victims of the Przytyk pogrom of last week.
More than a thousand separate demonstrations were held in this city alone.
POLICE CLUB CHILDREN, AGED
Foot and mounted police attempted to disperse the demonstrators in several sections of the city, using clubs on aged Jews and even school-children. These sorties by the police failed, however, to check the demonstrations, new thousands flocking in to displace those that had been dispersed.
Among the most impressive sights of the day was a procession of rabbis who marched through the center of the city to a cemetery where they said prayers over the graves of Jewish holy men.
Jewish lawyers, attired in full court regalia, appeared in the Warsaw district courts but maintained silence during the entire demonstration.
Jewish students of the Warsaw University, recently closed because of anti-Semitic rioting, abstained from classes, as did those at the Polytechnic Institute.
Signs in Hebrew and Polish were displayed at the universities, quoting the lamentations of Jeremiah as harmonizing with the present tragic position of the Polish Jews.
400 JEWS ENTRAIN FOR PALESTINE
A unique demonstration took place before the central railway station in Warsaw when 400 Jews took train for Palestine. Cars of the train were spontaneously converted into tribunes from which speakers addressed huge crowds on the anti-Jewish excesses.
Warsaw residents experienced a bread shortage because bakeries were closed during the strike, the bakers having joined the demonstrates.
The strike officially ended at two o’clock when normal activity was resumed throughout the country.
Police yesterday arrested three Jews in Przytyk, scene of anti-Jewish rioting last week, making a total of eight arrested. Twenty-two non-Jews have also been seized. Holding of the weekly market day was cancelled for fear of further rioting in the town.
Aided by firemen, the police dragged the bottom of the River Radomski, near Przytyk, for arms that might have been thrown in.
The relief committee organized by Senator Moses Schorr to aid the 700 Jewish families of the town issued an appeal for funds.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
