Polish Prime Minister and Wjc Officials Hold Friendly Meeting

Prime Minister Wojcieck Jaruzelski of Poland told a group of World Jewish Congress officials here last night, at a meeting held at his request, that the Polish government hoped Western Jewish communities would reciprocate with goodwill for efforts by his government on behalf of Jewish causes.

Jaruzelski met for about an hour at the Polish Mission to the United Nations with Edgar Bronfman, WJC president, Kalman Sultanik, WJC vice president; and Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director.

With the Polish Prime Minister were Stefan Olscewski, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Stultanik told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that the meeting was a friendly one.

Jaruzelski referred specifically to Polish government efforts to restore the Jewish pavilion at Auschwitz and the abandoned Jewish cemeteries in Poland. He also cited documentations sent to the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv.

Jaruzelski formally invited the WJC officials to a meeting scheduled in Warsaw in December, for which the meeting at the Polish Mission last night was a preliminary event, to discuss “oustanding issues.”

Bronfman, responding generally for the WJC delegation, said that improved relations between the Polish regime and the Western Jewish communities depended greatly on the restoration by Poland of normal relations with Israel, broken off by the Soviet government in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Sultanik said he had raised the issue of the Auschwitz exhibit which the Polish government is sponsoring, first at the United Nations in December and January, starting December 16, and then going on tour of American cities. Sultanik said the exhibit should stress the sufferings of the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide and that Jaruzelski assured him it would.